Another look at No-Shofar
Here are some points to underscore the amazing decree of the Sages in banning Shofar from Rosh HaShana, when it falls on Shabbat. Assume we were allowed to blow Shofar on Shabbat, as the Torah commands us. Most Shofar-hearing Jews live in areas with an Eiruv, where there is no risk of inadvertent Shabbat violation in the way that motivated the rabbinic ban.

Most Jews in a non-eiruv area know that one may not carry a Shofar in the street. Or they don't have a Shofar in the first place. Look what you would need to err in the way Chazal envisioned it. A Jew with a Shofar, who doesn't know how to blow on his own, who lives in an area without an eiruv, who knows and cares enough about Shofar to want to hear it, but doesn't know that you cannot violate Shabbat for that purpose.

And even if a person violates Shabbat thinking (mistakingly) that it is permis- sible to do so for the sake of the mitzva, he is then not considered culpable even on a SHOGEG level; such a "violator" would not have to bring a CHATAT to the HaMikdash. Yet every single Jew withdraws his hand and ears from that which the Torah commands us to hear.

Consider this: The command to hear the Shofar is couched in the cryptic wording of YOM T'RU'A YIHYEH LACHEM. Have a T'ru'a Day. And the Torah elsewhere speaks of ZICHRON T'RU'A, implying that sometimes we must have a T'ru'a Day by hearing the sound of the Shofar. And sometimes we are to have a commemorative of the T'RU'A Day, without actually hearing the Shofar.

And consider this: One may not walk outside the Shabbat or Yom Tov limit in order to fulfill the mitzva of Shofar. Chazal made no decree, "lest someone inadvertently violate" for that possibil- ity. Nor for many others.

"What's Rosh HaShana without Shofar", asked the non-observant Jew who came to shul for one of his three days a year.

That's exactly the point. RH is usually made into a Yom T'ru'a by the sounds of the Shofar. But there are other ways.