A vort from the Rebbe concerning Rosh Hashanah, and especially the way Rosh Hashanah is this year, that it's a יום טוב של ראש השנה שחל להיות בשבת, that Rosh Hashanah comes out on Shabbos. Well, we know on Rosh Hashanah that comes out on Shabbos we don't blow shofar, and the Gemara explains why: The Chachamim made a gezeirah, a decree, that they were afraid that there will be people who will want to learn on Yom Tov, on Rosh Hashanah, how to blow shofar and they don't know, so they might take the shofar to somebody to teach them how to blow, so they might come to carry on Shabbos. So therefore they made the gezeirah that you should not blow on Shabbos. And the Chachamim have a right to do that: יש כח ביד חכמים לעקור דבר מן התורה בשב ואל תעשה. The Gemara says the Chachamim have a right from the Torah to take away a mitzvah at a certain situation in a way of shev v'al ta'aseh. Shev v'al ta'aseh means they can't tell you to do something against the Torah, but they could have a right to tell you don't do something in a certain situations, something that the Torah wants you to do. So they have a right to do it. But Chassidus asks the question, but after all, that they might have a right to do it, but it seems like because of this these some of these people that might come to carry on Shabbos, people who are not so careful about carrying on Shabbos, because of them, no Yid has the mitzvah of shofar on Shabbos. Sounds strange. So in Chassidus, starting from the Alter Rebbe, the answer is that it is because Shabbos we don't really need the blowing of shofar. ברוחניות, this is על פי חסידות, that the המשכות and all the different ענינים that are accomplished ברוחניות through shofar, Shabbos they're accomplished through Shabbos.

But the Rebbe adds a certain point saying that now that we don't blow shofar on Shabbos, it brings out a certain maalah from a certain angle. And the Rebbe starts by explaining what is the inyan of Rosh Hashanah, what is the inyan of Shabbos. Rosh Hashanah is a day that we crown Hashem as King. We say that in the tefilot, מלוך על כל העולם כולו בכבודך, you should be melech, He should be the King on us, and the Gemara says that the Oybershter is asking us, תמליכוני עליכם, make Me your King. So Rosh Hashanah is a day that we crown Hashem as King, which means that we are mevatel ourselves to the Oybershter. What does it mean to crown a king? You show the king that you're giving yourself over to him, you are mevatel him yourself to him. So this is the inyan of Rosh Hashanah, that it's a day when a Yid is mitbatel to the Oybershter. Shabbos is also the same thing. Shabbos is a day when you feel that the the real metziut is the Oybershter, and you're batel to the Oybershter. Like the Sefer HaChinuch says that the inyan of Shabbos instills the emunah in a Yid that the Oybershter created the world and the Oybershter is the boss of the world, and that's the day you feel it. That's the inyan of Shabbos. It's one of the reasons it says in sefarim why Shabbos you're not allowed to work, because the Gemara says in Chagigah that in front of a king, obviously you can't do anything, you can't work in front of a king. So really, the Oybershter is there always, מלא כל הארץ כבודו, always אין עוד מלבדו, nothing but Hashem. So how are we allowed to work in front of the אויבערשטער? The answer is we don't feel it. Shabbos is a day that a ייד could feel the אויבערשטער, and ממילא he's batel to the אויבערשטער, and that's why he can't work. So Rosh Hashanah and Shabbos mainly have something in common: Rosh Hashanah is a day of התבטלות to the אויבערשטער, and Shabbos is a day of התבטלות to the אויבערשטער. When the two come together, the pshat is there's a double התבטלות, there's a deeper level of התבטלות. It's a a bitul of a bitul, so to speak, a התבטלות to the אויבערשטער in a higher level. Now, what does that mean? If you're batel to the אויבערשטער, you're batel to the אויבערשטער. What does it mean you're batel in a higher level?

So the Rebbe explains there are two levels of bitul: You could be mevatel yourself like an eved who's batel to his master. An eved, a servant, a slave is batel to his master, he doesn't have his own metziut. כל מה שקנה עבד קנה רבו, the Gemara says, whatever a slave acquires really belongs to his master. His whole metziut is the metziut of the master. But nevertheless, it's a thing that he is a metziut which is מתבטל to the master, he gives himself over to the master. So even when he gives himself over, סוף כל סוף, after all, it's a metziut. He feels that he, there is a he who gave himself over to the master. There's a higher level of bitul, and that is that you don't even give yourself off, over, because you feel the the true metziut of the Melech that you don't feel yourself as a metziut at all. You don't even have to work on being mevatel yourself. That's a higher level. So when Rosh Hashanah comes out on Shabbos, so you have the two bittulim, the bittul of Rosh Hashanah and the bittul of Shabbos, you reach a higher level of bittul, a double level of bittul, which means at such a case the bittul is so great that you don't even have to be mevatel yourself. A Yid feels on such a day that he doesn't feel that his metziut is really battel to the Eibershter. He doesn't feel his own metziut, there's nothing but the Eibershter. Whatever he does, because the Eibershter wants him to do, but Not that he has to be mevatel himself. That is something that happens only on Rosh Hashanah that comes on a Shabbos. A regular Rosh Hashanah, you have a bittul to the Eibershter, but it's the lower level. If Rosh Hashanah comes on a Shabbos, it's the higher level. And so it comes out that when you don't have to blow shofar, it comes from the same reason. The reason is because you're mamshich all the hamshachot anyway through Shabbos. But it comes out that here in order to be mevatel yourself to the Eibershter, you don't have to do anything. A regular Rosh Hashanah you have to be mevatel yourself through blowing shofar. The Gemara says, Hashem says, תמליכוני עליכם, make me your king. ובמה, how do you do it? בשופר. So when we blow shofar, this is a form of being mitbatel. So here it's a case where you are a metziut that has to be mitbatel. But when it comes on a Shabbos, the same bittul happens even in a higher madreigah. You don't even have to do anything to be mevatel yourself. It's automatic. You don't have to do a פעולה, you don't have to blow the shofar. So the bitul that you have is a higher level of bitul, where your whole metziut is to begin with only a metziut of the Eibershter.

So we have to look at this that on one hand it's a חסרון, it seems like we're missing something, we're missing the mitzvah of shofar. But on the other hand, there is a maalah that we're accomplishing everything without having to do anything. But nevertheless, since there is such a thing that we have to do everything in avodah, there's something you have to do, so the Eibershter made that the second day of Rosh Hashanah we blow shofar. So we do do the avodah. But the first day represents the emeskeit of the bitul to the Eibershter, that on Rosh Hashanah that in this קביעות which comes on a Shabbos, a Yid is בעצם בטל to the Eibershter completely, and the Eibershter is his melech without even have to being mevatel himself. So when the Eibershter sees how batel the Yidden are to him, so for sure the Eibershter gives the Yidden a Ketivah vachatimah tovah on Rosh Hashanah because if the Yidden are so batel to him, so he does everything for us, and he gives us everything. And this is besides the vort of the Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev, that on a קביעות where Rosh Hashanah is on Shabbos, for sure the Eibershter writes us down for a good year, because be'emet you're not allowed to write on Shabbos. How could the Eibershter write? But the din is that פיקוח נפש דוחה כל התורה כולה, that if it's for פיקוח נפש to save a person's life, then it's דוחה שבת. So only for the good the Eibershter could write. If the Eibershter is going to write down for chas veshalom bad, he's not allowed to do it on Shabbos. But to write the good, which is to save us, that is allowed. So the Berditchever said a limud zechut that for sure in a case like this, the Eibershter gives all the Yidden a כתיבה וחתימה טובה, לשנה טובה ומתוקה.