302. Rabbi Elazar and Rabbi Aba were sitting. Rabbi Elazar said, I saw that my father, on the day of Rosh Hashanah (The Jewish New Year) and on Yom Kippur, refused to listen to the prayer of a man, unless he was with him three days in advance to purify him. As Rabbi Shimon used to say, by the prayer of the man who I purify, the world is atoned for. All the more so by the blowing of the Shofar, for he did not accept the Shofar blowing of a man who did not have the knowledge of blowing according to the meditation on the secret meaning of blowing.