September 30, 2026
Evangelist Pastor Barbara

My Word tells me:

Matthew 7:7-8 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.”

Luke’s account expresses a similar invitation:

Luke 11:9-10 “So I say to you: Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.”

I asked, and we all receive. Be Blessed

This is what I found about the shofar on the Sabbath:
By: Reverend Brett Connell

Solid historical Jewish evidence shows that the shofar was not normally blown when Rosh Hashanah fell on the Sabbath—but that was a rabbinic restriction, not because blowing the shofar itself was considered forbidden work under the Torah. The clearest evidence is Mishnah Rosh Hashanah 4:1: When Rosh Hashanah occurred on Shabbat, “in the Temple they would sound the shofar as usual. However, they would not sound it in the rest of the country.” That detail is important. They still blew the shofar in the Temple on the Sabbath. So there was clearly not an absolute biblical rule saying, “A shofar may never be blown on Shabbat.”

The Babylonian Talmud actually discusses this exact issue in Rosh Hashanah 29b. One proposed interpretation connects Leviticus 23:24, which calls Rosh Hashanah a “memorial of blowing,” with Numbers 29:1, which calls it a “day of blowing.” The suggestion was that on a Sabbath the blowing was only “remembered,” whereas on a weekday the shofar was actually sounded. But Rava rejects the idea that this was a Torah prohibition. His reasoning is basically: if the Torah prohibited blowing on the Sabbath, why did they blow it in the Temple?

He then states explicitly: “By Torah law one is permitted to sound the shofar on Rosh HaShanah even on Shabbat, and it was the Sages who decreed that it is prohibited.” And the reason given is fascinating. It wasn’t primarily because making a sound was considered “work.” The rabbis were concerned that someone who did not know how to blow the shofar properly might carry the shofar through a public area to take it to an expert. Carrying it four cubits in the public domain would violate Sabbath law. Therefore, they put a fence around the commandment and prohibited the ordinary community from blowing the shofar on Shabbat.

So historically the picture looks like this:
– Torah itself: no explicit prohibition against blowing a shofar on the Sabbath.
– Temple period: shofar was blown in the Temple even when Rosh Hashanah landed on Shabbat.
– Outside the Temple: Jewish tradition prohibited it when Rosh Hashanah fell on Shabbat.
– After the Temple was destroyed: Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai permitted Sabbath shofar blowing in certain locations associated with a recognized Jewish court.
– Later mainstream Jewish practice: the shofar generally is not blown when Rosh Hashanah falls on Shabbat.

One other distinction matters: the shofar was not something that was ordinarily blown every weekly Sabbath anyway. The major issue preserved in Jewish literature concerns a commanded shofar occasion—especially Rosh Hashanah—happening to fall on Shabbat.