The din is that we skip blowing shofar on Erev Rosh Hashanah to confuse Satan. Similarly the Gemara states that the reason why we blow twice (תקיעות דמעומד and תקיעות דמיושב) is to confuse Satan (כדי לערבב את השטן)
Truthfully this sounds silly. How many years does it take Satan to figure out what we are doing? Can't Satan see that every year we follow the same pattern? Generally, we assume that Satan is very smart and tricky in his attempts to get us to sin, and yet, suddenly on Rosh Hashana he is a complete fool?
I remember having the same thought, way back when I first learned about it.
ReplyDeleteI asked the same question in one of my first posts
http://2nd-son.blogspot.com/2009/08/ellul-month-of-storm-god.html
I think the answer is that this kind of thing is common in mythology. There are ceremonies and rituals that repeat every year, some of them meant to influence or fool metaphysical beings. If the Satan is a person, then he's an idiot. If he's a mythological archetype, then it's not so much that he's being fooled as this is the way the world works. You do X to produce Y result.
Or if the satan is our evil inclination then effectively the point is to mix things up, i.e. To get us to think. Makes sense to me.
ReplyDeleteWe are clearly is talking about Satan. It says we want to confuse him to think that we are blowing the shofar of moshiach.
ReplyDelete