By Rabbi Marco Del Monte
When Shabbat becomes Shofar At the height of the month of Elul, the Torah portion of Nitzavim gives us a verse that the Ben Ish Chai transforms into a true map of Teshuvah: "This thing is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, so that you may do it." The key to reading the verse is a seemingly simple term: דבר – davar – thing/word.
What does this seemingly indefinite term, *ha-davar* ("the thing" or "the word"), which the Torah declares to be "very close to you", represent? Rav Yosef Chayim of Baghdad in the *Ben Ish Chai* offers a precise exegetical and psychological explanation: "*Ein davar ella shemirat Shabbat* – There is no *davar* other than the observance of Shabbat." The textual foundation of this equivalence stems from the famous verse of the prophet Isaiah on the value of the seventh day: "If you turn back your foot because of the Sabbath... and honor it by not following your ways, by not pursuing your business and from -speaking words *ve-daber davar*-" (Yeshayahu 58:13). In this prophetic verse, the term *davar* precisely identifies the boundary of the sacred: the teachers of the Talmud deduce from it that on Shabbat our speech must change radically compared to weekdays. Therefore, in the rabbinic tradition, the term *davar* is one of the quintessential markers of Sabbath holiness. The Creator Himself promises: "Even if you have transgressed the Ten Commandments, Observe this '*davar*' – the Shabbat – and I will forgive you." For this reason Chazal (see *Tur* and *Bet Yosef*) attribute an extraordinary power to its observance: "He who observes Shabbat, even if he had practiced *avodah zarah* like the generation of Enosh, is forgiven." But the *Ben Ish Chai* reopens the same verse a second time. *Davar* also means *mitzvah*, based on the verse: "because he has despised - *Devar Hashem* - the word of Hashem" (Bemidbar 15:31; *Otiot deRabbi Akiva*). The *davar* then becomes the totality of the 613 mitzvot: 248 positive ones, corresponding to the organs, and 365 negative ones, corresponding to the tendons. No man can physically fulfill them all; some concern the Kohen, others the king, others the Bet HaMikdash. But as the *Ben Ish Chai* explains to us, through study with the mouth and desiring them in the heart – man can connect even with what he cannot physically realize. And here is the third step. *Davar* also means *refuah*, healing, as the Tehillim says: "He sends His word and heals them" (Tehillim 107:20). What is the medicine capable of spiritually healing man? *Teshuvah* (see Hoshea 14:5). The same verse therefore contains Shabbat, Mitzvot and *Teshuvah*: three aspects of a single return of man to his own integrity. Finally comes the Shofar. The *Ben Ish Chai* observes that the words פה–לב, "mouth-heart", calculated in their *milui* (a form of gematria calculation), have a numerical value of 586, exactly like *Shofar*–שופר. The Shofar is therefore the sound of a *Teshuvah* in which what the mouth proclaims and what the heart desires finally coincide again. And perhaps we then understand why, when Rosh Hashanah falls on Shabbat, the Shofar itself falls silent. The Chachamim explain that the memory of positive actions normally awakened by the Shofar is then stirred by Shabbat itself. When the melody of Shabbat plays, the Shofar is silent. Yet both ask for the same thing: to recompose the soul of man. Probably, at the moment when it is most necessary, right on Rosh Hashanah itself (this year), Hashem makes us experience it in the song of Shabbat. Perhaps precisely because Shabbat is the anti-Idolaters' antidote, the concentrate of the whole Torah, the essence of every form of forgiveness. Because sometimes *Teshuvah* expresses itself with a cry; at other times in the apparent absence of sound. And perhaps, in the song of the silence of Shabbat, the great Shofar has already begun to sound.
Shabbat Shalom
Translated from the Italian with Google Gemini. The Italian text is the original.