Blowing the Shofar: Confusing the Satan?

The widespread custom in the month of Elul is to blow the shofar everyday, in order to awaken us to teshuva.

We also blow the shofar on Rosh Hashanah itself, the fulfillment of a mitzvah from the Torah. The Rema¹ tells us that we do not blow shofar the day before Rosh Hashana, which the commentaries explain is in order to separate between the voluntary blowings of Elul and the obligatory ones of Rosh Hashana.

However, another more “mystical” sounding explanation is highlighted by the Kaf Hachaim as well as other commentaries: we do not blow shofar the day before Rosh Hashana in order to confuse the Satan. The Maharil explains that the Satan believes the Shofar is announcing the Day of Judgement and when he hears it, he prepares to argue his case before the Heavenly Court. He comes back every day that it is blown, expecting it to be Rosh Hashana. But when it stops, he believes Rosh Hashana has passed so he gives up.

Several questions arise here, such as: what exactly is confusing to the Satan about this? What does it mean to “confuse” a heavenly being — doesn’t he know better? And even if he could be confused, wouldn’t he learn after one or two years what this trick is?

First of all, we need to take a step back and understand who the Satan actually is. The Gemara² tells us that the Satan, the Angel of Death, and the Yetzer Harah are all one and the same. When we take a closer look at this being known as the yetzer harah, we see that in Gan Eden before the sin of Adam Harishon, the yetzer harah was an external entity to man (portrayed by the nachash, the snake). Man had a clear picture that there is an “I” created in the image of G-d, and there is this other voice (also G-d sent) which is trying to sway him from his true purpose — obeying Hashem’s command.

Confusing the Satan really can be understood as working with our own internal voices. The voices that tell us, “You’ve always been this way — you cannot change.” The ones that say, “Change is too hard, why bother?”. The voices of defeat, of denial, of despair. We can get stuck in patterns that feel endless and impossible to break. We can get caught in scary cycles that make us think we are now defined by our negative traits and choices.

Post-sin, the snake did not simply run off to wreak more havoc. No, instead he became integrated into our psyche. This presented a new challenge for man, for rather than battling a clear enemy, man would now have to go a step further and battle his own internal voice. He would have to work hard to detect what exactly is the will of G-d before he could properly follow it.

So now that we can understand Satan — not as a pitch-fork carrying lord of the underworld or a little red demon standing on our shoulder, but rather — as a deceitful voice within ourselves, we can re-examine the minhag and questions above.

Confusing the Satan really can be understood as working with our own internal voices. The voices that tell us, “You’ve always been this way — you cannot change.” The ones that say, “Change is too hard, why bother?”. The voices of defeat, of denial, of despair. We can get stuck in patterns that feel endless and impossible to break. We can get caught in scary cycles that make us think we are now defined by our negative traits and choices.

Comes along the month of Elul. We begin to blow the shofar, the voice of Teshuva. Day after day after day, we try to strengthen this voice of truth. But the voice of sheker, of falsehood, that of the Satan and our Yetzer Harah, comes back day after day after day. There is a battle going on inside of us. Who will win? The bad habits and behaviors, or the new self-talk we are trying to build?

Now it’s the day before Rosh Hashana. With one last push, we take all we have within us, every ounce of truth and — we don’t blow.

No, instead on this day, we surprise the Satan. We speak up with a slightly different voice. We speak in a voice that perhaps the Satan already is familiar with because he had utilized it himself so many times. We grab on to the power of Chutzpah. Brazenness. Disrespect. Contempt. We say to this voice of sheker, “You think you got me sized up? Well you don’t. I know who I am and I can be whatever I want to be, not what you tell me to be. Not what you expect me to be. You don’t know me. You can’t tell me what to do!”

There is a concept brought in the sefer Orchot Tzaddikim (among other mussar sources as well) that every middah has the potential to be used in a good way. Even middot which we may strike off as negative or bad, we can harness towards the power of good, of truth. chutzpah, a middah that usually carries a negative association, can be used to fight the internal voice that says, “You can’t.” “Don’t tell me what I can or can’t do,” we say back. And we say it with chutzpah.

It takes chutzpah to change. It takes chutzpah to challenge the beliefs we have so long held about ourselves, or about others. It takes chutzpah to believe we can be more and we can do better. It takes chutzpah to fight the Satan.

On the day before Rosh Hashana, we stop blowing and we take a 180 turn. We look at the Satan in the eye and say: “I’m not letting you be in control.”

This is what is “confusing” to the Satan! Our negative beliefs about ourselves were so strong and now, we are turning them upside down. We are telling ourselves a message that at first is confusing: You can be different. And then we go into Rosh Hashana, we blow the Shofar from the Torah, and all the confusion melts away. The Satan runs scared. We crown Hashem as King and make ourselves subservient to His Will Alone.

1. Orach Chaim 581:3 ↩︎
2. Bava Basra 16a ↩︎