Some fifteen years ago in this very format we explored the meaning and the musar of the daily Ellul shofar sounding. Certainly, it's time to revisit it. Indeed, there are many indications that the practice evolved to its present form in a two-step process; a “revisit” if you will.
It all began seemingly spontaneously on what would become the “first Rosh Chodesh Ellul”. The medrash (Pirkei Derabi Eliezer, chapter 46) quoted by the Rosh (at the end of Maseches Rosh Hashana) takes us back to Moshe’s third ascent up Har Sinai, this time instructed to come with the stones for the second tablets. Spontaneously, a spiritually shaken people diminished by the chet ha’egel, frightened by the specter of it all happening over again, sounded the shofar. This was their commitment to deeply felt remorse, caution, and change all at once. Dovid Hamelech (47:6) records that this moment became especially precious upon High; according to Chazal, Hashem “moved to a place of compassion from a place of demands and din. To memorialize and recreate it, rabbinic leadership legislated its reenactment every rosh chodesh Elul.
The Rosh further comments that for the rank and file of our people this was not enough and some centuries later we made the practice of daily shofar sounding.
What did Klal Yisrael recognize as they took ownership over the Elul shofar and insisted on the daily blasts? What should course through our minds as we are forced to count the days of since Rosh Chodesh and the days left till the Yom Hadin?
Perhaps they recognized that the slip from the heights of matan Torah to the depth of having an eigel in their midst did not happen in one moment. It was the result of a sole sudden, severe, and even crushing, disappointment.
They understood looking back with the national experience of over a millennia in mind that change of most sorts is gradual and is a process; that ruptures happen but rarely in a vacuum. They projected that over forty days we moved away from the revelation of Sinai, daily, slowly, and steadily; in modern jargon, change took place in micro-moves. Only with the momentum of decline and some distance from the moment of kabolas haTora could the fear of Moshe’s departure become real enough and so profoundly debilitating as to unhinge their spiritual accomplishments.
Klal Yisrael reasoned that the way back from any spiritual malaise and the way forward for substantial growth can be the same. The daily shofar was their commitment to growing steadily albeit slowly. Through daily “visits”, steady improvements in our davening, constant focus on our learning, disciplined attention to our speech and our thoughts, each one seemingly unimpressive viewed in isolation, but by the time we get to Rosh Hashana, the cumulative outcome is magnificent!