by Rabbi Jonathan Singer

Rabbi Joshua ben Korhah once said about the shofar, the rams horn we blow to announce the new year, that “it was given to announce the coming of a new age – for it is written in Isaiah that on that day a great horn shall be blown and those who are dispersed shall gather and worship the Eternal in Jerusalem.” But then Rabbi Joshua added, “For that Reason it is written also in Isaiah, ‘Cry aloud, spare not and life up your voice like a horn.’” It wasn’t until I had spent some time in the city of Jerusalem that I came to understand the meaning of that last phrase implying that our voices and not the voice of the shofar should cry aloud and make a sound like a horn, “if we hope to bring on a better age.”

Blowing the Shofar on Rosh Hashanah Credit: Creative Commons/Travis K

Jerusalem, Ir David – City of David – gilded heart of the Jewish people – where the Jewish soul finds its center, is a crossroads, not just for peoples of varying faiths, but for the many types of people who associate with the great spiritual tradition we call Judaism. It is in Jerusalem that secular, Hasidic, Modern Orthodox, Reconstructionist, Renewal, Social Zionist, Reform and all of the other varieties of Jews meet. There are common places where everyone gathers: the Kotel – great wall of the Temple, Machaneh Yehuda – the fresh fruit and vegetable market, and the Tachanah Merkazit – the central bus station which bustles with all kinds of people on Friday afternoons. There are also the separate neighborhoods, where as one crosses the street, one also crosses a cultural divide and transitions from one world into the next. Despite what one might think, such crossings take place quite frequently; for though there are many things that divide us, people go from one neighborhood to the next to do commerce, to meet family or just to experience another world. There are also those who venture into the territory of the Jewish “Other” because they know that they are in a place where their Jewish identity can be challenged; to have an encounter that will affect their soul.

As a rabbinical student living in Mosheva Germanit, the German Colony, I would make the passage now and then into the neighborhood of Mea Shearim, meaning “Place of 100 Gates.” Mea Shearim was built in the 1870s in a fortress-like fashion, with homes built into the walls and courtyards in the interior, in order to protect the inhabitants from marauding attackers. It quickly became a center for the Hasidic communities and now its ancient looking streets are reminiscent of shtetl life, with carts and shopkeepers selling their ware in the open air and shrieking children in traditional garb running from house to house. Mea Shearim is a place so traditional that when one goes there, one must respect their dress code and their ways. Men put on kippot, or yarmulkes and women cover their arms with long sleeves even in the intense heat of a summer day. I first went there to see how the other half lived; to learn about Hasidic ways and practices; to try to comprehend why other Jews would choose to live so very differently from me. The Hasidic Other with the roles between men and women so clearly divided and their sense that only their way is the right way, is clearly problematic to me. And yet we different Jews do have something to share with one another. I wanted to experience some of the uniquely Hasidic ways of incorporating joy and exuberance into their worship and learning. I danced there in a shteible on Simchat Torah, watched an otherworldly celebration of Purim and clarified that I could incorporate joy into my Jewish life and still remain a Reform Jew interested in Jewish renewal. And there I found myself returning after a time to frequent the bookstores and the shops filled with hard-to-find Judaica by people whose lives were devoted to bringing the holy into the everyday. In Mea Shearim I acquired my favorite chanukiah, which looks like it’s over one hundred years old, but was a new design that allows one to kindle the lights outside for all to see. It was also there that my wife (also a rabbi) and I purchased our olive wood Havdalah set, which is now multicolored from the drippings of the candles and the stain of wine. And it was also in Mea Shearim that one day I set out to purchase a Shofar.

The Shofar – the Rams horn – is one of the most popular symbols of Jewish life. Shofars, which are natural objects, can come in many shapes and sizes, but it is traditionally thought better to find one that gently curves and twists, symbolizing the desire of the Jewish people to turn our lives around during the High Holidays. Few people can blow them well, because it is difficult to produce that wailing sound that reverberates so powerfully from this simple instrument whose mouthpiece is only a simple hole cut in the end by a craftsman. Many of them are quite beautiful; their exterior polished to a bright shine. On the holiday of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, as the shofar blowers hold them in the air preparing to sound the calls that remind the community to renew their lives by seeking repentance for their sins and shortcomings, the sight of this ancient tribal ritual helps us behold for a moment a vision of what it must have been like to stand with our ancestors in the wilderness of Sinai and hear the same sound as they were called to embrace freedom and live lives grounded in value – a love of learning, and commitment to Torah, to righteousness. I felt that as a young rabbi-to-be, putting together my Jewish ritual collection while living in Jerusalem, that I had to own my own shofar.

So where does a Reform Rabbinical Student living in Jerusalem go to purchase a Shofar? Once again, I made the trip to Mea Shearim. There, next to a sign advertising tallit katan – the shirts with tzitzit – strings with ritual knots tied on them serving as a reminder to a potentially forgetful person to keep the commandments of Judaism – and by a store selling all kinds of silver filigreed ritual objects – a silversmith skill brought to Israel by the Jews of Yemen, who had just barely escaped annihilation by being flown last minute to the promised on Israeli planes, was an old book store that also had a Shofar in the window. I entered the shop and an older man came forward to help me. Seeing that I was interested in shofars he began to show me the different types that he had available. He smiled at me as I looked carefully at the ram horns in the cases and his eyes twinkled when he realized that I was not finding what I wanted. For as a new somewhat naïve rabbinic student, I hoped to locate the perfect shofar – one like Joshua must have blown to call the people to cross into the Promised Land. There I searched about in my western clothes, wearing a kippah or scull captl to appear acceptable to my hosts, one of a multitude of customers, tourists who come to gaze at their world, but the man still reached out to me as a fellow searcher. “Come,” he said, “I see that you cannot find what you seek. Come and let me show you something.” He took me to a staircase leading to an attic above the store. It was one of the old fashioned ladders that come down from the ceiling, and end at a trap door above. He climbed up and stood in above, me, threw the door open and then beckoned me to follow him. Up I went, and as I stepped into the attic I could see as my eyes adjusted to the light that flowed through into that musty unfinished room what seemed like hundreds of shofars resting on the floor. There were all kinds: black and brown, with a mixture of white; some twisted and long; others short and straight with the end turned sharply upright, and some that were rough, uncured, and not yet polished. “Look,” he said, this shopkeeper dressed in black garb, his smile beaming through a patchwork beard, with a message for me though differently dressed, someone he recognized as a fellow traveler, “we are all searching for the right one, never sure exactly where to look, and yet that which is right for us is near us all of the time, just waiting to be found… only waiting for us to make our sound ring through it. Your shofar has been above you all this time!”

Credit: Creative Commons/Ari Hahn

Standing in that unexpected treasure trove of rams horns, the store keeper helped me encounter a spiritual truth. There amidst the gathering of the horns, I came to understand Rabbi Joshua ben Korhah’s message. We in our lives wait for the miraculous to happen, we wait for God to step into the world and right all of our wrongs; we long for the coming of a new age, where justice and right will overcome hatred and evil. But Judaism at this more essential of levels has always beckoned us to understand that the announcement of a new age comes not from God, but from our own capacity to announce the dawning of a new day. Rabbi Joshua was explaining that this shofar is not something so distant, something so inaccessible, but it is a gift from God that lies within each and every one of us. It is a gift that we need not wait to receive – at any moment we can find the inner courage to shout aloud and lift up our voices like a horn – because that spiritual shofar is in our attic; it is a part of us, it has been with us all of the time, only waiting for us to sound it. This is the teaching of the High Holidays – this is the year that we can announce the coming of a new life for ourselves – a new world – a new age.

Of course, never having blown a shofar, the first time you try you may not be able to get out a note. When you attempt to change your life – if you wait for miracles to happen the first day, you’re bound to give up, weighed down by a sense of despondency that comes with failure. This is why the commandment for us on Rosh HaShanah is not to blow the shofar – each of us does not have to become a Ba’al Tekiah – an experienced shofar blower, right away – but the commandment is instead to listen to it. We have to stop all that we are doing as we consecrate this New Year and begin by trying to get back in touch with what is essential to us as human beings: the song of our soul. We stop and listen to the shofar in our attic – the music that our lives are trying to sing, but for whatever reason we have been unable to let sound out.

It may be hard to believe that you have inside of you the capacity to sing a new song; each of us has our longings, each of us has our personal suffering. Our lives have not turned out necessarily the way we had hoped. We have not risen to career heights that we might have assumed were ours for the taking. We have has losses that no one can ever really understand and we find we have less to count than we might have expected. Some of us may not believe that we truly have the ability to sound a horn of redemption and renewal. We look at ourselves and we are disappointed with what we behold. This holiday of Rosh HaShanah, which is about renewal, represents a Divine vote of confidence in the human spirit. If we begin to approach life from a holy and sacred perspective then we begin to see our life’s successes and capacities differently. In that attic the Shofarim all varied in size and style. Life’s experiences have a way of shaping us differently. However the horn is shaped, with scars and scrapes, it is not the superficial part of the shofar that matters, but the beauty of the message of our lives that has yet to come forth. Despite our past failings or problems, as long as there is breath within us there is yet time to sound the horn of redemption loudly and shake up our world. The sound is ingrained in your heart, you can close your eyes and listen to the song. Tekiah – I am alive and vibrant. Shevrim – I have hopes and dreams yet to be fulfilled. Teru’ah – My life is a holy gift from God; let me make the most of it. Tekiah G’dolah – I can pour forth all the power of myself to bring repair and continue God’s work.

“Lo B’shamayim hi” we will say on Yom Kippur, the capacity for transformation is not in heaven, nor across the sea, but here in our hearts and souls. So the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidic Judaism once taught in an emotional and profound story. Once the Besht, as he was known, instructed a shofar blower in the mystical meanings behind the shofar blast. The blower, as he prepared to break forth in sound wanted to have the kavanah – the focus – as he blew the notes, but was not able to recall what the Besht had taught him, and so broke down into tears. The Besht rose up to comfort him and told him that the mystical meanings were like the keys to the many doors of heaven; but if the keys are lost, the doors can be broken down with an ax. So too, a heart-broken burst of tears can break down all the barriers between ourselves and God. The sound that we find within – if it is a true one and we let it ring out like the call of the shofar – it’s powerful wail is that burst which will break down the barriers and open the gates of heaven.

We have the power of holiness inside of us! This year go into the attic of your soul – let yourself feel the power within – shout aloud in righteousness; shout aloud in joy and in newfound strength and confidence and let the world know that we will shake to the very depths as we prepare to seek change and find renewal for ourselves and for all the world.

Shanah Tovah – Happy New Year to All Peoples!