Tell Me More About This! בּוֹאוּ נְדַבֵּר עַל זֶה

When you go to shul on Rosh Hashanah, you’ll hear many different sounds coming from the shofar:
תְּקִיעָה (tekiah)
One long blast

שְׁבָרִים (shevarim)
Three medium blasts

תְּרוּעָה (teru’ah)
Nine extremely short blasts

Plus, you’ll hear shevarim-teru’ah, which is a combo note of the last two!

But in the Torah, Rosh Hashanah is only called a day of תְּרוּעָה (teru’ah). So why do we blow all these other sounds?

The answer is: We aren’t quite sure what teru’ah is supposed to sound like.
According to ancient Aramaic translations of the Torah, called Targumim, “teru’ah” in the Torah means a crying sound.

In the Gemara, Abaye notices that a crying sound comes up in Sefer Shoftim, in a story about a big battle where בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל (Benei Yisrael, the Israelites) defeated Sisera, the Canaanite general. Sisera’s mother, who didn’t realize her son was dead, is described as waiting for him to come home:

שופטים ה׳:כ״ח

בְּעַד הַחַלּוֹן נִשְׁקְפָה וַתְּיַבֵּב אֵם סִיסְרָא

Judges 5:28

Sisera’s mother looked out the window and cried.

But, as you probably know, crying can sound like a lot of different things.
Abaye explains that there are different opinions about what Sisera’s mother’s cries sounded like:

ראש השנה ל״ג ב

מָר סָבַר גַּנּוֹחֵי גַּנַּח.

וּמָר סָבַר יַלּוֹלֵי יַלֵּיל.

Rosh Hashanah 33b

One opinion is that they were groans.

And one opinion is that they were hysterical cries.

These different cries create two different shofar notes:

Shevarim = groans
Teru’ah = hysterical cries (the fancy English word for this is “ululating,” which sounds just like the Hebrew word, yalil)

Notice that one of these sounds is called “teru’ah,” but that’s just what WE call it. When the Torah says that Rosh Hashanah is a day of teru’ah, it could mean either of these sounds, or even both combined (Rosh Hashanah 34a)!

From other pesukim, the Gemara learns that all these sounds need to have a tekiah before them and a tekiah after them. That’s why we have so many different shofar sounds!

When have you cried in a groaning way and when in a hysterical way? What do different cries mean about what a person is feeling?
Sisera was the enemy of Benei Yisrael! What can we learn from the idea that our shofar blasts are modeled after his mother’s pain?
In other midrashim, the shofar’s crying sounds are connected to the crying sounds that Sarah made when she heard about her son Yitzhak being offered as a sacrifice (Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer, Sefer Ha-Minhagim). When you listen to the shofar, what could the memory of Sarah and the memory of Sisera’s mother add to the experience?
According to both midrashim, the shofar’s cries remind us of mothers crying for their children. What could that teach us about the shofar?

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