Think like a Rabbi!
Elli Cohn
“Today is an ephemeral ghost...
A strange amazing day that comes only once every four years. For the rest of the time it does not "exist."
In mundane terms, it marks a "leap" in time, when the calendar is adjusted to make up for extra seconds accumulated over the preceding three years due to the rotation of the earth. A day of temporal tune up!
But this day holds another secret—it contains one of those truly rare moments of delightful transience and light uncertainty that only exist on the razor edge of things, along a buzzing plane of quantum probability...
A day of unlocked potential.
Will you or won't you? Should you or shouldn't you?
Use this day to do something daring, extraordinary and unlike yourself. Take a chance and shape a different pattern in your personal cloud of probability!”
― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration (Russian-American fantasy and science fiction author)
We’re back to calculating shofar blasts again! The Gemara is really bothered by the idea that our Mishnah made a statement that there are never more than 48 shofar blasts blown in the Temple, when there are clearly examples of days when there would be more than 48 blasts blown. For example, erev Pesach that falls on Shabbat day (not to be confused with erev Pesach that falls on erev Shabbat, as we spoke about last week!). On erev Pesach that falls on Shabbat day, there would be 51 blasts according to Rabbi Yehuda, and 57 blasts according to the rabbis. What’s up with our Mishnah? Why did it cap the number of blasts at 48?
Think like a rabbi: what do you think the reason could be?