[Avodah] Why does it matter who blows the shofar?

[Micha Berger]

On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 02:12:33PM +1000, Joe Slater wrote:
: We need to hear the cry of a child, but it makes a difference whether it's
: our child (or indeed a child at all)...

This is a beautiful pshetl but I don't see the halachic angle to the
argument.

If the shofar is not a decar mitzvah because it's once removed from
the actual mitzvah, which is the qol, then the person blowing is twice
removed...

However, it's not entirely true that the shofar doesn't matter. A cow
horn is invalid for a few reasons, one of which is ein qeteigar na'asah
saneifar. The shofar's /history/ doesn't matter, but the shofar itself
does.


Tangent: The idiom "mitzvah haba'ah ba'aveira" doesn't exist in the Y-mi.
Instead the reason why a lulav hagazul is pasul is "shena'asah saneiguro
qateiguro" (Sukkah 3:1, vilna 12a). This nicely addresses one of the
differences between mitzvah haba'ah ba'aveira and asei dokheh lav -- the
former is a pesul in the cheftza, the latter is a matir for the pe'ulah.

But here is raises a question.... If mitzvah haba'ah ba'aveira is a kind
of ein qateigor, then why is a shofar that itself was actually stolen
more kosher than a cow horn that just historically relates to the eigel?

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             It is our choices...that show what we truly are,
micha at aishdas.org        far more than our abilities.
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