Positive Mitzvah Fifty-Nine Blowing the Trumpets in the Sanctuary
Requires Beit HaMikdash
Contingent Upon Eretz Yisrael
BaMidbar 10:10 On your joyous days and
on your festivals and on the beginnings of your months you shall blow with the
trumpets for your olah-offerings and for your shalamim [peace]-offerings; and it shall
be a remembrance for you before your G-d, I am Hashem your G-d.
We are commanded to sound trumpets in the Sanctuary
when offering any of the Festival sacrifices. The actual execution of this
Mitzvah devolved upon the Kohanim and it was binding only during the existence
of the Sanctuary, and within Eretz Yisrael. (Sefer
HaChinuch, Mitzvah 384)
The affirmation and acceptance of the all pervading
rule of Providence - extending as it does from the highest spheres to the
humblest and minutest created being - and the absolute rejection of chance as
affecting even the most trivial human affairs, is the object of this Mitzvah.
"It is a Positive Mitzvah decreed of the Torah to
offer up public and solemn supplications to Hashem and to sound trumpets over
every calamity that befalls the community, as it is said,
'[When you go to war in your land] against the
adversary that oppressed you, then you shall sound an alarm with the trumpets'
(BaMidbar 10:9). It is thus as if the
verse had decreed, 'Whenever you are beset by any calamity whatsoever, as by
drought, pestilence, locust, etc., you are to offer up public and solemn
supplications to Hashem concerning it and to sound the trumpets.'
Moreover, such conduct is of the essence of repentance, for when calamity
befalls the people, and they offer up public supplications concerning it,
sounding also the trumpets as prescribed, all are bound to realize that it is
owing to their evil ways that misfortune has befallen them, as it is said,
'Your iniquities have turned away these
things, - and your sins have withholden good from you' (Yirmeyahu
5:25) - and this repentance along with such
realization will cause the cessation of the calamity from their midst.
If however, they neither offer up such supplications nor sound the trumpets,
declaring that what has befallen them is but a natural event, or that this
misfortune is the result of chance and accident, their course is one of
wickedness, and causes them to persist in their evil ways, so that their
misfortune is bound to be followed by many others. It is with such
conduct in view that Scripture declares, '[And
if you will not for all this listen to Me,] but walk contrary to Me, then I
will walk contrary to you in fury' (VaYikra 26:27-28).
For it is as if the verse had declared, 'If when I cause misfortune to befall
you - thereby really calling you to repentance - you will not for all this
hearken to Me but walk contrary to Me, and declare this visitation to be
merely a matter of chance, then I will walk contrary to you and I will
increase My fury, by which this "chance" was occasioned to befall you'"
(Mishnah Torah, Zmanim, Hilchot Taaaniot 1, 1-3).
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