There is a minhag (custom) of blowing the shofar 100
times on Rosh Hashana. The Mishna Berura attributes the minhag
to the 16th century rabbi known as Shelah haKadosh, who connects the
wailing sound of the shofar to the whimpering of the unnamed woman who is the
mother of the defeated Canaanite general, Sisera. The prophetess Devorah
mentions the woman in her victory song (Shoftim/Judges 5:28-30).
“Through the window, Sisera’s mother peered and whimpered
through the lattice, ‘Why is his chariot so delayed in coming? Why do the
chariots’ wheels tarry?’ The wisest of her ladies answers her, and she replies
to herself, ‘Are they not finding and dividing the spoils? A girl or two for
each man, booty of colored garments for Sisera, booty of dyed embroidery,
doubly embroidered garments for the necks of the looters?’”
Rabbi Dr. Mordechai Schnaidman in The Jewish Press
(9/9/13, p. 69) notes a similarity of the wording in the passage about Sisera’s
mother and in the Torah’s and Talmud’s statements about sounding the shofar (Vayikra/Leviticus
23:24, 25:9; Bamidbar/Numbers 29:1; Rosh Hashana 33b). He writes: “The
Hebrew word va’teyabev used in Shoftim is understood by our Sages
to mean the wimpering of Sisera’s mother. This word is related to the word yevava,
which is the Aramaic rendering of the term used for terua, the singular
sound of the shofar on Rosh Hashana.”
Why 100 shofar blasts? Rabbi Mordecai Kornfeld on
shemayisrael.co.il explains that is common for a person to wail 100 times when
the life of someone dear to them is at stake. He writes: “[On Rosh Hashana] we,
too, arouse ourselves to wail 100 times for our own and our family’s well
being.”
Rabbi Kornfeld maintains that Sisera’s mother wailed only 99
times, and if she had cried out one more time, her prayers for her son’s well
being might have been answered. He cites a Midrash about a woman in labor: in
99 of her cries she pleads for death and in her final cry, when the baby is
born, she pleads for life. He also
points out that the gematria (numerical value) of the word ha-chalon
(the window [through which Sisera's mother peered]) is 99.
Why do we model the cries of the shofar on the cries of our
enemy? Sisera’s mother and her “wise” lady friend ignore the killing that
enables the seizures of captive women. They ignore the pillaging that allows
the acquisition of fine clothing.
Writes Rabbi Dr. Schnaidman: “In recalling Sisera’s mother
at the time of the shofar blowing, we are remembering enemies of Am Yisroel
[the people of Israel] who symbolize all of the adversaries who are opposed to
the moral ideas emanating from the Torah that Am Yisroel brought into
the world…We are also to hear a call, via the story of Sisera’s mother, to
unmask the evil that does not have respect for human beings, female as well as
male, and that places aesthetic feeling above moral considerations.”
“The shofar is the call to detect such evil and recognize
it, expose it and fight it, in order to bring closer that day when Hashem will
be the great king over all the earth. The shofar has high purposes that Am
Yisroel is mandated to strive for as the ambassadors of Hashem and the
moral foundations that He stands for in the community of man.”
http://www.mail-archive.com/daf-discuss@shemayisrael.co.il/msg00169.html
