On Yom Teruah, Rosh Hashana, the call of the shofar calls us forth to face God’s judgement. Hearing the shofar is the central mitzvah of this solemn day, following the intense spiritual preparation and introspection of Elul that is also marked by daily shofar blasts. How could it be, then, that we can fulfill our obligation to hear the shofar’s cry through theft?

In fact, this is precisely what the Shulchan Aruch permits: “The one who steals a shofar and sounds it has fulfilled their obligation even if the owners have not despaired of recovering it” (Orach Chaim 586:2).

This ruling is surprising for two reasons. First, it is hard to understand how fulfilling a mitzvah through a significant transgression could be permitted during the most spiritually precarious time of the year, when we strive to be on our very best behavior. Second, the language of “hagozel shofar,” the one who steals a shofar, immediately recalls the seemingly analogous case of the stolen lulav from the third chapter of Sukkah, “Lulav HaGazul.”

In Mishna Sukkah 3:1, the Mishna states unequivocally that a stolen lulav is unfit for fulfilling the obligation of taking the four species on Sukkot. The mishnah doesn’t give a reason for this prohibition, but it seems intuitively obvious that stealing something to fulfill a mitzva would be problematic. Surely, then, a stolen shofar should be similarly unfit for discharging one’s obligation. The Shulchan Aruch’s ruling, however, rejects this assumption. Therefore, it seems that the essence of the mitzvah of shofar differs in some key way from the mitzva of lulav. In fact, the themes of ownership and ownerlessness relate to the two holidays in different ways, offering us a new way to think about our teshuva process on Rosh Hashana.

The Gemara in Sukkah (29b-30a) presents two potential reasons for the mishna’s ruling that a stolen lulav is invalid for use: first, that the essence of the mitzvah of lulav has to do with ownership, and for this reason one cannot fulfill their obligation on a stolen lulav because it does not belong to them; and second, that this constitutes a mitzvah haba’a b’aveira—a mitzvah that comes by means of a transgression.

The idea that fulfilling the mitzvah of lulav hinges on ownership comes from the rabbis’ reading of the verse in the Torah where the mitzvah is first mentioned:

And you shall take for yourself on the first day the fruit of hadar trees, palm branches, branches of leafy trees, and willows of the brook and you shall rejoice before Hashem your God for seven days (Vayikra 23:40).

The Rabbis understood the seemingly superfluous language of “for yourself” as coming to teach that one must take the four species from their own property, meaning ownership is essential to fulfilling the mitzvah. Thus, one cannot fulfill their obligation with a lulav that they do not own. The Rabbis compare using a stolen lulav to bringing a blemished animal for sacrifice. Just as an animal with disqualifying blemishes cannot be made fit for sacrifice, so too a stolen object continues to carry the blemish of its acquisition, even if its original owners despair of recovering it and thereby relinquish their claim. Waving a stolen lulav is an affront to God and to the entire system of mitzvot which are meant to perfect our behavior and distance us from sin. So why doesn’t the stolen shofar follow this same logic?

The Talmud Yerushalmi offers one explanation for the difference between the cases:

What is the difference between a shofar and a lulav [such that the ruling differs]? Rabbi Yosei says: Regarding the lulav, it is written, “And you shall take for yourself,”—from your own property, not from that which you are forbidden to benefit [i.e. the property of others]. But here it says “A day of blasts it shall be for you.” Rabbi Elazar says: there [in the case of the lulav] he fulfills his obligation by the thing itself. Here [in the case of the shofar] he fulfills his obligation by its sound, and is there a sound from which he is forbidden to benefit? (Talmud Yerushalmi, Sukkah 3:1).

This framing provides two important insights for our consideration of what defines the mitzvah of shofar. On a purely halakhic level, we learn that lulav and shofar simply operate by different logical frameworks. Where the mitzvah of lulav is fulfilled through the object itself, the shofar is merely a vehicle for the mitzvah to hear its call. Beyond this, however, Rabbi Yosei’s and Rabbi Elazar’s statements prompt us to think about the symbolic meaning of the requirement of ownership for lulav.

At Sukkot, a time when we celebrate surviving the spiritual peril of the Yamim Noraim and the material peril of the immediate time before the fall harvest, the mitzvah of u’lekakhtem lakhem, and you shall take for yourselves, asks us to give freely of our choicest produce to Hashem for a purely ceremonial purpose. Taking the four species as commanded imposes a financial burden at a time of otherwise material plenty, providing a grounding counter to the celebratory nature of the holiday. It reminds property owners of their place in relation to the Master of the Universe. For this reason, fulfilling the mitzvah hinges on ownership.

In contrast, shofar is not an offering we make to God akin to a sacrifice, but rather a tool for our benefit—a wake-up call to repent according to Rambam (Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Teshuva 3:4), an expression of our spiritual distress according to the Rosh, or possibly a cry for mercy accordion to Rabbeinu Tam (both found in R. Shlomo Fischer, Derashot Beit Yishai Siman 17). Through its very sound, it reminds the listener of the cosmic order and our status as subjects of God. This accords with Rabbi Elazar’s statement that we do not forbid one to benefit from a sound, but only from an object. In its treatment of the two seemingly similar cases, the Yerushalmi suggests that not only is ownership not essential to fulfilling the mitzvah of shofar, but in fact ownerlessness may be something that defines the call of the shofar.

By connecting shofar to the theme of ownerlessness, the case of the stolen shofar points us towards the liberatory nature of the holiday itself. It may seem counterintuitive to connect Rosh Hashana’s central theme of God’s sovereignty to liberation, but through the experience of shofar—and the very order of the Rosh Hashana mussaf from Malkhiyot, to Zikhronot, to Shofarot—we see the liberatory potential of being in a covenantal relationship with God. After we reaffirm God’s rulership over us, we invoke the memory of the Akedah in word (the final blessing of Zikhronot: “And the binding of Yitzchak, on behalf of his descendants, may You remember is today with compassion,” Machzor Ashkenaz), and in sound, each time we sound the shofar, itself a symbol of the animal that replaced Yitzchak on the altar.

Just as the sound of the ram’s horn travels from its narrow origins up towards heaven, bringing our hopes for a better year and world with it, so too the shofar witnessed Yitzchak being released from his physical bindings while also being drawn deeper into his relationship with God. Yitzchak’s release from the sacrificial pyre represents his liberation from the dehumanizing institution of child sacrifice and the petty whims of the Canaanite pantheon. This liberation, however, is bound up in a renewed and expanded covenantal obligation to the One God.

In this way, the call of the shofar speaks to the deep connection between affirming God’s sovereignty and breaking free from spiritual bondage, while the Yerushalmi’s treatment of the stolen shofar versus the stolen lulav invites us to think about Rosh Hashana as a moment of breaking free from material bondage as well. On Sukkot, we are required to offer our choicest property, acknowledging our agency as free property owners. But on Rosh Hashana, the shofar is ownerless, and we sound the shofar from whatever narrow places we inhabit, grounding our teshuva in the reminder that we are free from all earthly bindings and bound only by our service to the Melekh Elyon.