The Torah calls Rosh Hashanah יום תרועה – a day when a teru’ah sound is blown with a shofar (Bamidbar 29:1)
The Gemara (Rosh Hashanah 33b) sets out to explain what the word תרועה actually means, and it begins by citing the ancient Aramaic translation to the Torah by Onkelos, which translates this word as יבבא. To determine the meaning of יבבא, the Gemara brings a pasuk from the Book of Shoftim (5:28) that speaks of Beneh Yisrael’s miraculous victory over one of the powerful enemy nations in the Land of Israel. There was a general named Sisera who led an enormous army that fought Beneh Yisrael. With Hashem’s help, Beneh Yisrael defeated Sisera’s army, and he was forced to flee. He ended up in the tent of a woman named Yael, who fed him and gave him a bed to sleep in. As he slept, she killed him.
The pasuk brought by the Gemara describes how Sisera’s mother wept as she waited in panic for her son to return home safely: ותיבב אם סיסרא. The word ותיבב is used in reference to Sisera’s mother’s crying, and so the Gemara concludes that the word תרועה, which Onkelos translates as יבבא, means “crying.” The teru’ah sound that we blow with the shofar thus resembles a weeping sound.
We must ask, what connection could there be between the story of Sisera’s mother and the shofar blowing on Rosh Hashanah? Why is her crying as she waited in vain for her son to return the model of crying on Rosh Hashanah?
The answer might be that on Rosh Hashanah, Hashem “cries,” as it were, for the same reason that Sisera’s mother cried.
Sisera’s mother sat by the window, wondering why her son hasn’t returned from battle. Her son was a powerful, successful, decorated general. He knew how to win wars. Why, then, wasn’t he triumphantly walking through the door?
On Rosh Hashanah, Hashem looks down from the heavens, so-to-speak, and cries for His beloved children. He knows how strong we are, how much potential we have, how great we could be. And He “cries” because He longs for us to return “home” to our true selves, to rise to the challenge, to “triumph” in the “battle” of life, to achieve the greatness that we are meant to achieve. Hashem, our father, is crying for us. He knows how powerful we are, and He cries because He wants us to win, to be victorious.
The Rambam in Hilchot Teshuvah (3:4) writes that the sounding of the shofar on Rosh Hashanah is to serve as a “wakeup call.” It is like the alarm that wakes us up in the morning. So many of us go through life “sleeping,” blissfully staying in place, without working to realize our full potential. We stay comfortably in our beds, rather than go out to fight the battle, to win, to achieve, to grow. And this is why Hashem cries, as it were, hoping that His children “wake up” and do what we need do.
Let us hear the cry, and respond accordingly, rousing ourselves from our “slumber” and making the commitment to put in the work to become the truly great people that we are supposed to be.