R
osh Hashanah is a day when freedom and liberty — true Jewish freedom and liberty — are declared.
We know this because the central mitzvah of the day the mitzvah of blowing the shofar does not appear in the Torah passage where the observance of this moed is commanded but is hinted at in broader terms that enable us to extract hidden meanings.
The pasuk states: “And in the seventh month on the first of the month… you shall not do any mundane work; it shall be a day of teruah for you” (Bamidbar 29:1).
We know of course that teruah refers to the blowing of the shofar and we know by tradition the specific form and pattern of shofar-blowing required to fulfill the mitzvah. But how do we know this? How did we reach this conclusion from the one word teruah when the word “shofar” doesn’t even appear in the passage?
