Rosh hashana

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12 lessons · Advanced

Lesson 1 of 12

What is Rosh Hashana

Lesson 2 of 12

The Shofar and Its Sounds

About this study

“Rosh hashana” is a free, 12-lesson study at advanced, created with soclever, a personal AI teacher. Each lesson takes a few minutes and ends with a check-in question; finish the curriculum and you can take a certificate test to earn a diploma. Starting is free once you sign in — or generate your own study on any topic. Shared by @jjea.

What you'll learn

  1. What is Rosh Hashana. Rosh Hashana doesn't appear in the Torah as the "New Year." The biblical text in Leviticus 23 calls it Yom Teruah — the Day of Blasting — and places it on the first of Tishrei,…
  2. The Shofar and Its Sounds. Most people know the shofar is blown on Rosh Hashana — the Jewish New Year — but the sequence isn't arbitrary noise. Miss the prescribed order or count, and the obligation is…
  3. Coronating the King: Chabad's Theology of Malchuyot. Without the annual re-coronation of God on Rosh Hashana, the Chabad framework holds that creation does not merely drift — it actively loses its source of vitality. The Tanya…
  4. Tzimtzum, Hishtalshelus, and the New Year's Cosmic Reset. The Arizal forced the problem into focus in 16th-century Safed: if God is infinite, where does a finite world fit? His answer — tzimtzum, a self-contraction of the Ohr Ein Sof —…
  5. Living Rosh Hashana Year-Round: Chabad Avodah in Practice. The Alter Rebbe, in Likkutei Torah on Rosh Hashana, describes R' Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev weeping during the tekiat shofar — not from dread, but from a specific recognition:…

Questions this study answers

  • Why does the Torah call Rosh Hashana the first day of the seventh month rather than the first month, and how did rabbinic tradition resolve that tension?
  • Why do some congregations blow Shevarim and Teruah as a single breath unit while others separate them, and what is the source of that disagreement?
  • In Chabad's framework, why is human acceptance of God's kingship on Rosh Hashana not just a ritual gesture but a functional cause of creation receiving its annual flow of life-force?
  • According to Chabad Kabbalistic teaching, why does the world's continued existence depend specifically on what happens on Rosh Hashana, rather than on a one-time act of creation?
  • According to the Alter Rebbe's framework, what is the precise role of hitbonenut in daily avodah, and how does it relate to the consciousness accessed during the shofar blast on Rosh Hashana?

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