Episode Details

We spend so much of our lives trying.

We work on our marriages. We work on our children. We work on our parnasah, our Torah, ourselves. And because Hashem created us adam la'amal yulad—born to work—that yegiah isn't something we're supposed to escape.

But then comes the danger.

When something finally works, it's very easy to look back at everything we did and think: I did this.

In this Rosh Hashanah shiur, Rav Shlomo Katz and the chevra of Shirat David continue an extraordinary teaching from the Tolna Rebbe about the ba'al tokeia who simply could not get a sound out of the shofar. From the building of the Mishkan and Beit Hamikdash to Moshe Rabbeinu forgetting everything he learned on Har Sinai, we discover a pattern that runs through Torah: techilah hishtadlut, sofo matanah. First comes our effort. In the end, it's a gift.

And that changes how we understand the shofar itself.

We blow from the narrow end—min hameitzar karati Kah—and somehow an enormous sound emerges from the other side. The more we toil, the more we're able to recognize and actually taste the miracle when it comes.

Maybe that's part of what it means to crown Hashem on Rosh Hashanah: not waiting until life pushes us into the narrowest place to realize that everything we have was a gift all along.

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CHAPTERS
00:00 Opening Announcements & Memorials
03:20 Recap: The Miracle of the Shofar
05:00 The Mishkan, Beit Hamikdash & Menorah
07:15 Why Does Hashem Make Us Work?
09:05 The Danger of Kochi V'Otzem Yadi
12:01 Yagata U'Matzata: Effort vs. Gift
15:03 Why Moshe Forgot the Torah
21:35 The More You Toil, the More You Taste the Miracle
22:45 The Paradox of Yagata U'Matzata
26:07 Why Our Effort Still Matters
28:40 Vihi Noam: Bringing Hashem Into Our Work
31:36 Why We Blow Shofar From the Narrow End
32:50 A Jew Is a Shofar
34:19 Min HaMeitzar: From Narrowness to Expansiveness
36:18 Why They Turned the Shofar Around
39:43 Why Three Ba'alei Tekiah Had to Fail
41:40 Don't Wait for the Narrowest Place
42:10 The Avodah of Rosh Hashanah
43:21 The Richest People in the World
44:19 A Blessing for a Year of Real Ashirut