We are studying Maseches Rosh Hashanah, chapter 4, mishnah 9 - the final mishnah of the tractate. This mishnah deals with the details of how the shofar blasts are sounded: how many blasts, the length of each blast, and how the blasts are divided into sets.
By Torah law, as derived from various expositions, one must sound three teruos on Rosh Hashanah, with each teruah preceded by a tekiah and followed by a tekiah. That comes to a total of nine blasts that a person is obligated to sound.
What is a teruah?
The tekiah is a long, straight blast, but the nature of the teruah is the subject of a dispute in the Gemara: is a teruah a broken, staccato sound (what we call "teruah"), or is it a series of longer broken sounds (what we call "shevarim")? Because of this doubt we are stringent and sound all the possibilities:
Tekiah - teruah - tekiah.
Tekiah - shevarim - tekiah.
Tekiah - shevarim teruah - tekiah, in case the teruah includes both sounds together.
All of these stringencies together bring us to thirty blasts, and that is the amount a person needs to hear if he did not hear the blasts in their proper order during the Mussaf prayer. The obligation is to hear these thirty blasts.
The order of the blasts and their length:
The mishnah opens: "Seder tekios shalosh shalosh shalosh" - the order of the blasts is three, three and three. The word "tekios" is used here in its general sense - any sound that comes out of the shofar, whether a tekiah or a teruah. That is, three sets of three blasts each: tekiah teruah tekiah, tekiah teruah tekiah, tekiah teruah tekiah.
The mishnah continues: "Shiur tekiah keshalosh teruos" - the length of a tekiah is like three teruos. The question is which tekios this refers to, and the Gemara records two opinions:
It refers to all six tekios - the three that precede the teruos and the three that follow them - which together are the length of three teruos. According to this, each tekiah is half the length of a teruah.
It refers only to the tekios that precede the teruah blasts, and together they are the length of three teruos. According to this, each tekiah is as long as a single teruah.
"Shiur teruah keshalosh yevavos" - the length of a teruah is like three yevavos:
What is a yevavah? This too is a question in the Gemara. From the plain reading of the mishnah it appears that a yevavah is an extremely short, broken sound, whereas a beraisa states that the length of a teruah is like three shevarim, which are longer sounds. Some understand that there is a dispute between the mishnah and the beraisa, while others explain that there is no dispute about the length at all, only about the type of sound: nine broken sounds are equal in length to three longer sounds, and the mishnah agrees with the beraisa about the amount of time and differs with it only in defining the character of the sound.
A long tekiah that is not split in two:
The mishnah continues: "Taka barishonah umashach basheniyah kishtayim - ein beyado ela achas" - if one blew the first tekiah and drew out the second one as long as two, he has only one in hand. A person blew the first tekiah for its proper length, but the second tekiah, the one that comes after the teruah, he extended for the length of two tekios. The question is whether the second half of that long tekiah can be used as the opening tekiah of the second set, the one that comes before the second teruah. The mishnah rules that it cannot: even though the tekiah is as long as two, we do not split it in two and we do not say that one half is the conclusion of the first set while the other half is the opening of the second set.
One who already prayed and only afterward obtained a shofar:
The mishnah discusses one who already recited the berachos - that is, he prayed the Mussaf prayer with its nine berachos (and although the mishnah uses the term "Shemoneh Esrei," it means the Amidah prayer, which in this case consists of nine berachos) - "ve'achar kach nizdamen lo shofar" - and afterward a shofar became available to him. During Mussaf he had no shofar, and he received one afterward. In such a case he blows tekiah, teruah and tekiah three times, a total of nine blasts. And of course, since we do not know with certainty what a teruah is, we act stringently and sound thirty blasts.
The obligation of the individual and the role of the chazzan:
The mishnah rules: "Keshem sheshliach tzibur chayav - kach kol yachid veyachid chayav" - just as the chazzan is obligated, so too every single individual is obligated. Every individual is obligated to recite the Shemoneh Esrei himself, and the chazzan cannot discharge his obligation for him; rather, he must pray himself in addition to what the chazzan says.
Rabban Gamliel disagrees and says: "Shliach tzibur motzi es harabim yedei chovasan" - the chazzan discharges the obligation of the community. In his view the chazzan discharges the obligation not only of one who is unfamiliar with the prayer, but even of one who is familiar with it.
The practical halachah:
For the prayers of the entire year the halachah follows the Sages, that one who is familiar with the prayer - who knows how to pray - does not fulfill his obligation through the chazzan's prayer. On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, however, when the community is not familiar with the text of the prayers, a person does fulfill his obligation through the chazzan, since even one who is familiar with the prayers of the rest of the year is not necessarily familiar with the prayers of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
Thank you for joining us for Maseches Rosh Hashanah. We hope you will join us for the next tractate - Maseches Taanis.