[Avodah] T'ruas Amo Yisrael

[Akiva Miller]

.
Musaf for Rosh Hashana has three central brachos. The third of them is
called "Shofaros", and ends with the words, "... Who hears the sound of the
t'ruah of His people Yisrael with rachamim."

For the past few years, I have been bothered by the fact that the word
"shofar" does not appear in that chasima.

On the one hand, if the bracha is called "shofaros", then I figure the
chasima ought to mention a shofar explicitly. On the other hand, the word
"t'ruah" *does* appear, and I suppose that you can't have a t'ruah without
a shofar, so the shofar does appear, albeit IMplicitly.

This year I decided to question that supposition. I took a look in my
concordance, focusing on the noun "t'ruah" (deliberately skipping related
verbs such as "l'haria"). Without any difficulty at all, I found five
pesukim where the word "t'ruah" appears, and the sound was NOT made by a
shofar. In all five cases, ArtScroll translates this word as "shout", i.e.,
a loud sound made by a human. The five pesukim are Yechezkel 21:27, Iyov
8:21 and 39:25, Ezra 3:12, and Divrei Hayamim 1 15:28.

I probably could have found several more examples if I looked harder, but
this was enough to satisfy me that when one sees the word "t'ruah", it does
NOT necessarily refer to the sound of a shofar.

If so, then why was the word "shofar" omitted from the chasima? My guess is
that Chazal wanted to allude to the power of our tefilah: HaShem does hear
the sound of the shofar, but what He is truly listening for  - and with
rachamim - is the sound of His people Yisrael davening.

Any thoughts?

Akiva Miller
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