Chapter 2-1 – Why Shofar

“Why do we blow the shofar on Rosh Hashanah? Why do we blow it? The All-Merciful told us: ‘Blow.’”[4]

There is a simple reason, and an even simplier reason, why the Jewish people blow shofar, the “ram’s horn,” on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish holiday that marks the anniversary of the creation of human consciousness in the world, and on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.

The simple reason is that Jewish law and tradition tells us to. The Torah says:

“The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Speak to the Israelite people thus: In the seventh month, on the first day of the month, you shall observe complete rest, a sacred occasion commemorated with loud blasts.” Leviticus 23:23-25

“In the seventh month, on the first day of the month, you shall observe a sacred occasion: you shall not work at your occupations. You shall observe it as a day when blasts are sounded.” Numbers 29:1

Tradition and rabbinic interpretation inform us that the blasts are to be sounded by blowing shofar, the hollowed horn of a ram or other animal.[5]

To understand the importance of this practice, consider the following scenario: The synagogue in your town has a great rabbi and even a cantor with an amazing voice, but there is uncertainty about whether a shofar blower will be present on Rosh Hashanah. Another town, farther away, has neither a rabbi nor a cantor, but it does have a shofar blower. In which community should you worship on Rosh Hashanah? Talmud says you should go to the community with the shofar blower so you can fulfil the mitzvah of hearing shofar.

The scriptural reference to blowing shofar on Yom Kippur is:

“Then you shall sound the shofar loud; in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month – the Day of Atonement – you shall have the shofar sounded throughout your land and you shall hallow the fiftieth year.” Leviticus 25:9

This commandment is to blow shofar only on the fiftieth year of the Jubilee cycle when slaves were freed, debts forgiven, and land returned to the clan to which it was originally assigned. Since we no longer observe the Jubilee, our tradition has become to sound shofar annually on the Day of Atonement.

An Even Simpler Reason

The even simpler reason we blow shofar is that, as Jews, we have no choice.

The sound of shofar is one of the fundemental energies of our spiritual universe, and is the very cry of the Jewish people itself. Its call permeates our entire cosmos and is imprinted into our hearts and souls. We can no more refrain from sounding shofar than we could stop breathing.

In our tradition, the call of shofar marks the very beginning of time and the very end of time. In the beginning was the spirit/breath of God, a wind.[6] This was the same breath of life that God blew into the nostrils of humans to transform clay into a living being,[7] and the same breath that we return to our Source when we blow shofar. And, at the end of time, we are told that the coming of the messiah will be announced by blasts of shofar.

The Hebrew letters of the first word of Torah, “bereshit,” can be rearranged to spell out “bara tayish,” Hebrew for, “He created a ram.”[8] This ram, and its horns, has been central to the tribal story of the Jewish people ever since. The ram was given form at twilight on the sixth day of creation when God brought forth many other wonders of the Torah, including the rainbow of Noah and the manna that fed us during our 40 years in the desert after the Exodus.

The ram lived in the Garden of Eden until it was required on Mount Moriah where Abraham sacrificed it instead of his son, Issac, a story we retell every year when we read the Akedah[9] in synagogue on Rosh Hashanah. It is said that the ashes of this ram were used for the foundations of the Temple in Jerusalem, its gut was used for the strings of King David’s harp, its skin became the mantle of the Prophets Elijah and Elisha, and its horns were made into shofarot[10]. One of the horns was sounded at Mount Sinai during God’s revelation when we received the Ten Commandments, and the other will be sounded by Elijah to announce the messianic era.

God accepted Cain’s sacrifice of a ram over Abel’s sacrifice of plants – initiating the tradition of animal sacrifice that runs throughout Torah. Noah’s rainbow, the sign of our covenant with God, has the curved shape of a horn, and its Hebrew name, “kesher,” is an acronym of the teKiah-SHevarim-teRuah blasts of shofar we sound on Rosh Hashanah.

Just as the ram of the Akedah marked the transition in tribal leadership from Abraham to Issac, a young ovine or caprine male was also present at other key transitions in our history. Issac blessed Jacob after being served a ram potage. Jacob grieved when he was shown Joseph’s coat stained with the blood of the ram. Moses used the blood of a ram to mark the homes of the Israelites on the eve of the liberation from Egypt. When he descended from Mount Sinai, his head was crowned with keren, another word for horn. The priesthood was initiated when Aaron and his sons were annointed with the blood of the ram. Joshua brought us into the land of Canaan by sounding shofarot outside the walls of Jericho.

Among the Judges, Ehud, and Gideon sounded shofarot to rouse the Hebrews. Ram’s horn flasks of oil were used to anoint Kings Saul, David, and Solomon, and the coronation of other kings were announced by blowing the ram’s horn. The altars, first in the Mishkan and later in the Temple, were constructed with horns, and daily blowing of horns marked Temple rituals.

The prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Joel, and Amos used the image of shofar to call upon Jews to return to ways of righteousness. Midrash connects shofar to the Book of Esther, and The Book of Maccabees relates how shofar was blown to mark the rededication of the Temple.

The Talmud, the writings of Miamonides, and the Shulhan Aruch are just a few of the rabbinic writings that devote an abundance of pages to codifying the laws of shofar. The kabbalists found esoteric meanings in shofar. And the Hasidic masters filled their stories with impassioned tales about shofarot.

We are also told to blow horns on the new moon, to mark fasts, to rouse the people in times of crisis, on joyous occasions, in excommunications, and to exorcise a dybbuk, the soul of a deceased person that can inhabit the body of a living person.

In every era of Jewish life, the call of shofar has grown richer and overlain with new reverberations of memory and meaning. From the modern era, we still hear the echos of shofarot blown from within the Nazi death camps to sactify the Holy Name, and the amazing grace of shofar blasts sounded when the Israeli Army reached the Western Wall during the Six Day War.

Throughout the ancient world, shofar was used for a wide range of practical, spiritual, and ritual functions. A 20,000-year old bas-relief in a cave in Southern France depicts a ram’s horn that is apparently used for ritual purposes. In Biblical times, shephards used shofar to call to each other across valleys; in medieval times it was sounded in villages and cities to call field workers into town before the start of Shabbat. It was even used as a vessel from which to drink.

In other times and places, Jews have had to hide in cisterns or caves in order to perform the mitzvah of hearing shofar without negative repercussions. Today, in the United States, Israel, and many other places throughout the world, shofar can be freely and safely blown in public.[11] This has lead to a renaissance of shofar blowing, and shofar is increasingly blown for a variety of holidays, life-cycle events, and public assemblies.

Throughout the month of Elul, the month preceeding Rosh Hashanah, it is customary to sound shofar every day except Shabbat and the day before Rosh Hashanah. We listen to these calls to help us wake up spiritually, as a charge to examine our lives, and to alert us to any amends we have to make for harm we have done. In Hebrew, we call this process of returning to right living “teshuvah.”

Then, when we blow shofar on Rosh Hashanah and at the conclusion of Yom Kippur, over five thousand years of Jewish history, faith, and devotion courses through the horn and are amplified by our prayers and those of the entire congregation, especially prayers that cannot be put into words. When I blow shofar on these occasions, I experience the blasts as vibrations that flow out of the ground, travel the length of my body, and emerge through the shofar and out into the universe, unifying heaven and earth.

Blowing shofar is a transformational moment, and I am never the same after blowing shofar as I am before blowing. At times, the blasts have moved me to tears, caused me to quiver in awe, or released so much energy that I literally danced with joy.

Like hundreds of generations of Jews before me, I simply must hear shofar.

What is Your Reason?

I have taught several thousands of people to blow shofar, and many of them have reported similarly significant experiences as shofar blowers.

As a shofar blower, you will also have the important opportunity to serve your community by blowing shofar for communal prayers during Elul and the Days of Awe, and by visiting the sick and confined to sound shofar for those who cannot attend communal worship services. When you do so, you not only fulfill the mitzvah given in the Torah, you recreate and help maintain the sonic energy field that has kept and sustained the world for more than five thousand years so far, and counting.

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Chapter 2-2 – Kavanah of Sounding Shofar

“A Hasidic rebbe asked one of his hasidim to be his ba’al tekiah. ‘Rebbe, I cannot. I am not learned in the secrets of the mystical kavanot for the shofar blasts.’ This was no excuse for the rebbe, who had his reasons for his choice, so he taught his disciple the kavanot. After being fully versed in the esoteric knowledge, the hasid again refused his rebbe’s wish, this time saying, “Rebbe, I cannot. Now I know the kavanot.’”[12]

More important than blowing shofar well, is blowing shofar “good”; that is, with good kavanah – the intention or focus with which you sound shofar.

The concept of kavanah can best be understood by stories from our tradition about good and bad kavanot – the plural of kavanah – for sounding shofar:

Teachings on Kavanah

Doing God’s Will

“‘Blowing the shofar is chochmah (a skill), and not work.’[13] But regarding chochmah, it says, ‘The beginning of chochmah (wisdom) is fear of HaShem.’[14] Fear of HaShem is the first requirement for being a tokea (shofar blower).[15] This is also expressed, “The primary intent upon which one should concentrate during the sounding of the shofar is to fulfill the will of the Creator.’”[16]

Spiritual Warrior

“A man, lost in a deep forest inhabited by wild animals had only a bow and some arrows with which to defend himself. In his fear, everything he saw he imagined to be an attacking beast and shot off his arrows in their direction. When he came closer to what had appeared to be a lion, wolf, or bear, he discovered that it was only a tree, a rock, or some other part of the forest. Checking his quiver for arrows, he realized in great dismay that he had wasted all of them and that only a single arrow remained. ‘With this last precious arrow I must be very careful,’ he admonished himself, ‘for this may save my life.’

“When we Jews lived in the Holy Land, many paths of redemption were open to us – our Holy Temple, the altar, sacrifices, and the High Priest. But in our own day, none of these avenues remain. Our last hope is the shofar. Therefore, my dear ba’al tekiah, apply your mind and your heart to the sacred task at hand so that the shofar will reach the target at which you are aiming.”[17]

Preparation to be Ba’al Tekiah

Ba’al tekiah translates literally as “master blaster”. It is the individual who sounds the shofar for a congregation. It is a position that requires spiritual preparation as well as the ability to sound shofar, as the following examples indicate:

“On the first day of saying Selichot (penetential prayers recited as the New Year approaches), the community must determine who the prayer leaders and the shofar blowers would be, to provide ample time for each prayer leader and shofar blower to practice and prepare himself. Each prayer leader and shofar blower must free himself from all his other activities, stay in the Beit Hamidrash (synagogue) all day and learn, and especially during the last three days prior to Rosh Hashanah.”[18]

“Whosoever of the congregation has been chosen to…blow the ram’s horn needs, three days before Rosh Hashanah, and before Yom Kippur as well, to seclude himself from every thing that leads to ritual uncleanliness because he needs a special purity.”[19]

“And if the congregation desire him for their reader, he is obligated to remove the hatred from his heart, and to say explicitly that he will include his enemy in his prayer, the same as every other man.”[20] The shofar blower bears this obligation, too.

The physical and spiritual preparation required of a ba’al tekiah, plus the awesome rush of emotions and spirit that accompanies shofar blowing, can have a lasting effect on an individual. For many, being ba’al tekiah becomes part of their self-identities. The honor of sounding shofar can also influence or indicate an individual’s status in a community. It is not surprising that many shofarists try to serve as ba’al tekiah for as long as they can. The grave marker of a deceased ba’al tekiah might illustrate a shofar, recalling the prophetic image of eternal life and as a symbol of the individual’s distinction.[21]

A Simple Jew

“One year Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev spent a long time in search of a man who would be worthy of blowing the shofar in his synagogue. Rosh Hashanah was fast approaching, and many righteous folk sought the privilege, vying with each other in demonstrating their expertise in the mystical kabbalistic secrets associated with the shofar; none of them were to his taste.

“One day a new applicant came along, and Rabbi Levi Yitzhak asked him on what deep mysteries he meditated while he was performing the awesome mitzvah.

“‘Rebbe,’ said the newcomer, ‘I’m only a simple Jew; I don’t understand too much about the hidden things of the Torah. But I have four daughters of marriageable age, and when I blow the shofar, this is what I have in mind: “Master of the universe! Right now I am carrying out your will. I’m doing Your mitzvah and blowing the shofar. Now supposing You, too, do what I want, and help me marry off my daughters!’

“‘My friend,’ said R’ Levi Yitzhak, ‘you will blow the shofar in my synagogue!’”[22]

When you are Unable to Blow

“On the last New Year’s festival in the life of Rabbi Levi Yitzhak, they tried in vain to blow the ram’s horn. No one could wring from it a single note. Finally the tzaddik himself put it to his lips, but he too did not succeed. It was clear that Satan was involved in the matter. Rabbi Levi Yitzhak put down the horn, laid it aside, and cried: ‘Lord of the world! In your Torah it is written that we Jews are to blow the ram’s horn the day on which you created the world. Look down upon us and you will see that all of us have come with our wives and children to do your command. But if we are denied this, if we are no longer your beloved people, well – then let Ivan (the Russians) blow the ram’s horn for you!’

“All wept and in the depths of their hearts they turned to God. After a time, the rabbi put the ram’s horn to his lips again, and now it emitted a flawlessly pure sound. After the prayer, Rabbi Levi Yitzhak turned to his congregation and said: ‘I vanquished him (Satan), but it will cost me my life. Here I am, a sin-offering for Israel.’

“He died a few weeks later.”[23]

Another who was unable to blow

This tale describes someone whose motivation for blowing shofar was not, perhaps, of the highest order:

“[The congregation] was meant to offer a more personal though still rigorous Judaism, and for a few years did so. But reform movements, especially perhaps “conservative" ones, evolve their own orthodoxies. As more families were drawn to the spirit of the young temple, more space was needed; a new sanctuary required donors to finance it. Donors expect to be listened to in matters of practice and policy, and do not always want moral instruction. They may get it anyway. After 30 years of blowing the shofar during the High Holidays, my father was summarily replaced one fall by a man who had made a very large gift to the congregation. When that man was unable to coax even a single good tekiah out of his dinky ram's horn, a voice from the pews called out, ‘There is a God.’

“That was my mother.”[24]

Who by Shofar?

In the Yom Kippur prayers, we ask about the coming year, “who will live and who will die? Who by fire and who by water?”[25] We also reflect on the words of Rabbi Eliezer who taught: “Repent one day before your death.” When his students asked, “But who knows when he or she will die?” Rabbi Eliezer responded, “That is all the more reason to repent today, lest you die tomorrow. In that way, one’s whole life will be spent in repentance”[26] One may want to ponder these words while preparing to blow shofar, as the following incident reminds us:

“When I was fourteen or fifteen… the Yom Kippur service ended in an unforgettable way, for Schechter, who always put great effort into the blowing of the shofar—he would go red in the face with exertion—produced a long, seemingly endless note of unearthly beauty, and then dropped dead before us on the bema, the raised platform where he would sing. I had the feeling that God had killed Schechter, sent a thunderbolt, stricken him. The shock of this for everyone was tempered by the reflection that if there was ever a moment in which a soul was pure, forgiven, relieved of all sin, it was at this moment, when the shofar was blown in conclusion of the fast…”[27]

The Master Key[28]

The following legend makes clear that perfect technique is not nearly as important as the kavanah one brings to the blowing of shofar:

“Once the Ba’al Shem Tov dreamed that he was walking outside his hut, and he saw a tree, shaped like a shofar, twisting in and out of the earth, as if a giant ram’s horn had taken root. The sight of that great shofar took The Ba’al Shem’s breath away. And in the dream, the Ba’al Shem gathered all his hasidim together by that tree and told them to see who among them could sound it. So, one by one, they approached the mouth of that mighty shofar, but none of them could bring forth a single sound. At last Reb Wolf Kitzes approached it, and this time a deep and long-sustained blast came forth, like a voice from deep in the earth. He blew only one note, but it rose up into heaven.

“When the Ba’al Shem awoke, he was still being borne along by that long note, and he sighed because there was no such shofar in this world, only in the world of dreams.

“The next day the Ba’al Shem called upon Wolf Kitzes and told him that he wanted to teach him the secret meanings of the blasts of the shofar so that he could serve as the ba’al tekiah for the High Holy Days. Of course, Wolf Kitzes relished this chance to delve into the mysteries with The Besht.[29] So it was that he learned, over many months, that every blast of the shofar is a branch of the Tree of Life, and that there are great powers residing in the shofar. So mighty are its blessings that a note blown with the right meaning and intensity could rise on a single breath all the way to the Throne of Glory.

“Now Wolf Kitzes listened carefully to the words of the Ba’al Shem, and wrote down the secret meaning of each and every sound, so that he could remember it precisely as he blew on the shofar.

“Then it happened that on the day of Rosh Hashanah, when he was about to blow on the shofar before the Ark for the first time, the notes with all the secret meanings vanished. He frantically searched for them everywhere, but to no avail.

“Then, weeping bitter tears, he blew on the shofar with his broken heart, without concentrating on the secret meanings. And the sound of the shofar rose up in long and short blasts and carried all of their prayers with it into the highest heavens. And everyone who heard him blow the shofar that day knew that for one moment heaven and earth had been brought together in the same place.

“Afterwards, the Ba’al Shem said to Wolf Kitzes: ‘In the palace of the king there are many chambers, and every one has a lock of its own. But the master key is a broken heart. When a man truly breaks his heart before the Holy One, blessed be He, he can pass through each and every gate.’”

Compensation

It is not proper to get paid for performing a mitzvah such as blowing shofar on the High Holy Days. Of course, there is a way around this, that is to accept payment for one’s preparation or travel time.[30] Then, the service that one provides during the Days of Awe is “absorbed” into the work performed over a larger scope of activities. For example:

“There is a dispute among the authorities whether the prohibition of Shabbat payment applies to things which are a mitzvah, such as…one who blows the shofar. But even according to the lenient opinion, accepting payment for it is not a sign of blessing. It would be proper for those so engaged, to stipulate that they are accepting payment only by “absorption,” i.e., …that the shofar-blower is paid also for blowing during Elul...”[31]

The Sound of our Liberation

Among the legacies of the Holocaust are stories of individuals who risked their lives in order to fulfill the mitzvah of shofar. Their bravery and faith comforted those interred in the camps and ghettos and voiced defiance against our oppressors. May their kavanah give strength to all who blow shofar today and for generations to come.

File written by Adobe Photoshop® 5.2

This shofar was made in anticipation of Rosh Hashanah 5704 (1943) by an inmate working in the armaments factory at Skazysko-Kamienna, forced labor camp. A Polish guard was bribed to obtain the horn. Its fabrication, and even its possession, carried a penalty of immediate death if discovered.[32]

The following story, told by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi,[33] is an example of this genre with a happier ending than most.

While still a young man during World War II, Reb Zalman was imprisoned in a Vichy detention camp in France, hoping that a visa to emigrate to the West would arrive before those in the camp were deported to the East.

With the approach of the High Holy Days, Zalman escaped from the camp and sneaked into a nearby town where he entered a butcher shop. The butcher, knowing how desperate an escapee could be, fearfully asked Zalman what he wanted. While rations in the camp had been meager and Zalman was undoubtedly hungry, Zalman asked only for the horn of the sheep being butchered, Securing the horn, he then sneaked out of town and back into the prison compound. Working in secret, he fashioned a small shofar.

Each morning, prisoners in the camp were assembled for roll call in the prison yard. On Rosh Hashanah, when all the prisoners were assembled, Zalman surreptitiously blew the shofar. Just then, the camp commander entered the prison yard with a pistol in one hand and a whip in the other. “What was that noise?” the officer demanded. Zalman stepped forward to say, “That was the sound of our liberation.”

Hearing this, the Commander laughed, pulled a sheet of paper from his jacket pocket, and bellowed, “Blow it again, Jew, for your emigration papers have just arrived.”

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Chapter 2-3 – Buying, Making and Caring for a Shofar

If I had a shofar

I’d blow it at shacharit.

I’d blow it at musaf,

All over this land.

It’s the shofar of tzadakah.

It’s the horn of the yovel.

It’s the song about the love

between HaShem and his people

All over this land.[34]

Should a Horn be Kosher?

“All mammals that have horns have cloven hoofs.”[35] From this standpoint, all horns come from animals that are permissible under kashrut – the Jewish dietary laws.

We must go further, however, and ask: Should a shofar be made from the horn of an animal that was slaughtered in accordance kashrut? Sources within our tradition differ, and their perspectives may help you determine which path to follow.

The first view is that the dietary laws do not apply to shofar; shofar, after all, is not eaten and is not even placed inside the mouth when blown.[36]

Beyond the dietary laws is a principle that religious articles must be made from sources that are muttar be-fikha (literally: permissible in your mouth), a precept derived from the commandment regarding tefillin in Exodus 13:9, “in order that the Teaching of the Lord may be in your mouth.” A careful analysis of this principle limits its applicability to sacred writing. The precept, moreover, is countered by the concept that inedible items are afra be-alma (mere dust) and are therefore exempt from considerations of kashrut. In addition to horns from a non-koshered animal, other non-kosher animal products are allowed in ritual use; tzitzit, for example, can be made with dye from mollusks and silk from insects, and a sukkah can use a living elephant for a wall.[37] Like a shofar, these items are tashmishei mitzvah, objects used to perform a mitzvah yet do not have inherent kedushah (holiness).[38]

A second perspective claims that kashrut elevates the mitzvah of shofar into a higher spiritual realm. This belief is poignantly expressed in a Rosh Hashanah sermon by Rav Kook, the first Chief Rabbi of Palestine. In 1933 when Zionist migration to Palestine was increasing in response to growing oppression by Nazi and Stalinist regimes in Europe, he opined:

“We find that there are three categories of shofars that may be blown on Rosh Hashanah. The first category, the optimal shofar, is the horn of a ram. If such a horn is not available, then the horn of any kosher animal (except a cow) may be used. If no kosher shofars are available, then one may blow on any horn, even from a ritually unclean animal. When using a non-kosher horn, however, no bracha (blessing) is recited.

“These three shofars of Rosh Hashanah correspond to three ‘shofars of redemption,’ summoning the Jewish people to be redeemed and redeem their land.

“The preferred ‘shofar of redemption’ is the divine call that awakens the people through holy motivations – out of faith in God and the sanctity of the people of Israel. This form of awakening corresponds to the ram's horn, recalling the holy dedication of ‘Akeidat Yitzchak’ (the Binding of Isaac)… It is for this ‘great shofar,’ an awakening of spiritual greatness, that we pray.

“There exists a second 'shofar of redemption,’ a lower level of awakening. This shofar calls out to the Jews to come to the Land of Israel, to return to the land of our ancestors, our prophets, and our kings. It beckons us to live as a free people in our homeland, educate our children in a Jewish environment, and so on. This is a kosher shofar, albeit not a great shofar like the first type of awakening. We may still recite a bracha over this shofar.

“There is, however, a third type of shofar. (At this point, Rav Kook burst out in tears.) The least preferred shofar comes from the horn of an unclean animal. This shofar is the wake-up call that comes from anti-Semitic nations, warning the Jews to escape while they still can and flee to their own land. Enemies force them to be redeemed. They sound out the trumpets of war, bombarding them with deafening threats of persecution and torment, giving them no respite. The shofars of unclean beasts are transformed into the messianic shofar.

“Whoever failed to listen to the calls of the first two shofars, will be forced to listen to the call of this last shofar. On this shofar, however, no blessing is recited. ‘One does not recite a blessing over a cup of affliction.’[39]”[40]

In between the two poles, the Alter Rebbe makes his determination not on whether the horn comes from an animal that is kosher to eat, but whether it comes from a kosher species. [41] To this, his translator appends, “the horn of an animal of a kosher species that died or was not slaughtered according to the laws of kashrut may be used.”[42] This comment is significant because many commercially available shofarot are made from horns imported from Africa, India, China, or other lands that do not have an abundance of ritual slaughterers. And many of the long horns of kudu are taken by hunting, generally considered a non-kosher means of slaughter.[43]

Individuals with ethical or moral objections to the slaughter of animals may prefer a horn from an animal that has died a natural death, even though such an animal would not be kosher to eat.

Endangered Species

Beyond the laws of kosher is an emerging consciousness of eco-kosher, that we must “tend” the earth and not just “master” it. [44] Of what value is a glatt kosher certificate if, in order to get it, we jeopardize the survival of one of the species on the Ark called Earth?

Most commercially available shofarot are made from the horns of domesticated sheep. Horns from domesticated goats can also be used for shofarot. There are many breeds of sheep and goats, and their horns come in various sizes, colors and configurations.

Many people, however, want a shofar made from a more exotic horn. For example, long helical “Yemenite” shofarot are made from the horns of the Greater Kudu, an African antelope. The horns of wild goats, ibex, and other animals offer additional options. While there are ranch-raised specimens of these exotic species, most of the horns of these species are taken from the wild.

Buyers should be wary of purchasing horns from endangered species or species that are considered vulnerable to extinction due to over-hunting, habitat-loss, or changes in species dynamics due to the spread of disease or the introduction of non-native species, etc. In the year 2004, 15,589 species faced extinction and one out of four species of mammals were in jeopardy.[45] Many of the species mentioned in the Bible are now extinct or no longer living in the land of Israel. Humans were created to tend God’s garden[46] and clearly have an obligation to protect the species Yah created. Before you acquire an exotic horn, either in a raw state or fashioned into a shofar, it is up to you investigate its provenance.

File:Amnh fg02.jpg File:Capra ibex ibex – 01.jpg File:Male Lesser Kudu.jpg

Left to Right\: Oryx (Oryx gazella), Ibex (Capra ibex ibex), Lesser Kudu (Tragelaphus imberbis).[47]

A useful source of information on which species are at risk is the ICUN Red List of Threatened Species compiled by the Species Survival Commission of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (www.redlist.org). According to the list, various types of wild goats, gazelles, ibex, oryx, and other animals whose horns are prized for use in shofarot are already endangered. The Greater Kudu is classified as having a “lower risk,” and is dependent on the enforcement of conservation measures to assure the stability and survival of the species.

“A world where the environment is so polluted -- where there is no clean water, no toxin-free feed, no land available – will be a world that will not hear the blast of the shofar. On that day, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Teruah, the day of the blast, will be our ‘silent spring.’”[48]

It can be argued, with some justification, that the demand for exotic horns can actually aid in the survival of wild species; that the market for their horns makes it economically practical to preserve open range lands and regulate the number of animals culled. But poaching remains a huge problem in many parts of the world. If you are offered a horn from an animal on an endangered species list, do not accept it unless a clear chain of custody enables you to track the horn through the web of commerce back to its place of origin and can assure you that the animal was not taken from an at-risk population.[49]

Buying a Shofar

Some shofarot are compact and simple; others are long and showy. Some are polished to a high sheen, and others are left with the rough ridges of the raw horn. Each horn is unique in appearance, performance, and sound. Which you select will depend upon your budget, aesthetic preferences, and practical matters such as whether you want one that is easy to fit into a backpack, briefcase, or suitcase for treks into the wilderness, business trips, or family gatherings. In addition to getting a shofar for yourself, they make great gifts to bar and bat mitzvot and on other significant occasions.

The ultimate selection criterion, however, is to listen to hear which shofar calls to you. I mean this in two ways. First, you should select a shofar that is easy for you to sound and does not require a lot of breath for a sustained blast. And second, you should feel a resonance with your shofar’s voice. If a store has several horns in your price range, take time to sound each of them; if you do not yet know how to blow, ask the sales person to blow them for you. Listen, and purchase the one that feels right to you.

Shofarot are available at Jewish book and gift stores, music stores that sell “ethnic” instruments, and many synagogue gift shops. If you live in a community that does not have a large selection from which to choose, make buying a shofar a highlight of your trip to Israel or to a city with a large Jewish community. Shofarot can also be purchased via the internet; before buying online, verify the seller’s reputation and return policy.

The length of a shofar is typically measured along the outside (longer) curved edge or face of the horn. Rather than fumbling with a tape measure, simply roll the outside edge or face of the shofar along the edge of a tabletop and measured the distance traveled. The minimum size should be long enough that, when grasped in your hand, both ends of the shofar remain visible. While a very long horn may look dramatic, it may be difficult to support throughout a full sequence of blasts.

Make your Own[50]

Making a shofar can add to the personal meaning of shofar. For example, working with a “raw” horn, with its bone core and perhaps a few bloodstains and hairs still on it, deepens the ritual’s primal, earth-based connection to life and death, one of the powerful themes of the High Holy Days.

It is also a mitzvah to create something of beauty to enhance the practice of a mitzvah; this is called, hiddur mitzvah – beautifying the commandments. We are told to, “Adorn yourself before God in the fulfillment of mitzvoth: make a beautiful sukkah in His honor, a beautiful lulav, a beautiful shofar…”[51]

There is also satisfaction in working with ones hands, and horn is a wonderful material for crafting. It is relatively soft, enabling it to be cut easily with hand tools. It is a thermoplastic that can be reshaped when heated and holds its new shape after cooling. It has beautiful colors and translucency and can be finished with a range of textures. And it is strong and resilient.

Horn has been fabricated into useful objects ever since humans began using tools, and the horners were one of the important medieval guilds. In addition to blast horns like shofar, the material was used to make spoons, drinking horns, powder horns, combs, buttons, and a wide variety of ornaments and implements. Flattened into sheets and separated into thin, translucent layers, horn was used as glazing before the availability of glass; the word “lantern” derives from “lamp horn” and refers to the panes of translucent horn used to protect a flame from wind. It is only in recent times, with the invention of plastics, that horn lost its economic importance.[52]

The horner was an important craftsman until relatively recent times and the discovery of plastics. This 18^th century illustration shows a horner’s workshop and a guide to cutting bovine horns.[53]

While craftsmanship can be lavished on the horn’s exterior, the most crucial details are in the forming of the horn’s interior: removing the horn’s bone core, drilling a hole into the horn’s cavity, and shaping the blowhole. This is a tangible metaphor for the realignment of the kishkes, our guts or inner composition, that is necessary as we pursue teshuvah. If the horn has enough twist, its inner structure cannot be visually examined, and the crafter must probe the horn to understand its inner nature, a process similar to the self-searching we must do in preparation for atonement.

Step-by-Step Instructions

SAFETY WARNING: Follow prudent safety procedures when using cutting or power tools, chemicals, open flame, heat, or boiling water. Children should have adult supervision. Use heat-resistant gloves when handling hot materials. Wear safety glasses or goggles and dust masks or respirators when cutting, grinding or sawing. Some individuals may be allergic to dust created by cutting bone and horn.[54] Do not use horns from animals known or suspected to be diseased. Pathogens may be present until the horn has been sterilized by boiling; wash hands after handling.

1. OBTAIN A HORN: It may take patience to find a horn, since most animals in our industrialized agriculture are slaughtered in remote factories; local butchers receive only cleaned sides of meat without hides, hoofs or horns. More, many commercial sheep are polled – either their horns have been removed while still young or they are breed to have no horns – for the convenience of the sheep rancher. Widespread reliance on artificial insemination means that fewer rams are required for breeding purposes. As a consequence, most males are slaughtered as soon as they reach full size, and few live long enough to produce the large horns of a mature ram.[55] Others become wethers, neutered male sheep, and yield smaller horns than do intact rams.

Observations of a Jewish Shepherd

“Domesticated animals reach sexual maturity as adolescents and then simply never grow up to be wild. That is, in both appearance and behavior, domesticated animals are remarkably similar to the young of their wild progenitors. Adult dogs both look like juvenile wolves and exhibit the same submissive traits: They whine, roll over to expose their bellies, and like all domesticated animals, are less fearful around other species. In sheep the best evidence for this permanent adolescence, known as “neoteny,” is the large size of a domesticated ram’s horns. Unlike wild rams, which stop growing their horns in adolescence, domesticated rams grow their horns throughout their lives.”[56] That is, if they are not polled.

Sources for horn include slaughterhouses, shepherds and farmers, craft supply stores, taxidermists, and internet-based shopping websites. Members of the Society of Creative Anachronism or other historic period re-enactors may know suppliers. Several ranchers responded to a small classified advertisement for horns I placed in Sheep! Magazine. Do not order or accept raw horns from areas where communicable animal disease is suspected, and check with government authorities before importing raw horns.

A horn from an ewe (top) is generally smaller than that of the similar-age ram’s horn (bottom); it is still suitable to fabricate into a small shofar. See Chapter 1-7 – The Ewe’s Horn.

While horns from sheep, goats, bison[57], antelope, impala, and most other horned mammals are acceptable, horns from cattle are not. This is because the cow is associated with the golden calf. While we are listening for shofar to call us back to the revelation at Sinai, we should avoid temptations from the symbol of our idolatry, the representative of whatever it is that turns us away from the Divine. It is said that the ram’s horn reminds God of the merits of Abraham and Issac, but Satan cites the golden calf as evidence that God should not judge us with mercy. In light of this, our sages ask, “Can a prosecutor (a cow horn) become a defender (the shofar)?” Venturing to update the prohibition against cow horns into modern taxonomic nomenclature, the horns of any member of the Bovidae family are acceptable except members of genus bos, a category that includes cattle, oxen, and yak.

A shofar must be made from a hollow, true horn. This refers to a horn with a bone core growing from the skull that is covered by a sheath or horn. Neither rhinoceros horns (compacted hair) nor antlers from deer, elk, or moose (solid material without a sheath) can be used. Giraffe horns are not usable because they are covered with skin, not a horny sheath. Tusks from elephants and other animals are specialized teeth, not horns.

Use a horn that is long enough that both ends of the shofar will be visible when clenched in a hand, keeping in mind that the tip of the horn may be trimmed during fabrication. Examine the horn for defects: cracks, cuts, and splits in the wall of the horn can weaken it and any perforation through the wall of the horn will invalidate it as a shofar.

These sheep skulls were found on the open range. The skull on the left had very weathered horns with splits and deterioration that made it unfit for use as a shofar despite its double curl. In both skulls, notice the bone protrusions from the constitute the core of the horns. The connective tissue between the horn sheaths and bone cores had decayed, making it possible to twist off the horn sheathes.

While long horns are very dramatic to look at, do not overlook the potential of shorter horns. Our focus during shofar blowing ritual should be aural, not visual. It is written, “Pay no attention to his appearance or his stature… for man sees only what is visible, but the Lord sees into the heart.”[58]

Short horns can usually sound the fundamental and an octave; they can be as loud as longer horns and often have a startlingly piercing call. In general, longer horns will have a lower pitch than short horns, and may be able to sound additional intervals. Pitch and range, however, are also affected by each horn’s unique configuration as well as by blowing technique.

2. REMOVE CORE: Horn grows as a thickening of the epidermis (skin) and forms as a sheath over a bone core protruding from the skull. The horn and bone are joined by soft connective tissues that must be removed or weaken in order to separate the sheath and core.

If you do not process the horn soon after it is harvested, the soft tissues in the bone and between the bone and horn sheath will begin to decay, stink, and fester with larva. The rotting will not harm the horn (and can even make it easier to extract the bone), but can be a nuisance. Will you be able to store it outdoors where the smell will not objectionable and does not attract vermin or dogs? Can it be refrigerated or frozen until you are ready to use it? Should the supplier keep the horn until it dries out and can be shipped without problems?

The simplest way to separate the bone and sheath is to expose the horn to the elements so microorganisms and insects can consume the soft tissue. Some shofar makers accelerate the natural decay by burying horns in earth or employing carrion-eating dermestid beetles that are available from taxidermists and laboratory supply houses or can be collected off road kill.[59] One taxidermist allows skulls to dry for several months, then, “To remove the horn from the skull, lay a ¾” piece of plywood on the concrete floor and beat the front of the horns at the base to pop them off the skull. Whack them good and hard! Use heavy gloves during this process.”[60] Sliding a thin, flexible knife can between the bone and horn can also aid separation.

The method I generally use is to heat the raw horn in boiling water. Not only does this weaken connective tissues, it also softens the horn sheath so it becomes malleable and releases its mechanical grip on the bone. Boiling has the additional benefit of killing potentially pathogenic organisms living in the soft tissue within the horn.

Horn is composed of keratin, the protein also found in hair, skin, and fingernails. In the same way that hair can be straightened or given a permanent set, horn can be softened and reshaped by exposing it to heat and chemicals. Depending on the size and thickness of the horn, heating can take one to two hours. The literature reports that adding wood ash to the boiling water can help soften the horn. Boiling horns can be quite odiferous, and you will probably not want to do it in your kitchen. I boil mine outdoors, in an iron cauldron over a wood fire to further my connection to the primitive nature of the instrument.

In some horns, the bone slides right out or can be gripped with pliers and twisted out of the softened sheath. When either the horn is stubborn or I am impatient, I screw a lag bolt into the exposed end of the bone core and use the protruding head of the bolt to grip the bone so I can apply additional encouragement to its extraction.

3. CLEAN INTERIOR: Some of the connective tissue will still cling to the inside of the horn and will become a source of unpleasant odors as it decays. Suggested techniques for cleaning the horn include: using a pick or blade to scrape away visible tissues, sanding the interior, scrubbing with a bottle brush and soap, blasting the interior with high pressure water, placing the horns in clean water and bringing it back to a boil to simmer-away loose tissue, placing small gravel or coarse sand in the horn (rock salt can be used) and shaking it vigorously to scour the inside. Exposure to sunlight and the elements, over time, can also help.

4. LOCATE THE TOP OF THE CAVITY: Study the horn to locate the top of the natural cavity in the horn. Several techniques that may help include:

· If the horn is thin or light in color, you may be able to see the shadow of its interior configuration when you hold the horn up to the sun or other intense light source. While in a dark room, a small pen flashlight can be inserted into the horn to help with this “candling.”

· Place magnets or iron pellets inside the horn and use a magnet on the outside to help you locate and mark the interior configuration. I have several powerful 1/8” diameter rare earth magnets, available from Radio Shack, and they do the job handily.

· Use a bent wire or stick to probe the interior.

· Lay the extracted bone core against the exterior of the horn as an aide to visualizing the interior of the horn.

Once you locate the top of the horn cavity, draw the outline of the cavity onto the exterior of the horn with a pencil or crayon.

5. DESIGN: Now that you know your horn inside and out, you can design your shofar. There are several general typologies:

LEAD Technologies Inc. V1.01

Short (Sketch B and D): Remove the horn’s tip close enough above the top of the horn cavity to allow drilling without problems due to the curvature of the horn.

Straightened (Not Shown): To maximize a shofar’s length, you can straighten the tip of the horn using heat, chemicals, and pressure. Be aware that the length of your drill bit may impose a limit on the length of the bore you can make.

Side-Blown (Sketch A): See discussion in Chapter 3-14 – Blow it as it Grows. Note that the desigh shown in Sketch C should not be used as a shofar as the air must travel through the entire length of the horn cavity.

6. RESHAPING: There are several reasons you may want to reshape the horn:

· Halachah: If the natural shape of the horn is straight, you can curve it in accordance with the tradition’s preference for a bent shofar.[61]

· Stylistic: The shape of shofarot has varied from location to location and from era to era. In some cases, this was a function of the types of animal horn available. In other cases, it seems to reflect the sophistication of horn-fabrication technology available. For example, 19^th and early 20^th Century horns from Central Europe were flattened, straightened, and given a hook-like curve at the bell representing a high manifestation of the horner’s art. A flattened horn is less bulky and easier to conceal, a consideration from times when freedom to live as a Jew was curtailed.[62]

· Increase Length and Simplify Drilling: A horn may extend well past the end of the bone core. Since drilling is limited to straight holes, straightening the horn makes the solid “tip” drillable to maximize the length of the shofar.

Because a thin cross section of horn is easier to bend then is a thick cross section, you may want to begin by reducing the girth of horn tip or the thickness of the horn walls. Grinding, rasping, and carving are suitable techniques. Avoid perforating the wall of the horn.

Then, reheat the horn to make it pliable. Various sources recommend heating with radiant heat from a fire, immersion in hot oil or sand, heating in an oven, boiling, or steaming. Be cautious to not overheat your horn; it can char or burn.

You may have to use a press or clamp to deform the horn and hold it in the desired shape until it cools. It may be necessary to go through several cycles of heating and pressing to get the ultimate shape you want. I have no first hand experience reshaping horn, but have been told that as many as half the horns shaped by one commercial fabricator breaks while straightening.[63] Note that making it into a shorter shofar can sometimes salvage a broken horn.

After drilling the bore of the shofar, a horn can be heated once again so it can be returned to its original curvature.

7. CUT OFF THE TIP OF THE HORN: Study the horn to determine the best angle at which to cut off the tip of the horn. Generally, you will want to cut the horn on a plane perpendicular to the axis of the proposed drill hole. But in some instances, this will result in the bell of the shofar being located next to the blower’s ear or in some other awkward configuration, so plan the cut to create the most appealing shofar.

When in doubt, be conservative in locating your cut; you can cut more off later if necessary. Remember the maxim to, “measure twice, cut once.”

8. FORM THE BORE: A hole (bore) has to be made to connect the shofar’s blowhole and with the horn cavity. The usual method is by drilling. Draw a line connecting the top of the cavity to the proposed blowhole. It may be helpful to place the shofar in a vise so you can align your drill accurately. Start with a drill bit about 1/8 or 3/16 inch in diameter; you can re-drill or ream the hole later if you decide you want a bigger bore. Only a minimum of force is necessary to drill into the soft horn material. Be careful to drill at the correct angle since a perforation is not permitted in the wall of a shofar.

Horn is a soft material that can be cut, drilled, and finished with either hand or power tools. An alternative to drilling is to melt or burn through the horn with a heated rod, a Bronze Age technology that predates the electric hand drill. While drills work only with straight bores, a bent rod can sear curved channels through horn, giving the patient craftsman the means to make a bore through a curved horn.

9. SHAPE BLOWHOLE: In modern trumpets, the mouthpiece is separate from the length of tubing that constitutes the horn. For a shofar, however, the “mouthpiece” or blowhole must be an integral part of the horn.[64] Carve or rout a recess to create a cavity into which your pursed lips can vibrate. If you have access to a shofar that is easy to blow, use its blowhole as a guide to the one you are making; an aperture of ⅜ to ½ inch diameter should be suitable for an adult. If the horn is too narrow to make a satisfactory blowhole, you may be able to soften the horn and reshape it to create a slightly flared blowhole. Sand the blowhole if necessary to remove burrs. Remove any remaining debris in the shofar with a pipe cleaner, running water, or blowing.

10. TESTING AND ADJUSTING: Say a blessing, and blow your shofar. Be patient, as it will take practice to adjust your shofaring technique to the new instrument. You may want to make adjustments to the instrument’s configuration as you get to know its voice.

11. FINISH THE EXTERIOR: The horn can be left with the ridges, scales, and wildness of the natural horn, honed to a fine polish, sculpted, or engraved with designs or an appropriate text. The wide end of the horn is especially suitable for embellishments ranging from simple flourishes to stylized “mouths.”

Some people use automotive waxing and buffing products to produce a high shine. I prefer to use products that have a more ancient provenance such as bee wax or olive oil. While I have not noticed it in my horns, I have heard that some oils can darken the color of a horn over time.[65]

The Talmud disapproves of painting the exterior of a shofar but specifically allows gilding the exterior of the horn with precious metals; the gilding should be terminated well below the blowhole to make it clear that the sound is being produced within the horn and not by blowing into metal. For similar reasons, the interior of the shofar should not be coated with anything; be aware that some vendors coat the inside of horns with a clear coating to minimize the odor associated with shofarot – a practice that is not halachically acceptable.

12. REPAIR: A shofar should not have cracks or holes in the horn.

Despite careful planning, the bore was not aimed correctly and perforated the side of the horn. There was still enough solid tip left in horn to allow me to cut off the tip below the perforation and salvage the shofar.

If a horn chips or begins to split at an end, it may be possible to shorten the horn to remove the damaged portion. If the damage is in the shaft of the horn, it may be possible to patch the horn. Our sages say that a shofar should be “all of its kind,” so only horn should be used in its fabrication or repair. Horn is a thermoplastic material that softens with heat and hardens as it cools. You may be able to cut a patch or plug from the end of the horn or from another horn, carefully heat the damaged area and the patch until their surfaces begin to liquefy, and press the two surfaces together and hold them until they fuse and the repair cools. To fill in narrow cracks, it may be possible to heat powdered horn to use as a patch. Another way to seal small splits is to heat the split area until it softens, and then squeeze the horn to close the split; if the heated horn does not fuse shut, consider the use of a clamps to squeeze the split shut. Use caution when handling hot materials.

Tzivos Hashem, a Lubavitch organization, conducts “Shofar Factory” workshops in many communities to provide children “and the young at heart” a hands-on opportunity to fabricate a shofar. Instead of trying to make a shofar completely on your own, consider inviting the organization to conduct a workshop in your community.[66]

Other Uses of Horn for Judaica

Once you start crafting horn, you may want to explore other uses for the material. Here are a few ideas to inspire your hobby:

The solid tip of the horn, removed during the fashioning of a shofar, can be carved and used as a yod (pointer) for reading the Torah, reconnecting the sheep’s horn and parchment skin.

A horn makes a beautiful mezuzah case, symbolic of the lamb whose blood we used to mark our doors on the eve of the exodus from Egypt.

Since antiquity, horns have been used as vessels; the Nordic drinking horn and the powder horn of the muzzle-loading rifleman are but two examples of this practice. A ram’s horn kiddush cup is richly symbolic for use as the Cup of Elijah at the Passover seder table to remind us of the shofar that will be blown by Elijah when the messiah comes.

For an interesting shofar stand, mount the bone core to a piece of hardwood or stone. When the shofar is not in use, it can be replaced onto the bone.

Care and Maintenance of a Shofar

Shofarot are often afflicted with shofaROT – an unpleasant smell due to decay occurring inside the horn. New shofarot often have small particles of soft tissue clinging inside the horn. Even with aged shofarot, saliva and dampness from your breath can make the inside of shofar a breeding ground for microorganisms and give a shofar “bad breath.”

If the odor is tolerable, it can deepen the spiritual practice of shofar by engaging the sense of smell, a sense that goes beyond the intellectual mind to connect the blower with the primeval forces of the universe. They remind us that the horn came from a living animal, and we imagine what it must have been like to smell the smoke of the animal sacrifices our ancestors experienced. I believe that the shofar retains some of the essence of the ram’s life force and is, in a mystical way, a living entity itself with a voice of its own. If the shofar smells like an animal, it is because it is an animal.[67] As Isaac said when he blessed Jacob who was disguised as Esau, “Ah, the smell of my son is like the smell of the fields that the Lord has blessed.”[68]

Still, cleanliness also serves a spiritual purpose, and purification is part of our preparation for the High Holy Days. To that end, I recommend a three-step purification process: 1) cleanse, 2) disinfect/deodorize, and 3) sweeten. These three steps are akin to the process of teshuvah. First we cleanse by removing the offense behavior. Then we disinfect by making amends to repair damage we have done. And finally, we sweeten our lives by replacing our former behavior with better practices.

Coating the inside of the horn with polyurethane or another sealant will encapsulate the organic material that is decaying inside the horn. But the Talmud prohibits covering the inside of a shofar. Just as teshuvah must come from our authentic self, the sound should come from the shofar itself and not from a lining.

Cleanse: Remove any soft tissues still clinging to the inside of the horn. See techniques recommended in the Step-by-Step Instructions.

Disinfect/Deodorize:

1. Soak the inside of the horn in diluted vinegar, hydrogen peroxide, rubbing alcohol, cheap high-proof drinking alcohol, or another disinfectant. Note that repeated cycles of wetting and drying can cause a shofar to swell and shrink, leading to splitting. For this reason, my pharmacist says he cleans his shofar with anhydrous (water-free) isopropyl alcohol. Plug the blowhole so you can fill the shofar; a small piece of plastic held in place with a rubber band works as does a piece of wax or an earplug. Rinse afterwards with clean water.

2. Sunlight is a great purifier.

3. Sprinkling borax inside the horn has been recommended.[69] Baking soda is also reported to be an effective deodorizer

Sweeten:

1. In my congregation, we pass out sprigs of rosemary, lavender, and other aromatic herbs during the fast of Yom Kippur. Inhaling the scent during the long afternoon service and can awaken the spirit and reinvigorate the body without violating the terms of the fast. Afterwards, I collect the sprigs that are left behind and pack them into my shofar as a sort of potpourri to absorb and mask odors. Inhaling the fragrance of the herbs in the days that follow Yom Kippur serves a function similar to inhaling the spices during havdalah, reconnecting me to the imprint of the Divine from the Holy Days.

2. You can also use natural oil with a fragrance you like. Some oils, such as oil of oregano or citrus oil are also antiseptic and will help disinfect the horn. I use rose oil, a fragrance that connects me to memories of my mother.

Caring for and Displaying your Shofar

In the children’s book, Sophie and the Shofar: A New Year’s Story,[70] a child is accused of stealing a shofar. The child’s reputation is redeemed and her accuser gets a lesson in teshuvah when the family’s dog appears with the shofar in its jaws. Unfortunately, most incidents of dogs and shofarot do not end as happily, as the odor and consistency of a shofar convinces most dogs that it is meant to be chewed. YOU ARE WARNED.

Treat items made from horn in a manner similar to fine woodwork, protecting them, for example, against prolonged exposure to intense sunlight and extreme fluctuations of heat and humidity. If the horn has been polished, a periodic buffing will keep it shining. A case or padded sleeve for a shofar is useful for carrying it between home and shul; for long shofarot, you can even get a carrying case with a shoulder strap.

Storing a shofar in a dark, enclosed area or wrapping it in plastic can promote the bacterial action that can give a shofar an unpleasant smell and can even lead to its deterioration. It is best, therefore, to allow it to dry thoroughly and then store it in the open air, a ventilated cabinet or a permeable box that will allow the horn to “breath”.

A shofar and its storage box from late 19^th Century Europe.[71]

Like your seder plate, Hanukah menorah, and kiddush cup, your shofar can be displayed in your home throughout the year. With their graceful curves, most shofarot are certainly beautiful as decorative objects. However, there are higher purposes for displaying your shofar. First, its presence is a daily reminder of the High Holy Days and of any goals you laid out for yourself to live by during the year. In addition, keeping the shofar on display keeps it convenient for you to blow at anytime during the year when you need to reconnect with its awesome sound.

RETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 2-4 – Hearing Shofar

Student: “Rabbi, Are my prayers heard?”

Rabbi: I don’t know. Do YOU listen?”[72]

In the blessing recited before blowing shofar, we bless God and acknowledge that we are commanded to hear the voice of shofar. As this blessing indicates, the mitzvah is to hear shofar. Blowing shofar is also a mitzvah, but only indirectly as it enables the fulfillment the mitzvah of hearing shofar. Our primary duty is to hear.[73]

Hearing is central to many aspects Jewish faith and practice. It has been observed that,

“The shofar blows and we listen… It is not a pretty sound, one that pleases genteel or even trained ears. To listen to this shrill blast disturbs our senses so that we might respond to deeply felt realities of admonition and warning. Jewish worship is expressed by the mouth and caught by the ear, not managed by the eye reading silently on the handheld page. Silent reading is only a little more than a century old.”[74]

The significance of listening is made manifest in Torah where, for example, we are told:

“And he (Moses) took the book of the covenant and he read it into the ears of the nation; and they said, ‘Everything which the Lord has spoken, we shall do and we shall listen.’”[75]

“And now if you will listen, surely listen, to My voice… then you will be to Me a Kingdom of Priest-teachers and a holy people.”[76]

Nowhere is the significance of listening stated more clearly than in Shema prayer, recognized as the watchword of Judaism:

“Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one.”[77]

In Hebrew, this verse begins with the imperative, “Shema!” – “listen” or “hear.” It is said that, “God calls to the one who listens.” If we are to realize the spiritual potential of shofar, we must learn to listen to it as well as sound it.

Listening is more than the impingement of sound on our auditory nerve. Indeed, we would probably go mad if we really heard all the noise around us. Instead, our minds filter out most of the sounds reaching our ears. Yet as important as our ears and mind are to hearing, they are not the only organs required to hear the call of shofar in all its dimensions. As with the continuation of the Shema, we must hear shofar “with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.” This is made clear by the suggestion that the root of “shema” is “ma,” the Hebrew word for intestines or guts.[78] We must experience the vibrational field of shofar from the core of our being.

To do this, try listening to shofar with your body turned towards the shofarist and your arms and hands stretched out, like an antennae, so the vibrational energy of shofar impinges on the maximum area of your body. As the shofar blower exhales to sound the horn, inhale so the sound enters into your being and you recreate that primal experience of God breathing the breath of life into each of us.

“Vechol ha-am – all the people – saw how it thundered and the lightning flashed, and heard the trumpet sound…” This can also be read to mean, “Vechol ha’am – and the whole of the people, every part of them – heard the sound.”[79]

In ordinary hearing, we quickly desensitize to a prolonged sound. Yet when we received Torah at Mt. Sinai, we are told that the voice of shofar grew “louder and louder” as it continued. [80] Some explain that this implies the sound was weak at first and grew louder, “in order to let their ears hear what they were able to hear [and not shock them suddenly].”[81] But the description in Torah also describes another way of hearing, one in which we are able to listen more and more closely as we become spiritually awakened. We get to practice this type of hearing each year when the long Tekiah Gedolah sounds; strive to continue listening for the entire duration so that the sound grows “louder and louder” even as the shofar blower loses breath and produces a weaker and weaker sound.

To improve your hearing, focus your attention on listening. You may not be able stop thoughts from getting in the way of your concentration, but you may be able to divert them by telling them, “Later. Not now.”[82] Refrain from speaking or making noise. Do not try to analyze the blasts or critique the shofar blower; try to hear each blast as if it is the first shofar blast you have ever heard. If that does not work, imagine that it is the last you will hear and you wish to absorb it all one final time.

Just listen.

Being a Duplex Communication Channel

As a ba’al tekiah, you are not exempt from the commandment to actively listen to the voice of shofar, even while you are actively engaged in blowing. Multi-tasking like this, becoming a duplex communication channel – concurrently sending and receiving signals – may appear challenging. Indeed, one of the greatest challenges of being a shofar blower is to simultaneously blow and hear. In ordinary conversation it is difficult to both speak and listen; how much more complex is it for us to process duplex signals at the higher frequencies of spiritual communication?

This conundrum is eloquently described by the poet, Carl Sandburg:

From The People, Yes[83]

From Illinois and Indiana came a later myth

Of the people in the world at Howdeehow

For the first time standing together.

From six continents, seven seas, and several archipelagoes,

From points of land moved by wind and water

Out of where they used to be to where they are,

The people of the earth marched and traveled

To gather on a great plain.

At a given signal they would join in a shout,

So it was planned,

One grand hosanna, something worth listening to.

And they all listened.

The signal was given.

And they all listened.

And the silence was beyond words.

They had come to listen, not to make a noise.

They wanted to hear.

So they all stood still and listened,

Everybody except a little old woman from Kalamazoo

Who gave out a long slow wail over what she was missing

Because she was stone deaf.

The folks at Howdeehow could not simultaneously make a great noise and listen, the same paradox you must surmount as a shofar blower. Yet, as my sister Hannah reminds us, “Embracing paradox is a strength of our tradition and is the work of being on a spiritual path.” Blowing is the yang of shofar, and listening is the yin; doing both together creates wholeness in the sense of that word that means “holy-ness.”

Hearing the Still Small Voice

Sometimes we don’t hear until a sound blares so loudly that it cannot be ignored. Yet at other times, our listening is sharpest when we sit quietly in meditation and hear the still, small, inner voice. About this, we are told that, “the Messiah will come when our cries are so loud they reach heaven, or when we are so quiet that we can hear the angels singing.”[84] Shofar gives us the opportunity for both types of hearing.

If the outward sound is the shofar blast, what is the inner sound of shofar?

· It is in your meditation in preparation for sounding or hearing shofar.

· It is in the remembering of shofar when we do not blow it on the Sabbath.

· It is the silence of the inhalation before each shofar blast. This silence is like the silent aleph – the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet – that the mystics say is the sound of God inhaling before bringing the universe into creation with the sound of bet – the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet and the first letter of Torah.

· It is in the sound of shofar reverberating through your soul, a vibration that lingers even after the horn’s sound wave has decayed below audibility.

· It is when the sound of shofar is so intense that it blocks out all other noise – the chit-chat of your mind, the nattering of neighbors, and the rumble of the city – so you can hear your spirit (and, perchance, the angels) sing.

In music, the gaps between the played notes are also part of the music. The Torah, we are told, is “white fire written on black fire,” and that even the white spaces between the black letters have meaning in the Divine scheme. In the same way, one can hear the still small voice of shofar by hearing the silent pauses between blasts.

Exercises in Listening

Children are sometimes told, “you better learn to listen,” but the punishments that are occasionally administered with those admonitions do not help us to learn to listen deeply. How, then, does a person learn the type of listening that is required to hear the still small voice of an unspoken prayer?

Meditation: The Jewish tradition of hitbodedut – meditation – offers some practical lessons that will sharpen your acuity to hear both the inner voice and the world around you. In the late 20^th century, a generation Jews looking for instruction in meditation turned to Buddhism, Hinduism, or other traditions. Stimulated by their studies, many of these “Jew-Bus” and “Hin-Jews” have returned to their roots and discovered that there are also ancient and beautiful Jewish meditative traditions. We are now blessed with many fine teachers of Jewish meditation with whom you can learn to listen.[85]

The Voice of Shiva

“Personally, I am more fixated on the sound of the shofar, than its appearance, whether curved or straight. From childhood to the present day, I anticipate the moment in the overheated service when murmuring stops and attention shifts to the honored blower, who sometimes manages little more than a muffled squawk, but other times a clear, piercing tone – one long note fractured to three shorter notes splintering like glass into a run of nine or twelve and then recomposed into a single enveloping cry. I close my eyes and let it take me, subsuming the chatter of my mind, consuming the sensations of my body. Mixing my metaphors, I call it the voice of Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction for the sake of creation. I want it to shatter my artifice, reveal the living substance of my soul flowing into the essence of existence that goes by the cognomen of God.”[86]

When Hearing becomes Seeing

“The most interesting yet least talked about message we can take from the revelation at Sinai is the state of being necessary to receive revelation and how our text gives us this insight…

“Meditation is one of the hardest exercises that I have ever attempted. Mindfulness is not our normal state of being, and as such, I have great difficulty trying to not think, process, feel, engage… While the difficulty is endless, however, the potential is limitless. This mindfulness, this potential, is what I perceive happening in the moment of revelation.

“In the midst of all of the passages surrounding the Sinai revelation, I have discovered two that suggest the Israelites were in a state of mindfulness at the moment of revelation. In Exodus 19, the sound of the shofar is described in an unfamiliar way: va'yehi kol ha'shofar holaich v'hazaik m'od; translated literally this means, “The voice of the shofar is walking and strengthening greatly." What does it mean that the voice was “walking"? The traditional commentaries…read, “And the voice of the shofar grew louder and louder."…I wanted to look at the language of this passage through the lens of meditation. What might it mean if we accepted that the voice was “walking"?

“The ability to experience out-of-the-ordinary sense perception is a classic giveaway of a deeper meditative state. We learn in this passage that the situation surrounding the revelation was imbued with meditative potential. We are being set up for an incredible event. What is normally heard, the sound of the shofar, a voice, is becoming visible; the Torah is preparing us for transformation. In order for us to witness the voice walking, we must enter into a mindful state of being…

“In Exodus 20:15, the voice or sound of the shofar is not only walking, but can actually be seen by the people as thunder, just as they saw the lightning and the smoke on the mountain. In his book Jewish Meditation, Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan says that the event at Sinai is a clear example of synesthesia, a meditative state in which our consciousness is raised to a higher level.[87] In the moments surrounding revelation, the Israelites (and according to the midrash that includes all of us here today) saw sound, experienced a shift of sensory perception.

“Prayer is meant to be this kind of meditative time… Allowing our minds to rest from activity and focusing on God in the moments that we say words of prayer—this is how we can begin to understand the state of consciousness that was present at Sinai…

“God is found in the moment that we stop and notice our breath. This does not have to happen sitting still, or in isolation. Once a person is comfortable with breath awareness, has practiced it in silence, then meditation can happen walking down Broadway, sitting on the subway, running in the park. Being mindful and open to seeing God all around, to feeling the Shechinah, the holy presence which surrounds us always: this is revelation.

“…In the second half of Exodus 20:15 we are told, “And the people saw [singular, not plural] and they trembled and stood from afar." There are two teachings here. The first is that community is a vital aspect to revelation. We were all there. We saw as one, based on the singular verb which goes with “the people/nation," a collective seeing, if you will. Yet, we trembled and were afraid individually, because the verbs switch to plural in describing the ensuing trembling and fear of death. We become a multitude of individuals in the moment when we need each other most; the unity turns to multiplicity and we are afraid of God. Is the fear that the people experience due just to the scary special effects of the moment? I don't think so. The people were opened up to a reality beyond their own. God was present: they experienced creation, liberation, and redemption all in one. What is our own fear? The fear, I believe, is that we might connect with God; we might change the world; we might find peace. Our most noble dream is our greatest dread.

“See the dream and go to it. The closer we come, the more clear the vision. And then we freak out, and run for the hills. Or back to Egypt, the narrow place, Mitzrayim. The message of meditation is not to run, but to be still. To be present. To receive.”[88]

Study Partner: “Find yourself a study partner,” we are told.[89] Take turns alternating between blowing and listening to shofar. Do not attempt to critique the blower’s technique, but focus instead on your own experience of hearing. Listen for what is called forth, awakened, or broken open in you. Take a moment of silence between each set of blasts. After several repetitions, you can discuss your experience, thoughts, and feelings.

How to Listen

“Zalman Shazar, the third president of Israel, was a childhood friend of one of Rav Kook's prominent disciples – Rabbi David Cohen, known as the Nazir. When both moved to Jerusalem, the two men renewed their former friendship. Mr. Shazar described a particularly memorable experience during the month of Elul, before the New Year:

“‘When I rediscovered Rav David in Jerusalem, he was steadily ascending the world of mysticism and silence. One day in Elul I went to visit him in Rav Kook's house, in order to absorb some of his spirit of purity and holiness. Upon arriving, I was told that he was in the study. Rav Kook was reviewing with him the kavanot – kabbalistic intentions – of the shofar blasts. I summoned the courage, and allowed myself to peak into the room. I froze at the sight, totally mesmerized.

“‘The two were standing with their eyes shut. Rav Kook called out the sounds, and Rav David blew the shofar. The blasts sounded as if they came from another world. In those moments I felt that I was hearing the blowing of the shofar of our redemption, the messianic shofar announcing the ingathering of the exiles!’”[90]

Sighing and Groaning:

Sigh.

Sigh again.

And again.

There are all sorts of sighs and they each mean something different. One can say, “I give up,” and the next, “This moment is so beautiful, I will remember it always,” “I am too tired to take another step,” or “I am ready to get going.”

While we are quick to interpret the sighs of others, we seldom listen to our own sighs. Set aside a few minutes a day to sigh, and listen uncritically to what your sighs express. This is excellent training for listening to your shofar blows because, like shofar, sighing involves your breath and often represents an unspoken prayer offering God a petition, praise, or other message. As our sages say:

“The sighs and groans of a Jew are very precious. When a person is lacking something, sighing and groaning can bring wholeness and completeness… One sigh of regret for your sins and the distance which separates you from God is worth more than many fasts and other forms of self-mortification. The sighs you let out when you want something holy can actually break the force of your bodily instincts. Then the soul can draw nearer to the body and communicate to it something of her own perception of God.”[91]

“When a Jew groans or cries on Rosh Hashanah about something bad in his physical situation, in health or livelihood, this is higher repentance.”[92]

Shema Yourself

The first words of the Shema are usually translated as, “Hear, O Israel…” The stilted, archaic language of this translation got in my way of deeply understanding the prayer, and its frequent repetition during daily worship made it rote. Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi taught me an exercise that transformed my relationship to this prayer. He reminded me that I was part of this people called “Israel,” and that I could insert my own name into the prayer so that it would tell me,

Listen! Michael! The Lord is our God! The Lord is one!

Said this way, using your own name, transforms shema-ing from passive hearing to active listening. Embracing this practice helped me develop my spiritual hearing muscle, so I could listen better to shofar.

Prayer: As with the Shema, we too often recite prayers by rote and without listening to or comprehending what we are saying. Being mindful of our spoken prayers will help us attune to our shofared prayers. As my teachers have taught:

“If you don’t hear an answer to your prayer, you hung up the phone too soon.”[93]

“Prayer is always answered if you listen, and sometimes the answer is ‘no’.”[94]

The Talmud on Hearing Shofar

Tractate Rosh Hashanah of the Babylonian Talmud[95] contains extensive discussion about when and why we sound shofar and what qualifies as a shofar. However, it also discusses how to hear shofar. The quality of our listening, it makes clear, is very important.

Some of the discussions contain readily understood spiritual implications. For example:

“…regarding one who was passing behind a synagogue, or whose house was adjacent to a synagogue, and on Rosh Hashanah he heard the sound of a shofar emanating from the synagogue…the law is as follows: If he directed his mind to it, he has fulfilled his obligation, but if not, he has not fulfilled his obligation. Even though this one heard the sound and that one heard the same sound, this one directed his mind to it and that one did not direct his mind to it; hence, the law is different for each.”

In other words, one must hear with kavanah – intention or right attitude.

Other discussions in Rosh Hashanah appear, at first reading, to be about the mechanics of shofaring. Yet they, too, provide spiritual guidance about hearing. For example, the Talmud discusses blowing two shofarot at once, one inside the other. I can understand why someone might attempt this feat; I like to display my shofar virtuosity by sounding up to four shofarot simultaneously. Yet the discussion is included in Talmud not as an attempt to suppress showmanship, but to make a point about how to listen. For example:

“There is the basic act of sounding the shofar, and the arousal to repentance that it engenders. This is alluded to in the Gemara Rosh Hashanah 27b. If one places a shofar within another shofar and blows, if only the sound of the outer shofar was heard, “lo yotzo” [the obligation is not fulfilled]. If he heard the sound of the inner shofar, “yotzo” [the obligation is fulfilled]. The outer shofar is the physical body hearing the sound, while the inner shofar is the soul inside the person who responds to the sound with repentance. “Lo yotzo,” – he has not gone out of his previous status, as he has not repented. “Yotzo,” he has left his previous status and is a “ba’al teshuvah” [repentant].”[96]

The message is that we have to hear shofar from deep within, even from our guts.

Other passages teach us:

· We need to have our own transcendent experience of the Divine; the reflection of another’s experience is not enough. So we are told to hear the sound of shofar, and not its echo.

· While shofar sounds both broken and whole notes, we need to know that its voice comes to us from a place of wholeness, so we are enjoined from using a shofar that has holes or is pieced together from several horns.

· While the outside of a shofar may be plated, the inside of a shofar must not be plated or coated, so we can hear the raw, unvarnished truth from the horn.

· Lo yotzo if we hear a shofar that has been turned inside out or deformed so that the base of the horn becomes its mouthpiece and the tip of the horn stretched to become its bell.

Teachings on Hearing Shofar

“Rabbi David Moshe told this story: The year he died my father could no longer go to the House of Prayer on New Year’s Day. I prayed with him in his room. His service was more wonderful than ever before. When he had ended, he said to me: ‘Today I heard the Messiah blow the ram’s horn.’”[97]

“Rabbi Hanokh of Alexander was asked: “It is written: ‘Lo, I come unto thee in a thick cloud, that the people may hear when I speak with thee.’[98] Why should hearing be helped by the fact that He comes in a thick cloud?” Rabbi Hanokh interpreted the words in this way: “The sense of seeing takes precedence over the sense of hearing. But the thick cloud makes it impossible to utilize the sense of seeing, and so hearing is everything.”[99]

“In the time of the Temple, Jews traveled to Jerusalem for the Festival. ‘Yet, despite the absence of the pilgrimage to [Jerusalem] on Rosh Hashanah, the shofar, in its own inimitable fashion, transports the Jewish soul to the innermost sanctum of the [Temple’s] Holy of Holies. As the Talmud relates,[100] the shofar, whose purpose is to bring Israel’s merit before HaShem, enjoys the same status and significance as artifacts used in the innermost recesses of the [Temple].’[101] This only happens if we hear the shofar’s call in our own innermost recesses.

“By recognizing that all of our pleas on Rosh Hashanah are for renewal of our spiritual life…rather than a life dominated by our physical desires, we can better appreciate the significance of the voice of the shofar. In sounding the shofar, are we not actually clamoring to hear once again HaShem’s voice as He gave us the Torah at Mount Sinai, the Voice which the Torah describes as ‘a great voice, never to be repeated’[102]?”[103]

“The sacred call is transformative. It is an invitation to our souls, a mysterious voice reverberating within, a tug on our hearts that can neither be ignored nor denied. It contains, by definition, the purest message and promise of essential freedom. It touches us at the center of our awareness. When such a call occurs and we hear it – really hear it – our shift to higher consciousness is assured.”[104]

“When HaShem hears the shofar, it ‘reminds’ Him of one of the high points in His relationship with Israel: the pledge of ‘We will do and we will hear.’[105] Tragically, with the Sin of the Golden Calf we forfeited our claim to the doing part of this commitment (because we did the antithesis of HaShem’s will), and ever since, the road to Israel’s restoration lies in listening, as the midrash[106] states, ‘you have failed in your pledge to do, be careful to observe your pledge to listen.’”[107]

“Rabbi Nachman of Breslov explains that when a person attempts to reproach another, and the listener does not accept his words, the words return as ‘reflected light’ to the speaker. This creates an opportunity for the speaker to find the right words to penetrate the soul of the listener as direct and inner light. Hence, when we do not understand the deep content of the sound of the shofar, the light of the shofar is reflected back to Heaven. Subsequently, we merit to draw down from Heaven the inner content of what we have heard.”[108]

“There is no act, word or thought in which the essence of divinity is not constricted and hiding… And when you listen carefully to the inner voice within any physical sound that you hear, you will hear only the voice of God as, at that moment, it is literally giving life and existence to the sound that you are hearing.”[109]

How God Listens[110]

“‘The level of a ba’al teshuvah [one who has returned to the path of right living] is so exalted that not even perfect tzaddikim [righteous person] can stand in their division in Gan Eden [Garden of Eden – paradise in the world to come].’[111]

“Near the close of the Amidah prayer during the Rosh Hashanah Musaf service, it says, ‘For You hear (shome’a) the sound of the shofar, and You give ear (ma’azin) to the teruah, and none is comparable to You.’

“The Shelah explains that a perfect tzaddik may be compared to a shofar. Like the straight sound of the tekiah, he is upright and without failings. A heartbroken ba’al teshuvah is likened to the broken teruah sound.”

The verb, shome’a, hear, denotes hearing from a distance, while ma’azin, give ear, implies listening from close by. “For you hear the sound of the shofar” alludes to the tzaddik who never sins – HaShem [God] hears him from afar. But “You give ear to the teruah” refers to the ba’al teshuvah. HaShem listens to him from close by, for a regretful ba’al teshuvah is closer to HaShem.

RETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 2-5 – Preliminary Exercises

“Are you looking for me? I am in the next seat.

My shoulder is against yours.

You will not find me in stupas, not in Indian shrine rooms, nor in synagogues,

nor in cathedrals:

not in masses, nor kirtans, not in leg windings around your own neck, nor in

eating nothing but vegetables.

When you really look for me, you will see me instantly –

you will find me in the tiniest house of time.

Kabir says: Student, tell me, what is God?

He is the breath inside the breath.”[112]

In the Beginning, Make Funny Noises

Stop! Don’t pick up your shofar yet.

First you have to be able to make noises with your lips. I mean really silly sounding noises; the types of noises that used to make your elementary school classmates giggle.

· Stick your tongue between your lips and “blow raspberries.”

· Smacking sounds like you just ate something sticky and delicious.

· Pucker up those lips and make smooching kissing noises.

· Sound like a sputtering motorcycle exhaust pipe as you let your gently-closed lips flutter in the breeze as you blow through them.

The sillier the sound, the better.

Is this an essential prerequisite to blowing shofar? Probably not. But starting with silly sounds can help in at least four ways:

First – It prepares you for the silly sounds your will almost certainly make when you finally do blow into shofar. Do you remember the piercing pure sounds your Uncle Shmuel got when he blow shofar in shul when you were young? Well someday you will sound like that too, and you won’t even have to wait until your beard is as long and gray as his. I guarantee, however, that litte Sammy’s first toot on shofar when he was a kid sounded more like the south end of a north facing horse, and so will yours. Starting with silly sounds will help you laugh at yourself when your shofar decides to laugh at you.

Second – Among all the people who have tried to learn shofar with me, only a few have not succeeded in rousing the voice of the horn. What these people had in common was an inability to make any type of mouth or lip sounds. One of these unfortunates told me with regret, “As a child, my parents scolded me whenever I made what they considered to be ‘impolite sounds,’ and I guess I never learned to play with my mouth as an instrument.”

Instead of shame, I offer them hope; the human vocal repertoire is vast, and around the world there are entire languages built upon whistles and clicks, fricatives and glottal stops that aren’t part of ‘proper English’. Imagine the difficulty your non-Hebrew speaking friends have making the throaty sound of the Hebrew letter chet (as in Hanukah). My advice to students in this situation is to find time when they are alone – in the shower or sitting in a parked car with the windows closed, for example – and explore what they can do with their mouth. The book, MouthSounds, by Fred Newman[113] has diagrams and explanations on how to use the mouth to produce a wide repertoire of sounds. If necessary, you may want to enlist the help of an open-minded music teacher, speech therapist, psychologist, or four year-old child.

Third – Making these silly sounds will train your body to make sounds without using your voice box. Some shofar novices will put the horn to their lips and hum or sing into it. Maybe they think shofar is like a megaphone that will amplify their voices – but it won’t. For others, it is just force of habit, so natural it is for us to propagate sound in our throat.

To see what I mean, try this exercise: Put your hand gently on your throat and repeat the long vowels a-e-i-o-u, holding each letter long enough to feel your throat vibrate. Inside your throat, a pair of small muscles called “vocal cords” is stretched tightly across your wind pipe (trachea). As you exhale, air is forced through the slit between the vocal cords and causes them to vibrate and generate sound. This is known as “vocalizing” and is the source of the vibration you feel with you hand on your throat.

Now, with your hand still on your throat, pretend you are gently blowing out a candle. Note that your hand does not feel any vibration when you puff this way and that your breath is silent except for the turbulent rush of air. This is how your breath should feel when you blow shofar. Practice this blowing breath a few times to get used to how it feels. If you find yourself having trouble getting a blast from shofar, it may help to check on your breathing or to put a hand on your throat to make sure you are not vocalizing with your vocal cords.

Fourth – Beginners often tell me that, after a few minutes of blowing shofar, their lips feel tired. Making silly sounds will warm up and strengthen your lips. Like an athlete stretching, you are about to use some muscles in an unfamiliar way, and it is wise to condition them first by getting them moving. Many new shofar blowers note that their lips tingle in unfamiliar ways. This is a normal result of their lips vibrating when they blow shofar. When I teach in a class, we spend about ten minutes blowing shofar, after which many students say their lips are “exhausted.” So make those silly sounds as a warm up exercise.

The lips are an amazing organ, with far more sensitivity and dexterity than we usually acknowledge. We form them into a myriad of shapes to articulate words. We use them to grab, hold, and manipulate food in order to eat. And they demonstrate a remarkable range of delicacy and strength in the kisses of a lover. Getting them in shape for shofar blowing will add another dimension to your lip life. As the Good Book says, “My lips shall be jubilant…,”[114] and “Gold is plentiful, jewels abundant, but skilled lips are precious objects.”[115]

Of course you won’t want to make “raspberries” in synagogue, but after a month of practice during Elul, your lips will be strong enough that you shouldn’t need to do warm up exercised on the bimah. But these silly sounds are not just for beginners; if, at anytime in your shofar practice, you have problems getting shofar to sound, put your instrument down and go back to silly lip and mouth sounds. Obviously, the “right way” you were using was wrong, so anything else you do will feel silly at first. By returning to silly sounds, you give your lips permission to try doing it in a way that feels “wrong” but may turn out to be just what you needed.

Neville, my friend, was having a hard time figuring out shofar. Unconsciously, he kept vocalizing into the horn instead of blowing. So I told him to set down his shofar and to start moving or dancing in a child-like manner. Then I had him make the most silly mouth sounds he could imagine. These exercises helped him get “out of his head” so he would forget about trying to do things in what his mind told him was the “right” way. Once he started to relax, I had him blow through his pursed his lips and, sure enough, he was able to get them to buzz in the way essential to blowing shofar.

In the meanwhile, his two years old son was watching dad with amusement. I noticed that he was emulating everything dad was doing, including making his lips toot. Playfully, I held the shofar up to his face and invited him to toot into the horn. And to everyone’s delight, little Johan tooted the shofar. While it wasn’t the blasting piercing sounds one longs for on Rosh Hashanah, it was enough to teach his father that blowing shofar did not requires deep concentration or strenuous effort – a lesson that the father quickly learned.

Now, Rise-Up

If you are able to, assume a vertical stance when you practice shofar. (If you are unable to stand, assume whatever position is comfortable – one of my students was flat on her back just weeks after major surgary when she learned shofar.) This will help you prepare for blowing shofar on the High Holy Days when we rise, as one would in court, to symbolize that we stand before God while judgment is passed. Unfurling your torso also allows you full use of your breathing apparatus to you can produce stronger blasts and sustain a longer tekiah gedolah.

More, standing helps make a connection between earth and heaven when we sound shofar. While the vibrations that produce shofar sound are generated by our lips, I experience them as coming from the earth. On Yom Kippur, after a day of fasting, deep prayer and penitence, I stand before the Eternal One to blow shofar, and the earth trembles in awe at this holy moment. The tremors radiate into the soles of my feet, travel up my legs and through my pelvis, shoot through my spine and unites all the chakras (sephirot) in a release of kundalini energy, and are released in a sound that fills the entire universe. The shofar blast is an acoustic lightning bolt that releases the congregation’s built-up static prayer energy to bring ha’eretz v’ha’shamayim (earth and heaven) into balance.

Contemporary shofarists usually stand with both feet on the ground. However, a 13^th century machzor shows a shofar blower with one foot on a stool. According to the Encyclopedia Judaica, this was a widely documented custom of the period “and was believed to diminish the power of the devil in his attempt to confuse the blower or cause the shofar to ‘mutiny’.”[116] It may also have been understood as a form of aliyah, rising up to help the shofar calls ascend.

So you say you don’t believe this shamanistic mumbo-jumbo? It doesn’t matter. Trying to visualize it anyway can help you have a fuller, more spiritually satisfying shofar experience. I have found a lot of truth in the saying that, “where the mind goes, energy flows.” It may be true that the trembling I feel as I approach the shofar service is the result of fatigue and low blood sugar due to fasting, hyperventilation due to chanting, the emotional release of making confession, or plain nervousness about how well I will “perform” when called upon to sound shofar. But it is no less true that shofar awakens my sleeping soul, and that I get a lot more spiritual juice from believing I am connected to all creation.

Wear comfortable shoes without high heals. If decorum permits, take your shoes off so your toes can grip the earth.[117] Stand with your feet spread about shoulder width apart for stability. Your knees should be slightly bent and loose so your body feels springy or buoyant. Stand proud and erect, but not rigidly or “at attention’. Take a moment to be mindful of each part of your body, from your toes to the crown of your skull and the energy fields beyond, as your bring your attention from your feet through your ankles, calves, knees, thighs, pelvis, lower back, upper back, shoulders, neck, and facial muscles. Stretch your hands over your head and shout, “Hallelujah,” a word coming from the Hebrew, “Hallel Yah” (הלליה) which means, “Praise God.”

Next, Learn to Breathe

As we go about our lives, we often breathe on automatic, seldom thinking about our inhalations or exhalations. Blowing shofar, as in yoga or singing, gives us an opportunity to be mindful of our breath.

Slowly take a few deep breaths, feeling the air enter your body, then leave your body. Ordinary breathing uses only a small percentage of your lung capacity and is marked by a shallow rise and fall of your chest. In shofar breathing, you should try to breathe with every part of your body. You probably do this automatically when you yawn; now you have to do it consciously.

Try this exercise: First, quickly exhale as much as you can. Then when you inhale, try filling your body one part at a time:

1. Extend your belly, breathing air into your lower abdomen by forcing down your diaphragm – the shelf of muscle that separates your chest from your belly. It may help to place your fingertips just below your ribs so you can feel the powerful diaphragmatic muscles move as you breathe.[118]

2. Next, fill your lungs until your chest feels fully expanded.

3. Then, discover that you can draw in more to fill the region of your shoulders.

4. Finally, inhale still more to fill your throat and nasal chambers with air. Imagine your head is a balloon and you are filling it with air.

Hold your breath for just a moment. Then reverse the process by exhaling slowly through your mouth in the opposite sequence:

1. Relax your throat and nasal chambers.

2. Feel as if your shoulders were dropping.

3. Deflate your chest.

4. Pull in your belly and use your powerful diaphragm to squeeze out the last remaining wisps of air.

Relax for a moment before you begin the next inhalation, then repeat the cycle.

This type of breathing may feel awkward at first, since you will become aware of parts of your body to which you do not usually pay attention. With practice, however, you may become pleasantly aware of air rising and falling in your body – like waves washing up onto a beach and than flowing back into the ocean – and feel a calming sense of peace.

Your body may feel tingly or you may feel light-headed due to the extra oxygen you are processing. If you feel this way, slow the pace of the breathing, or take longer pauses between each inhalation and exhalation.

The final stage of our breathing exercise is to visualize the air coming in from and being exhaled through the soles of your feet. Then visualize breathing through the crown of your head and through your fingers. If any part of your body hurts, visualize your breath flowing through where you need healing.

Visualizing breathing in this manner energizes the body and allows your entire body to participate in each breath. Torah tells us to love God “with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.”[119] You will want to sound shofar with the same totality of your being, and this whole body breathing technique is the key. The root word for “respiration” is the same root as in “inspiration” and “spirit,” and mindful breathing as you prepare to blow shofar will help you get in touch with your “spirituality.”[120] When we sound shofar, it is “not by might, and not by power, but by spirit alone.”[121]

Sounding the Lips without a Shofar

Now that you have warmed up your lips, assumed a comfortable stance, and inspired yourself with breath, you are ready to make the sound of shofar. But stop! Don’t pick up your shofar yet. First you have to be able to make noises with your lips. Only now, instead of deliberately silly sounds, you should make a focused, intentional sound.

Leaving aside the metaphysics, the vibrational energy that drives shofar sound begins in the rapid, controlled vibration of breath being forced, under pressure, through tautly drawn pursed lips. Got that? If not, keep reading and try the exercises step-by-step:

1. Gently curl your lips over your teeth.

2. Then bring your top and bottom lips together until they make light contact with each other.

3. Exhale through closed lips. (Leave your tongue on the bottom of your mouth so it doesn’t get in the way of your breath.)

If you get a satisfying toot, well done! If not, you will need to experiment with your instrument – your lips and breath. While you can’t do much about genetic factors that control the shape and size of your lips, with practice you will be able to control your embouchure – the use of facial muscles and the shaping of your lips. Variables include:

1. How tightly or loosely are your lips curled over your teeth?

2. How tightly pursed (pressed together) or relaxed are your lips? Pressed together too loosely, and the lips flutter like in the raspberries exercise. Squeezed together too tightly, and you need to strain to force air through them. Find a happy medium.

3. How far back are the corners of your mouth? Most people can leave the corners of their mouths in a normal, relaxed position. Some, however, need to draw the corners of mouth back far enough to dimple their cheeks.

4. Where do your lips form the channel through which air passes? If air is pouring out of you across the entire width of your mouth, you will not be able to direct your breath into the shofar. Your airflow has to come from an area no wider than the tip of your small finger, about the diameter of the action end of a shofar. Most people find it easiest to control the shape of the front and center of their lips and this is generally the classic image we see of shofar blowers. But others blasters blow out of the side of their mouth.[122] If necessary, hold your hand in front of your mouth so you can feel where the airflow is.

5. Are your lips moist? Moisture acts as a lubricant to loosen your lips and let them vibrate against each other more freely. Lick them if necessary.

6. Your lower jaw can move forward from its normal position, changing the relative position of top and bottom teeth and lips.

7. Your check and face muscles can be tighted or relaxed to change the tension on your lips. As an exercise, tighten all the muscles in your face and neck – from your scalp to your ears to your shoulders; now relax them. Experiment to see if selectively tightening or relaxing them changes your ability to buzz your lips.

8. Tilt your chin upward or downward to see which position works best.

9. Are you checks bulging out like balloons? They shouldn’t be. Your breath should come from your diaphram, not checks.

10. How much air pressure and air flow are you using?

A bugler can form all the notes needed to play taps just by controlling his or her embouchure. In general, the tighter your lips are and the greater the air pressure you use, the higher the pitch that your horn will produce. And the more wind you put out, the louder your blast will be.

It may help to have a mirror handy so you can see what you are doing with your lips. Now it is up to you to experiment – or, in keeping with the silly sound exercise, to play with your mouth – until you make and sustain a controlled sound through your lips. If you don’t succeed after a few minutes, take a rest. Simply repeating the exercises in the same what that hasn’t been working will not help. Returning to the practice after a break, you will, even without intending too, make subtle shifts in how you shape your lips or use your breath. Have fun.

Your Health, Safety, and Comfort

Novice shofar blowers are prone to over-exerting themselves by blowing with all their might. IF YOU ARE BLOWING SO HARD THAT YOUR CHEEKS OR SINUSES HURT, OR YOU FEEL STRAIN – STOP IMMEDIATELY. You probably won’t injure yourself, but it could take a while for the discomfort to subside and this could discourage you from persevering. Take a break from shofar practice, and use less effort when you resume.

On rare occasions however, playing any wind instrument may present a danger due to the Valsalva maneuver. This occurs when a person strains to exhale, increasing the air pressure in their chest, neck, and mouth and nasal cavities. (Scuba divers and airplane passengers use Valsalva when they hold there nose and try to exhale; the internal air pressure builds until pressure in the eustachian tube equalizes air pressure on the exterior of the eardrum. A similar internal pressure build-up can occur when one strains to make a bowel movement.) If internal pressure becomes too great, it can put squeeze internal organs or veins and contribute to temporary numbness or loss of feeling, fainting, cerebral hemorrhage, stroke, spinal epidural hematoma, and other cardio and arterial maladies.

Individuals with uncontrolled high blood pressure, cerebral aneurysms, or arteriovenous malformation may have a higher risk and are encouraged to consult their physician before taking up any wind instrument.[123]

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Chapter 2-6 – Getting Sound from a Shofar

“Not study, but action, is the essence of the matter”[124]

By learning to toot your lips without a horn, you now understand that the vibrational origin of shofar sounds comes from you and not from the horn. Had we begun with the shofar, you may have incorrectly attributed any difficulties you were having to the fault of the shofar. While some shofarot may be more difficult to sound than others, you now know that the solution is in your own hands, so to speak.

The relationship between blower and shofar is very intimate, and you will want get to know the shape, feel, and smell of your shofar. Find your shofar’s center of gravity. Run you hands along the shofar’s length to establish a tactile connection and experience its curving, tapering form. Exhale into it a few times, without sounding it, to warm the horn. This meditative moment of connection helps me to attune all of my senses more closely to shofar so I can have a fuller experience blowing it. Plus, I believe that some part of the life force of the ram – maybe just a molecular memory – remains present in its horn. This moment of tenderness will make it eager to please and serve you; awakening the shofar acts as a prelude to its blasts that will awaken you.

In getting to know your shofar, notice how the shofar wants to be held? Can you hold it in one hand, or does it require two? A typical shofar has an oblong into which one blows; it is usually (but not always) easiest to blow if the long axis of the oblong is parallel to the long axis of your lips, i.e. horizontal.

It is customary to blow shofar so the broad end opens upward, as if to blast the sound to the heavenly hosts above and to direct the sounds over the heads of the congregation so it is more clearly audible in the back of the sanctuary. But sometimes I rotate the horn as if to send the radiating acoustical and spiritual energy back into the earth or striking my own body; it depends on where I feel the need to direct my intentions. The entire world is sacred, not just the heaven above. More, Earth and its ecosystems are in urgent need of healing. During Sukkot, we shake the lulav in the four cardinal directions and upward and downward as we send our prayers and intentions to all corners of the world; perhaps we should similarly blow shofar in all directions to help us foster an eco-consciousness.

Standing, take a moment to get centered and grounded. Take a few full breaths as I have described in the preceding Chapter, feeling the air flowing in and out of your body. And then place the narrow end of the shofar to your lips at the place where the air flows through the lips. Press the shofar against your lips with just enough pressure to seal the junction between the horn and your lips so that your breath does not leak out and away from the shofar. And then, as you have already practiced, exhale so that your lips vibrate. If all goes well, the audible vibrations of your lips will be modulated and amplified as the sound passes through the horn, and you will have sounded shofar.

If this technique does not work, hold the horn a small distance from your lips. Cause your lips to buzz as described preceding Chapter. And while they are buzzing, bring the shofar up against your vibrating lips so the vibrations and passing air is forced into the hollow of the shofar.

While the preceding Chapter introduced the sounds your lips can make and most of the variables involved in blowing shofar, you have several additional techniques to modify your embouchure. Every horn and every mouth is different, so there is not a single embouchure that works best for every shofarist. You will have to experiment to discover the embouchure that works best for you.

In addition to the variables discussed in the preceding chapter, introducing an actual horn to your embouchure enables you to experiment with the following variables:

1. Pressure: Vary the pressure with which you hold shofar against your lips and the pressure applied between the lips and teeth. In most cases, a gentle pressure is required to keep air from leaking out of your lips and away from shofar. Using minimal pressure will allow your lips to vibrate more freely. This may work for you; or it could allow your lips to flutter in a way that produces a raucous noise. Gradually increase the pressure by pulling shofar slightly closer to your face; this has the tendency to stretch your lips, increasing the tension in them and raising the pitch and changing the timbre.

2. Angle: Vary the vertical angle of inclination of shofar to your face. This can be accomplished either by moving the shofar or by holding the shofar steady and moving your head. Changing the angle can be useful in helping you find the best position for channeling your breath into the shofar. Further, it changes the relative pressure on the top and bottom lips, allowing your flexibility to adjust the tension in the lips to find the combination that works best for you.

3. Horizontal Position: Some blowers get the best sound holding the shofar to the center of my mouth, others position the horn slightly off-center, and some place the shofar right into the corner of their lips.

Left, Right, or Center: Some rabbinic sources say shofar should be blown from the right side of the mouth. They base this on scriptural references to Satan, the prosecutor, standing on an individual’s right as God judges the person. It is said that holding shofar on the right protects that side in the same way that tefillin protects the left side of a right-handed individual. Similarly, left-handed individuals – who wear tefillin on the right arm, are encouraged to blow shofar from the left side. Other teachings, however, say that the left side is preferred regardless of the blower’s handedness.[125]

These teachings appear to be minhag (custom) and not halachah (Jewish law), and the prevailing wisdom is that otherwise qualified shofar blowers are acceptable regardless of the mouth position they need to use when blowing shofar. As a beginning shofarist, use whatever mouth position you find easiest. Then, as you strengthen your embouchure and gain competency, adjust your technique to follow the tradition of your community.

4. Vertical Position: Start by positioning the center of your shofar’s blowhole so that it is centered between the upper and lower lips. Then try raising or lowering the horn so that more of one or the other lip is astride the blowhole. Some brass horn pedagogues recommend having more of your upper lip in the mouthpiece, but I know shofarists who get a better tone by favoring their lower lip. The lip with the greater exposure over the blowhole is that one that will vibrate the most to create shofar’s sound.

If air leaks from between your lips outside of the shofar blowhole, use a finger or two to plug the leak or squeeze your upper and lower lips together.

Time for Prayer

After sounding shofar for the first time, take a moment to listen to its voice reverberate through your body and the space you are in. You have learned a new skill, a skill that will help you fulfill a mitzvah. As it is written, “There is gold, and an abundance of jewels; but the lips of knowledge are a more precious thing.”[126] Rejoice, and say the Shehecheyanu or a prayer of gratitude for having learned a new skill.

Baruch atah Adonai Elohaynu Melech ha-olam, shehecheyanu, v’kiyamanu, v’higiyanu lazman hazeh.

Blessed are you, Yah, Spirit Guide of the world. You have kept us alive, sustained us, and brought us to this moment.

All Sounds are Acceptable

Talmud states, “If the shofar’s sound was naturally thin, or thick, or rough, it is valid, for all the sounds are valid [in the case of] a shofar.”[127] Strive to send a strong and steady shofar signal, but suffer such sputters, squawks, squeaks, or squeals your shofar sounds, certain they suffice and suffuse the soul with spirit.

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Chapter 2-7 – Sounding the Notes of the Shofar Service

“May the expression of our lips be sweet before You, almighty and exalted King, who understands, listens, sees, and hearkens to the sound of the shofar.”[128]

Now that you are able to produce sound from shofar, we will refine your unshaped toots into the sequence of blasts typically used in the High Holy Day liturgy.

Making Music

As a child, I was given clarinet lessons and struggled to read the notes and play them as written; it was a frustrating exercise in mental and manual dexterity and I did not persevere at it for long. As an adult, I returned to the instrument, but with a new understanding. This time, I listened to the clarinet as I played the scales and exercises. I heard intervals, patterns, melody, phrases, and, most importantly, music. It was no longer an abstract mental exercise to ken whether I was playing the correct note – all I had to do was listen. The feedback was instantaneous and completely natural; if it sounded good, I was playing the right note. Listening to your shofar is the surest way to improve your technique.

Shofar is a blues horn, where the beauty and impact of its voice is formed in the “bending” of the notes and the transition from one tone to another. As you play and pray with shofar, you will begin to infuse each blast with feelings that swing with grief, fear, triumph, elation, majesty, and the full spectrum of emotions.

While I try, below, to describe an ideal of what each of the traditional blasts aspires to, I believe there should be considerable latitude given to the shofar blower. Blowing shofar in synagogue is not a performance to be judged by anyone but God. There is a story about pious but uneducated person who prayed with fervor, but could not follow the prescribed order of the text in the prayer book. When someone criticized his technique, he replied, “All I can do is say the words as they come into my heart. I will have to leave it to God to put them in the right order.” Let the same philosophy inform your shofar blasts, as “imperfect” as they may be.

In the drive for “perfect” blasts, some have resorted to ploys that, to my sensibility, lack authenticity. For example, someone recalls hearing shofar in a Reform congregation in the mid-Twentieth Century as follows, “For the shofar blowing, my French horn teacher would stand in the wings and produce these perfect dulcet tones with her horn. Meanwhile, out on the bimah, someone would be holding the shofar aloft.”[129]

I do not espouse an “anything goes” approach; only to encourage beginners to trust that their best efforts will be enough. Through the generations, performance standards have been established for what shofar calls should sound like, and all shofarists should strive to honor the traditions of their communities.

The Basic Blasts

Tekiah: Although it is a single blast (produced with a single, continuous exhalation), tekiah is not played on a single pure note. Fully developed, there are three parts to the sound of tekiah: the blast begins with a short, sharp attack or introduction, raises dramatically in volume and pitch to sound the alarm, and finishes with a flourish. Onomatopoetically, these three parts are like the three syllables in te-ki-ah.

“Te” begins with a sudden sound made like the creation of the consonant tee. It blasts out of quietude and is created by a quick contraction of your diaphragm. This introduction is sustained just long enough to be heard.

“Ki” has a long “i” vowel in it. As when pronouncing that vowel, you can linger over this syllable of tekiah, holding it for most of the duration of the blast.

“Ah” is like the fiery crown on a Hebrew letter, it is the mote note or sweet release that gives tekiah its final “potch on tuchis”[130] to send it on its way into the universe. This is not the “ahhh” of a sigh or “ahavah” (Hebrew for “love”), this is the “Ah!” of having a bucket of cold water thrown in your face, and like the ah of the German “achtung!” it is meant to be given attention. It is formed with a sharp final contraction of the diaphragm to push out the final puff of air with even greater intensity; you should feel your chest shudder as the diaphragm jolts it with a quick squeeze. And it is frequently accompanied by a physical gesture such as raising the horn or the head to change the inclination of the horn, tensing the lips and modulating the pitch. Sometimes I find my entire body stretching into the final “ah” as if I am being lifted towards heaven with the blast of breath.

Shevarim: Shevarim consists of three successive tekiah blasts in a single breath. Begin each of the three segments of shevarim with a strong attack of a “Te,” then a short “ki” followed promptly by “ah” mde by rapidly contracting the diaphragm to force more air through your lips to produce a rising pitch. Tightening the lips or changing the inclination of the horn to your face can also help shape the higher pitch.

Teruah: While exhaling in a continuous breath, the air stream is interrupted by rapidly moving your tongue forward and backwards to repeatedly block and open the passage of air into the shofar blowhole. This “tonguing” technique is known to all wind instrument players who use it to produce distinct breaks between notes that are faster and more staccato than could be created by contractions of the diaphragm. Try saying “ti-ti-ti” and you will feel your tongue repeatedly touching the front of your mouth, exactly as it will when you sound teruah.

Adding a small flourish at the end, and using our onomatopoetic syllables, teruah is, “ti-ti-ti-ti-ti-ti-ti-ti-ti ah.”

Traditionally, teruah consists of nine bursts; other communities favor twelve. I have a hard time trying to count out nine (or twelve) bursts at the same time I am focused on trying to sound and listen to shofar. So what I do is count or feel the beats in sets of three. My mind recognizes “three” at a semi-subconscious level, so I can feel the bursts as “one-two-three/one-two-three/one-two-three without having to count them. With practice, you will find yourself doing the desired bursts without thinking; it will just feel right.

Shevarim-Teruah: These two blasts should be sounded in a single breath and without pausing between them.

[131]

Tekiah Gedolah: While the other blasts may take as little as two seconds, you should aim to sustain tekiah gedolah for at least ten seconds or more.

Tekiah gedolah provides the opportunity for a shofar blower to grandstand his or her skills by holding the blast for an even greater length. Like the opera singer who can hold a dramatic note, sustaining a very long tekiah gedolah heightens the theatricality and emotional impact of the shofar service. Blows of 30 to 60 seconds or even longer duration are not unheard of. My friend Howard – a professional showman – sometimes drops to his knees while sustaining an exceptionally long blast, playing off the congregation’s concerns that he might faint from not breathing.

Some traditionalists may scoff that the High Holy Days are somber occasions and that grandstanding has no place in a religious service. And while they are true, I say we also have the responsibility to dance with God, and to transform worship from “oy!” to “joy!” There is room in the Yamim Noraim for every human emotion, and if we descend into the depths of remorse when we make our confessions during the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur Services, the tekiah gedolah allows our spirits to soar upon a mighty wind.[132]

While an initial “te” is optional, I typically minimize or dispense with it and begin with an easy “ki” in order to conserve air. In a long blast, you may find that your pitch or timbre wander; without the shaped mouthpiece of a modern brass instrument, the tone of shofar is inflected by every nuance of change in the tension of your lips or pressure of your breath. I do not worry about these variations; they are a reflection of the prayer work that is going on inside my heart and soul. And while every attempt should be made to sustain the tekiah gedolah for as long as possible, one must have the wisdom to know when the end of the blast is approaching so you can seal the blast with a rising “ah.” Tekiah gedolah, then, sounds like, “(ti)-kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii-ah!”.

Additional tips for blowing tekiah gedolah, and the other calls, are in Chapter 2-11 – Secrets of an Awesome Tekiah Gedolah.

Remembering the Names of the Blasts

From year-to-year and during the excitement of blowing shofar in shul, some shofarists have a hard time remembering the difference between shevarim and teruah. My friend, Perla, solves this by discretely taping a reminder to the top of her shofar where she can see it while blowing. It looks like:

Tekiah _____________

Shevarim ____ ____ ____

Teruah _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Tekiah gedolah ______________________

If you know Hebrew, a mnemonic I like is that “shevarim” begins with the same sound as “shalosh” – Hebrew for three – the number of pulses in shevarim, while “teruah” begins with the same sound as “tesha” – Hebrew for nine, the number of pulses in teruah..

A similar mnemonic that does not rely on Hebrew is that “shevarim” has the same initial sound as “several” while “teruah has the same initial sound as “trill” or “tremolo.”

Another approach is to remember that the blows are in the sequence of a whole being broken into progressively smaller parts until it achieves a new consistency as a reformed whole; tekiah is a whole sound, shevarim is broken, teruah is shattered into even smaller pieces, and finally the sound is fractured into such short blasts that the ear hears them as a continuous tone.

The Sequence of Blasts

Each community has its own minhag (custom), and local tradition should be followed. In general, most communities use the following sequence of blasts:

Tekiah Shevarim-Teruah Tekiah

Tekiah Shevarim Tekiah

Tekiah Teruah Tekiah[133]

If it is the last blast of a sequence, the final Tekiah is sustained as Tekiah Gedolah.

Many congregations expand this basic series of ten blasts so that shofar is heard up to 100 times on each day of Rosh Hashanah.

Call and Response

The shofar blower is called a “tokea.” Another term for the shofar blower is “ba’al tekiah” (masculine) or ba’alat tekiah (feminine), term that poetically translate as, “master blaster.” It is customary for the blasts to be announced before each is sounded. The person calling out the name of the blast to be sounded is called a “makrei.”

While the tokea concentrates on the blasts and his kavenah for sounding them, the mackrei is responsible for following the prescribed sequence of blasts in the machzor – High Holy Day prayerbook and to call out the name of the next blast. The makrei is also charged with determining if the blasts are acceptable in form, clarity, and duration; if the blast is not acceptable, the makrei will call out the name again so the tokea can repeat the blast. A rabbi or prayer leader frequently performs the role of makrei, but it can be anyone who is knowledgable about shofar and is of good character.

It is advisiable for the tokea and makrei to meet before Rosh Hashanah to review the order of the blasts and how they will collaborate.

More teachings about the shofar blasts are in Chapter 1-5 – Blast, Break, Shatter, Blast.

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Chapter 2-9 – Staging Shofar

“Know before whom you stand.”[137]

Keeping Shofar Covered

There is a custom to keep shofar hidden within the drapes of one’s tallit or wrapped in a special cloth until the blessing is recited before blowing shofar. Covering is a sign of respect given to many spiritually significant items including the challah of the Shabbat table and the Torah scroll. Concealing shofar reminds us of the ram of the Akedah which was concealed from Abraham. Concealing shofar also helps keep the congregation’s focus on the horn’s sound and not on the visual impact of the horn or the shofarist. A shofar blower can also pull a tallit over his or her head before blowing; like at Sinai, the congregation hears the sound without seeing its source.

“The shofar is covered while the brachot are recited. This is similarly related to the Akedah. The midrash says that before building the altar on which to sacrifice his son Yitzhak, Avraham kept Yitzhak hidden, for fear that Satan would injure Yitzhak and render him unfit to be offered.”[138]

While waiting for the blasts to be called, I hold the shofar close to your body to warm the horn. I also blow into the horn to keep it moistened with my breath. I don’t know if these steps actually improves the sound, but it does connect me to the horn and seems to make it easier to blow.

When performing a mitzvah, it is customary to refrain from speaking from the time the blessing of the mitzvah is said until the mitzvah is performed. This applies to the mitzvah of sounding shofar.

Solo or Tutti Shofar

In many synagogues, a single ba’al tekiah serves the congregation and sounds a solo shofar while standing in front of the open ark of the Torah. The single shofarist represents an ancient archetype, a spiritual warrior who intercedes with the Almighty on behalf of the people. More, a powerful energy can be generated when the entire congregation is united in its focus on a single note. And, for the individual listener, the sound of a single shofar can enable the listener to discern each nuance of the blasts, allowing its message, we hope, to be heard with clarity.

There are equally ancient and spiritually compelling traditions of polyphonic shofaring. For example, whole platoons of shofarists lead the attacks on Jericho and against the Medianites. The Levites had entire trumpet choirs. And when shofar was blown in the Temple, two trumpets accompanied it. Some congregations now use a shofar duet, trio or other small grouping of skilled shofarists; others all shofar-blowing members of the congregation to participate.

In Judaism, as in many spiritual traditions, loud noise is understood to scare away evil forces; playing groggers (noisemakers) during the reading of the Esther during Purim is a familiar example of this. Surely the cacophony of a multitude of shofarists will deter even Satan. And while I never doubt the ability of a solitary shofar to pierce someone’s heart or psyche, many of us need the concussive effect of an entire barrage of blasts to return to spiritual vivacity.

Software: Microsoft Office [139]

If your congregation’s practice is for a solo shofar, there is no reason to abandon your tradition outright. However, you may want to experiment with ensemble shofar tooting at least once during the High Holy Day observances. For example, use a single shofar on the first day of Rosh Hashanah according to tradition, then encourage group blasting on the second day as a way to keep the services fresh and awaken those who may have become satiated after two days of prayer.

Alternatively, introduce group blowing at the conclusion of Yom Kippur when shofar’s blast has a more joyous quality than do the soul-searching blasts of Rosh Hashanah. Group blowing at this time will resonate with the Biblical injunction to “have the shofar sounded throughout the land...for all its inhabitants.”[140]

Spatial Dynamics of Shofaring

This openness to exploring new approaches to liturgy is part of what Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi has called “davvenology,” the experimenting with the form of our worship to discover models of prayer that respect tradition yet are attuned to contemporary needs. If your congregation is open to multiple shofar blowers, you have the opportunity to explore a variety of strategies for how you deploy your cadre of shofar blowers. For example:

· Situate shofar blowers around the perimeter of the sanctuary to surround the congregation within field of sound.

· Have shofar blowers standing at their own seat throughout the congregation. This arrangement reminds us of the Torah verse read during the Holidays, “And God heard the boy where he was at,”[141] indicating that our prayers are heard regardless of the place or condition in which we are. The dynamics of this shofar blowing arrangement can have a profound impact on the congregation, since they can hear shofar blasts arising from their midst, altering the “them and us” dichotomy that can be fostered when shofar blowers are standing apart from the body of the congregation.

· A lead shofarist at the front of the sanctuary can be echoed by other blowers at the back of the sanctuary, enhancing the call and response of the shofar service.

“An old brass technique for trumpet/coronet is to have a primary musical sequence repeated thereafter from a distance as if it were an echo. This is especially useful for the relatively short sequences of shofar blasts. Plan to have the mitzvah blasts from the bimah called by the makrei (caller) and then blown first by the tokea (shofar blower). After each blast sequence, another shofar repeats the blast at the back of the congregation, or from various corners of the sanctuary as “echoes.” While it is a bit dramatic, it won't be forgotten; moreover it enables more people to be involved in the services. Since the tokea blows the mitzvah sequence, then the “echoes” could be blown by minors or women where otherwise they may be permitted to do so. Consider using different shofarot “voices” such that there will be sounds in “soprano,” “tenor,” “alto,” and “baritone” keys…”[142]

· And, of course, the choir of shofar blowers can huddle together on the bemah or in front of the open ark for a mighty team effort.

Once, finding myself the only shofar blower in shul, I blew each series of blasts, (Malchuyot, Shofarot, and Zichronot) from a different part of the sanctuary. It was the Second Day of Rosh Hashanah, and I was feeling that the congregation was getting lethargic. Like the acupuncturist trying to release blocked “chi” in a body, I felt that sounding shofar from different parts of the House of Prayer would free-up the flow of spiritual energy.

The team effort can also become a relay for what might be called a tekiah gedolah-gedolah or an extra-sized blast. Lined-up in front of the ark, the first blower sustains his or her blast for as long as possible. Just before running out of breath, the first blower signals to the next, by means of a nod of the head or other gesture, allowing each subsequent blower to take up the call without a break in sound.

In the Temple, two trumpets accompanied the shofar on Rosh Hashanah. This poses the question of whether we can fulfill the mitzvah of hearing shofar if more than one instrument sounds. The Talmud answer, “…the reason the shofar and trumpets can be blown simultaneously in the Temple is because two sounds issuing from one person are not discerned, whereas two sounds issuing from two people are discerned. ...since [the mitzvah] of shofar is especially dear, when one hears the shofar and trumpets blown together in the Temple he puts his mind to discerning the sound of the shofar, and indeed hears it.”[143] This suggests a precedent for sounding more than one instrument, and suggests that minhag – tradition – changes over time.

Outdoors and Open Doors

Today, most people hear shofar blown indoors, inside synagogues or rented hotel ballrooms. Throughout the ages, however, the horn was heard outdoors where its loud cry could travel from hillside to hillside or across a field. While we say it was blown “in the Temple” in Jerusalem, there too it was blown outdoors in the Temple’s precinct. Or in the words of a contemporary poet, “The answer is blowing in the wind.”[144]

The shofar was born to carry its voice v’ha-eretz v’ha-shamayim – throughout the earth and up to the heavens – not just within the walls of a synagogue. Rabbi Ayla Grafstein of Congregation Ruach Hamidbar (Spirit of the Desert) in Arizona uses shofar in a lake-side tashlich service on the second day of Rosh Hashanah.[145]

Blowing shofar in the open air of the out of doors has a liberating quality, freed from the constraints of roof and wall to send your blasts outwards into the ecosphere and cosmos. One of the great challenges of our era is to reconnect our urbanized culture with the earth. We experience a powerful reminder of our connection to Earth when, a few days after the Days of Awe, we sit outdoors in our Sukkot. But why wait until then. A contemporary sage says, “One way to celebrate Rosh Hashanah and honor the earth is to go out and blow a shofar out in the fields or the woods to fill creation with the sacred Presence.”[146] Why not carry the Torah outdoors during Rosh Hashanah – the birthday of the world – and blow shofar so all creation can be washed in its vibrations.

And if that is not practical, then let us open the doors to the Synagogue before blowing shofar. Open the doors, like we do on Passover, so that all who are hungry for spiritual renewal can be nourished by the call of shofar.

“…grandfather would go alone with his horse-driven cart to the forest, and there would sound the shofar…in different intonations and rhythms. I would not know whether he was practicing there the art of blowing the horn for the High Holidays, or whether he was spending his solitude in the forest in communion with God…”[147]

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Chapter 2-10 – Shofar Service in the Greater Community

“Just as we all eagerly hasten to hear the shofar, so must we do with regard to every other mitzvah.”[148]

As a ba’al tekiah, you have the opportunity to provide service beyond the walls of your synagogue by sounding shofar for individuals who are homebound, hospitalized, institutionalized, or otherwise unable to observe the High Holy Days in the midst of a congregation. This can be a double mitzvah since it fulfills both the commandment to visit the sick (bikur cholim) and to enable others to fulfill the commandment of hearing shofar.

For several years, I participated in a monthly Shabbat service at a nursing home. Several of our minyan were unable to speak and were locked in bodies that they no longer controlled. Yet somehow, I could sense that even their souls were moved when they heard shofar at our New Year’s gathering. A shofar blower at another nursing home reports that, “After I blew the shofar…one man came up to me and said, “Young man, that’s the first sound I’ve heard in 30 years.”[149] Miracles like this happen when shofar sounds.

Hearing shofar can be especially meaningful to those who are ill and living with the intimate knowledge that their days may be numbered. The call of shofar may reassure them that, in sickness as in health, we each stand before God as the Holy One passes judgment. For the dying and their families, prayers of teshuvah take on a special urgency, and hearing shofar may give them comfort.

“[Mother] was 18 months into her death sentence of ALS. It turned out to be her last Rosh Hashanah. For the first time in her adult life, my Mother did not join us [at Shul]… she said, it was just too hard. After services…the doorbell rang… There was our Rabbi and his wife. We were a bit astonished. It was after all, a kind of busy day for him. We also knew that he lived about 5 miles away and further knew that he did not drive on Shabbat or Yom Tov. After offering them a cold drink and chatting for a few minutes, the Rabbi pulled out a bag he was holding from which he took out a shofar. He looked at my mother and told her that he wanted to make sure that she heard the shofar for Rosh Hashanah and he proceeded to blast the shofar in my mother’s living room. I think that the Rabbi was the only one without tears in his eyes. Shortly thereafter, he and his wife apologized for the short visit and left – shofar in hand. He did, after all, have to get back for mincha. I have never listened to a shofar in quite the same way.”[150]

Even without a trip to a hospital, nursing home, or prison, you can telephone the shut-in and allow them to hear shofar via electronic assistance. One member of my congregation brings her cell phone to shul on the yontif and holds it up during the shofar service so her bed-ridden mother can hear shofar along with the rest of the congregation.[151] Parents and care givers who stay home to care for young children and the infirm can also benefit from a friendly visit by a shofarist from their community.

While this outreach can be undertaken as an individual effort, it is a wonderful project for a congregation or spiritual community to undertake. At Makom Ohr Shalom, for example, our Shofar Corps has become a service project that raises the ruach – spirit – of the congregation even as it serves the community. Volunteers contact local institutions before Rosh Hashanah to find out who needs a visit and to make arrangements. Then other volunteers, either individually or in small teams, spread out throughout the community. Our slogan: “Have shofar. Will travel.”

Blowing shofar in an institution can be a profound experience. One member of the Corps described,

“We blew shofar in the living room at a home for those with memory impairments. Just saying the word “tekiah” triggered a couple of people's memories, and they would light up like a happy kid. We led the Shehechayanu and translated it, essentially giving thanks for being right here, right now. These people are in the Right Now – each moment is a new day for many of them. That's my takeaway message: being present, and in so being, there is the possibility of joy in each moment.”

Jailhouse Shofar

For several years, I sounded shofar in the Los Angeles County Men's Central Prison. In Talmud, there is a discussion about blowing shofar inside a cistern; one is supposed to hear the sound of shofar directly and not the sound echoing off the walls. That can be a challenge when blowing shofar inside a concrete bunker at what is described as the “Largest Prison in the Free World" because the walls echo with the sound of so many of society's failings plus the fears and uncertainty facing the residents.

Yet all the Holidays' messages about teshuvah – that personal improvement can really happen – are so much clearer when discussed with someone who has seen the darkness of violence, addiction, crime, and incarceration. Rabbi Yossi Carron, the chaplain who works with the men, used the themes of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur to help the men understand that forgiveness is possible and that, by taking responsibility for their actions, their future do have to be limited by their pasts.

The residents recognized that I was in the prison by choice; it was meaningful for them to know that they were not forgotten by or completely cut-off from the outside world. Some had never heard a shofar before and were trying to reconnect with their Jewish heritage to help them have faith in their future. One told me that the sound of shofar burned into his heart where he will be able to hear it again throughout the coming year, drawing upon it for the strength to support his recovery. As the guards were preparing to strip search him after our brief visit, he said, “If I can keep hearing it, it will remind me of what the rabbi has told us. Then, maybe, this can be my last time in prison.” All I could say to that was, “AMEN!”

Sweet[152]
Once, I had a divine revelation.

It was on the holy day of Rosh Hashanah, but I wasn't in shul. I was in a hospital on that very wet morning, in a sterile and depressing geriatrics rehab ward, where a few old bubbies (grandmothers) had gathered to hear the sounding of the shofar.

Every year I do this--blow shofar in the hospitals. Every year at least one person cries.

This year there was a bubbeh who didn't seem so old. She was very with-it. The sight of a shofar filled her with excitement. She poured out to me memories of her childhood, it seemed the past had just come awake for her. She had grown up steeped in Chassidic warmth and soul, and…it had never left her.

She recited the blessing and I began to blow the shofar, softly but clearly. The tears began to come. I'm used to that already I just keep going. But when I finished, that's when it was obvious that God was there in the room. Because she was talking to Him.

"Oy, zisseh Gott! Tiereh, zisseh Gott! Mein zisseh Gott!"

She was crying and she was holding God in her hands. The hands of an old bubbeh holding an infinite, timeless God.

She called him “ziss.” I had never heard that before. “Ziss" I had heard applied to desserts and to grandchildren. The Psalms of David and the Song of Songs talked about the Almighty in that way. But this was an old bubbeh. Her voice had that tone of love and compassion, yet she was filled with awe. She was crying with sorrow, with joy, with pain, with longing...yet her words were sweet ecstasy.

I can't translate those words she said. It doesn't work in English, “My dear sweet God.” It just doesn't happen.

Because in English you don't talk to God the way a wife talks to her beloved husband, a husband who went away on a distant journey and you never knew if he would return, and now you're suddenly in his arms. Like a mother talks to her small, sweet children and like a daughter talks to her father who she knows will never abandon her. All in one. In English there is no such thing. But in the Yiddish of her childhood she could say it.

For me, her cries smashed through the most profound journeys of the philosophers, popping them like a child pops bubbles in the air, like shadows disappear in the sunshine. They had no meaning here. They are ideas. This is God. The real thing. This was revelation. Something the old bubbies had back there, back then. Something we had lost.

Almost.

I had to leave to go to shul. She was still in tears. I discovered I was smiling. You'll think I'm insensitive, but I was helpless before this deep, uplifting joy that just arose from inside.

She cried. I was full of joy. Why shouldn't I be? I had just seen God face to face. Unzer zisseh Gott.

Guidelines for Blowing Shofar for the Sick and Confined[153]

1. You are performing a mitzvah, an act of holiness, by enabling others to hear the sound of shofar. It is also a mitzvah, to visit the sick and confined.

2. Be respectful of the person you are visiting and others in the room. Your shofar blasts are still effective if you blow quietly to avoid scaring people. If someone does not want to hear you blow shofar, do not blow for them; wish them a sweet New Year and leave.

3. Be respectful of the institution you are visiting and heed its rules and staff’s instructions. Check in with the visitor liaison or nursing station before going to someone’s room. Even if you scheduled a visit, understand that plans may have to adjust to the current situation in the facility. Knock before entering a person’s room. Illness can make a person more sensitive to smells, so use moderation if applying perfume or a fragrance. When visiting the infirm, wash your hands before and after shaking hands with or otherwise touching a patient.

4. Lower your expectations about how you or your shofar blowing will be received. A person, especially if ill or confined, may respond to shofar or your presence with anger, sadness, fear, confusion, or other unexpected behavior. Trust in the holiness of your intentions and stay focused on the mitzvah.

5. A person who is sick may want to talk or want more personal attention than you are able to give; you do not become responsible for all their needs just because you have visited. Be civil and loving, but know your limits.

6. Do not become embroiled in discussions about Jewish sectarian issues or inter-religious discussion. For example, some Orthodox Jewish men may not want to hear shofar blown by a woman.

7. Visiting the sick and hearing shofar can bring up feelings inside you; you may want to ask a friend to go with you for support.

8. If you are asked to visit a private home, be aware of your surroundings and security concerns. Ask someone to come with you if necessary.

9. The family members and caregivers of the person you are visiting may also appreciate hearing shofar. Non-Jewish roommates or staff for example may also respond to or be curious about shofar. While you are at an institution, ask if there are other residents or staff that may want to hear shofar.

10. Listen to shofar while you blow. Do not worry about the quality of your shofar calls; this is holy work and not a concert. All sounds from shofar are acceptable.

Teaching Shofar

I encourage all shofar sounders to become shofar teachers. There is great hunger among many Jews to find more meaning in their heritage, and sometimes blowing one shofar blast can touch somebody in a way that reading a hundred pages of holy texts cannot.

Children, as young as six, are especially adept students of shofar. Teaching them continues the chain from generation to generation.[154]

Sometimes the rewards of teaching, though vicarious, are very direct and satisfying. I taught my friend Lynn, who taught her grandchildren and had the pleasure of hearing them blow shofar on the next Rosh Hashanah. But our own fulfillment is not the most important reason for teaching. We have, instead, an obligation to pass our traditions l’dor v’dor – from generation to generation. We are told:

“In Second Temple times, the baking of the lechem panim became the job of Beit Garmu. The Garmu family members were experts in baking this bread in such a manner that it did not become moldy, even after sitting out for six days…[155]

”The Garmu family understood and was skilled at this tradition. However, they kept their expertise secretive, refusing to teach others how to properly prepare the lechem panim. The rabbis of the Mishnah include Beit Garmu among others who refused to pass along the instructions of Jewish ritual to future generations. The memory of these people was to be recalled for disgrace according to the Mishnah.[156]

”The lesson for us is that no one person or group of people should hold a monopoly on Jewish tradition or the intricacies of Jewish rituals. We must keep our rich traditions from dying out by practicing “open source" Judaism, providing future generations with the recipe for Jewish living. If you know a great trick to blowing shofar, you should share that trick with a few other people. You should encourage your Bubbie to pass along her delicious gefilte fish recipes. Perhaps your family has some nice Pesach Seder innovations that you could teach to other families.”[157]

The Highest Level of Shofar Service

Maimonides taught that there are eight levels of tzadakah (charity), and that the greatest level is to give someone skills and resources so he or she will not be dependent on others.[158] With this in mind, perhaps the highest level of service a shofar-blower can perform is to give a shofar to someone and teach him or her to sound it so the person will not be dependent upon others to fulfill the mitzvah of hearing shofar.

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Chapter 2-11 – Secrets Of An Awesome Tekiah Gedolah

“Sometimes I blow the shofar. But sometimes, it blows my mind instead.”[159]

1. Practice: Remember the advice given to a tourist in New York City who asked “How do I get to Carnegie Hall? The answer: “Practice, Practice, Practice.” Blowing shofar daily throughout Elul – the month preceding the New Year – will assure you are in top form for Yamim Noraim – The Days of Awe. The practice throughout Elul, however, is not just to perfect technique. As discussed in Chapter 2-4 – Hearing Shofar, the practice is to spiritually awaken the blower and to align him or her with the sound of shofar and the process of teshuvah.

2. Conditioning: The healthier you are, the easier it will be to blow a strong, loud blast. I like to swim the length of a swimming pool underwater, a discipline that requires breath control similar to immersing myself in a tekiah gedolah. Steve. a fellow shofar blower in my shul, was able to sustain a longer shofar blast after he stopped smoking.

3. Mind the Basics of Posture and Breathe Control: Loosen your belt and collar to free-up your breathing apparatus. If decorum permits, remove your shoes so you are in better contact with the earth.

4. Preparation is the Key to All Spiritual Ritual: In the moments leading up to shofar sounding, turn inward; this is not the time to be concentrating on the prayer book or the mounting intensity of the worshipers surrounding you. I concentrate on my own most intimate prayers and assume a meditative composure. Sometimes I pull my tallit over my head to allow me privacy to do the inner work I must do. Rather than listening to the Rabbi and responses, I allow myself to feel the vibrational field of sound in the sanctuary. I pay attention to feeling centered in my own body and in contact with the earth. And I begin breathing slowly and deeply, inhaling oxygen into every cell of my body and exhaling carbon dioxide along with sins of the past year. By the time I am called forward to blow shofar, I aim to be of a single-mindedness of purpose – to connect heaven and earth in the sounding of shofar, advancing the process of teshuvah for myself, my congregation, all of Israel, my fellow Earthlings, and all the worlds beyond.[160]

5. Shofaring is Not a Performance Art: Blowing shofar is devotional service. If you remember that it is not a performance, you will experience less performance anxiety, leading ironically to a better performance.

6. Kavanah and Prayer: Kavanah is the intention underlying our actions. One can read the words of a prayer book out of intellectual curiosity, or one can read them with a sense of reverence; they are the same words, but your relationship to the words will be different because your kavanah is different. Before blowing shofar in shul, I pray, quietly, that I be worthy to act a messenger for the congregation, that my shofar blast be accepted as a giant AMEN to all the congregation’s spoken and unspoken prayers (including my own), and that I be given the strength and skill to sound shofar in such a way that it will be heard by anyone in the congregation who has not yet completed their teshuvah work (including myself). If my kavanah is clear, then it does not matter how long my tekiah gedolah is, it will be awesome.

7. Believe that the Longer you Blow, the more Opportunity you are Giving God to Show Mercy: Central to the High Holy Day liturgy is the belief that we can bargain with God for mercy. The machzor – prayer book for the Days of Awe – says, “Our Father, our King, be gracious and answer us, for we have too few good deeds. Treat us with justice tempered by love and bring us salvation.” Anthropomorphizing The Deity, we envision a judge about to pass a harsh decree, but who, at the last moment, shows mercy. By extending the cry of the tekiah gedolah for as long as possible, you give HaShem the opportunity to show greater compassion. One student in my class told me that, as a child, she imagined that every moment her rabbi sustained the tekiah gedolah meant that more people would be sustained in life throughout the new year; she says she continues to use the imagery to inspire her to “blow as though lives depend upon it.”

8. Believe that Your Blast will Bring the Messiah: The essence of this technique is captured in a story from the Satmar Rebbe[161] explaining why Satan is bewildered by shofar: “Every year when we blow the shofar, the shofar blasts of all the tzaddikim of previous generations are added to our present shofar sounds, and a great and holy crescendo rises to heaven. Every Rosh Hashanah, as new shofar blasts are joined to the ones of the previous years, the noise in Heaven grows stronger. Satan remembers the sound of last year’s shofar blasts. He is now confronted with a much louder noise. Afraid that enough shofar blasts have accumulated in Heaven to bring about the final redemption, he is panic-stricken, thinking that what he hears is the “shofar of Mashiach,” trumpeting his demise. The Satan’s fears are not unfounded. Mashiach can come today when our modest tekiot are added to those of the tzaddikim of past generations. Let’s not miss the opportunity. Entreat HaShem wholeheartedly and accept His absolute sovereignty, for with sincere prayer it is possible to bring the final redemption.”

9. Feel Competitive: Despite what I have said about shofar not being a performance art and about establishing kavanah, it excites me to blow tekiah gedolah with others. Like the racer who can run faster or farther when he or she has others to pace him or her, I feel the energy of the other shofar blowers and think, “If they are still blowing, I will too – and perhaps even longer!” Like the sportsman, I shake hands with my fellow blowers if they are standing nearby and bless them with strength, because I know the better they blow, the better I will as well. When I am a shofar soloist, I compete with myself to achieve my own personal best.

10. Use the Energy of the Congregation: I can always sustain a longer blow when I am in shul than when I am blowing for myself alone. In the same way that I draw energy from the other blowers, I feel the love and support of the entire congregation. I know that many of them are holding their breath as they experience the awe of shofar blasts, and I visualize that I have their permission to use all the air in the sanctuary to blow tekiah gedolah.

11. Use a Shofar that is Easy to Blow: See Chapter 2-3 – Buying, Making, and Caring for a Shofar for tips on finding a shofar that is easy for you to blow.

12. Find your Horn’s Resonant Frequency: During a long blast, the voice of shofar may change its pitch or timbre. While these changes may seem to occur spontaneously as if the horn was still a living thing with a mind of its own (and it is), the shifts are also in response to subtle changes in air pressure, tension in the lips, or the relative positioning of the horn and lips. When this happens to you, notice that the effort required to sound shofar may vary. To sustain a long tekiah gedolah, find the combination that requires the least “wind” to blow. This will generally be at a resonant frequency. It is not necessary to understand the physics. What is important is that you pay attention to the amount of breath you need to blow shofar. When you find a pitch that is easy maintain without having to blow hard, you have found a resonant frequency, the “sweet spot” in your shofar’s voice.

13. Ask for Support: During a long, sustained shofar blast, one is not breathing fresh oxygen into his or her body. This can produce symptoms of lightheadedness and even fainting. This is even more likely after fasting, when even the act of standing can be challenging. If you are concerned about fainting, ask someone to stand at your side to support you. Moses, when he stood with outstretched arms on a hill above our battle with Amalek, had Aaron and Hur[162] standing by his sides to support him. And when you read from the Torah, you have a gabbai standing next to you. There is a reason why we bless someone performing a mitzvah with “yashar koach, may you have strength”; we are most vulnerable to the evil impulse while we are doing a mitzvah. Getting the support you need will allow you to blow without fear of injuring yourself should you faint.

14. Keep your Focus on Listening: The mind plays tricks on us, making us panic or feel like we are out of air or about to pass out long before we are in real danger. If you are listening, you will not be thinking about how you might be running out of air. You will want to hear more and more.

15. Become Invisible: Pull your tallit over your head, allowing the far end of the shofar to protrude from under your cover. From the anonymity of your own private sanctuary, you can blow and listen uninhibited by thoughts of what you might look like or the visual distractions of your surroundings. This technique can also heighten the experience of the congregants listening to the blasts, since they veil will conceal the shofar blower’s face and keep the focus on the sound.

16. Inhale First: Many shofar blowers rush into their blast as soon as the first syllable of “tekiah gedolah” is pronounced by the caller. Instead, wait until the full call is uttered, then quietly reground yourself to the earth, raise to your full stature, bring shofar to your lips, and inhale deeply before blowing. The momentary delay will heighten the drama of the blast and arouse the congregation to listen even more closely as they fill with anticipation. This pause is similar to the midrash about why Torah begins with the letter Bet instead of Aleph, the silent first letter of the Hebrew Aleph-Bet. It is said that the Aleph is the sound of God inhaling before the Eternal uttered the first sound of creation.

17. Exhale: The real secret to inhaling is to be sure to exhale first. When blowing the relatively short tekiah, shevarim, and teruah blasts, you probably will not require all the air in your lungs. Instead, you will blow one blast, suck in a little gulp of air, blow the next blast, and take another short gulp of air, and continue taking short inhalations throughout the entire sequence of ten or thirty blasts. By not inhaling fully between each blast, your lungs will contain stale air and your blood will become deoxygenated. The rest of the congregation may be in a hurry to get out of shul, but shofar blasts should occur in “sacred time” that is not measured by the clock. So don’t hurry. Take time to exhale fully after each toot, and your body will naturally breath in fresh air. Then, when you get to tekiah gedolah, you will be stoked and ready.

18. Wet Your Whistle: Moist lips vibrate more easily than dry lips. More, it can help to moisten your shofar. Before blowing a conch shell, Hindu devotees make a ritual of pouring water into their “horn”; it makes the instrument easier to sound and is an act of purification. The practice is permitted in Judaism, too; the Talmud permits us to pour water, wine, or vinegar into a shofar.[163] If it is not a fast day, you may want to take a drink of water yourself. On fast days, however, reserve the liquid for the shofar in keeping with the ethical principal that a farmer must feed his livestock before feeding him or her self.

19. Visualize your Blast is Heard in all the Worlds: Motivational speakers say that the way to reach a goal is aim beyond it. So blow shofar with the goal of having it heard even beyond the back row of seats in your synagogue. Blow so they can hear it throughout your neighborhood and to the outskirts of your town. Blow with the intent that the call will be heard all the way to Washington, the Middle East, the hospitals and prisons and corporate board rooms and all the places in our society that need healing. Blow with the certainty that the endangered plants and animals (and they all are) in the rain forests, the family farm, and the coral reefs feel the vibration. Merge your blast with those of all shofarot being sounded around the world and blow so that all ten sefirot of the kabbalah’s Tree of Life resonate and harmonize with the vibration of shofar. In just a few days after the Days of Awe, we will enter the sukkah and invite our ancestors to sit with us; blow with the understanding that even now they are straining to hear the message that transcends physicality and temporality.

20. Blow Softly: For tekiah, teruah, and shevarim, I try to produce loud, strong blasts, blasts that can pierce the heart and awaken the spirit. Then, once the audience is fully alert, tekiah gedolah does not have to be loud because everyone is already listening with their senses fully engaged. In fact, the more quietly we blow, the closer we listen. This is a technique professional speakers often use, raising their voice to higher and higher volumes, then switching to a low decibel level so we have to listen more intently to hear what is being said. We can also think of tekiah, teruah, and shevarim as calls primarily to be heard by our fellow humans and sentient beings. Tekiah gedolah, on the other hand, is a direct line to Spirit and does not depend on acoustical pressure to be heard.

File:AlphonseLévy Shofar.jpg [164]

A Final Note:

“Once, when Rabbi Simha Bunam of Pzhysha honored a man in his House of Prayer by asking him to blow the ram’s horn, and the fellow began to make lengthy preparations to concentrate on the meaning of the sounds, the tzaddik cried out: ‘Fool, go ahead and blow!’”[165]

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[1] Hosea 8:1.

[2] Leo Rosten in The Joys of Yiddish defines chutzpah as “gall, brazen nerve, effrontery, incredible ‘guts,’ presumption plus arrogance such as no other word and no other language can do justice to.”

[3] Rosten, “To comment while watching… To carry on a running commentary…”

[4] Babylonian Talmud Rosh Hashanah 16a.

[5] See Chapter 2-4 – Buying, Making, and Caring for a Shofar for a discussion on species acceptable for shofar.

[6] Genesis 1:2

[7] Genesis 2:7

[8] Attributed to Nachman of Breslov. “Tayish” is also translated as, “male goat,” another animal whose horn can be used for shofar.

[9] Genesis 22:1-19.

[10] “Shofarot” is the Hebrew plural of “shofar.”

[11] Least we forget, there are still places where Jews cannot sound shofar with impunity.

[12] Whole Jewish Catalog, pg 69

[13] Rosh Hashanah 29a.

[14] Psalms 111:10.

[15] Rabbi Shlomoh Kluger, Avodas Yisrael, quoted in Meisels, pg 101.

[16] R’ Elimelech of Lizhensk, quoted in Rosh Hashanah – Its Significance, Laws, and Prayers, pg 58.

[17] Jacob ben Wolf Krantz, aka The Dubno Maggid, (1741-1804), Ohel Ya’akov as quoted in The New Rosh Hashanah Anthology, p 191. My source is a self-published paper, “The Shofar: Ancient Ritual Horn of Israel” by Mordehai Wosk and Rabbi Yosef Wosk.

[18] Zabludow Pinkas, 1750, translation by Shmuel Kehati, published in Kiryat Seffer, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Pamphlet 4, Shevat 1925, at www.zabludow.com/zabludowpinkus1647.html September 11, 2009.

[19] Agnon pg 37

[20] Rabbi Meir ben Isaac Katzenellenbogen, Responsa No. 64, quoted in Agnon pg 33.

[21] Portrait of William Zack, died 1953 at age 86, on memorial stone in Beth David Cemetary, Detroit

http://atdetroit.net/forum/messages/6790/69744.html April 27, 2009.

[22] Retold by R’ S.Y. Zevin in A Treasury of Chassidic Tales, quoted in Rosh Hashanah – Its Significance, Laws, and Prayers, pg 59. Also at www.ascent.org.il/NewAscentOfSfed/Stories/Stories/5763/255-01.html from Treasury of Chassidic Tales – Festivals Artscroll.

[23] Buber, Tales of the Hasidim, Book 1, pg 233

[24] Jesse Green , “My Bar Mitzvah Year: The Gayish Problem,” dated 11-6-06,

www.nextbook.org/cultural/feature.html?id=447, November 6, 2006.

[25] U'netaneh Tokef prayer.

[26] Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Shabbat 153a.

[27] Oliver W. Sacks, Uncle Tungsten (2001), p. 177, Knopf, hardcover edition, ISBN 0-375-40448-1

[28] Or Yesharim, Warsaw, 1884 as retold by Howard Schwartz, “The Master Key,” Gabriel’s Palace, Jewish Mystical Tales, Oxford University Press, 1993, pp 198-199.

[29] Besht is an abbreviation of Ba’al Shem Tov.

[30] www.ohryerushalayim.org.il/halacha_topic.php?id=32, 8/13/05

[31] Shemiras Shabbos K'Hilchasa, Chapter 28, Paragraph 66, translated by Kenneth G Miller, http://www.ottmall.com/mj_ht_arch/v44/mj_v44i80.html, August 11, 2007.

[32] Made by Moshe (Winterter) Ben-Dov, now in Yad Vashem Collection, Jerusalem. http://yad-vashem.org.il/exhibitions/museums/histmuseum/from_coll/data/shofar.html August 14, 2006.

[33] Paraphrased, told during Rosh Hashanah 1993 at Makom Ohr Shalom, Los Angeles, CA. The story also appears in Jewish with Feeling by Zalman chacter-Shalomi with Joel Segel, Berkley Publishing Group 2005, page 139f.

[34] Parody of “If I Had a Hammer” by Lee Hays and Pete Seeger. For chords and original lyrics, see Rise Up Singing, edited by Peter Blood and Annie Patterson, The Sing Out Corporation, Bethleham, Pennsylvania, 1992, pg, 215. Shacharit is the Jewish morning prayer service; shofar is traditionally blown following the Torah reading during shacharit. Mussaf is the supplemental prayer service on Rosh Hashanah, another time when shofar is traditionally blown. Tzadakah can be translated as “justice.” Yovel is the year following the seventh sabbatical cycle when debts are forgiven and slaves released; it is initiated with the blowing of shofar. HaShem is, literally, “The Name” and refers to God.

[35] Niddah 51B Cited in Natan Slifkin, “Exotic Shofars: Halachic Considerations,” Version 1.3 (2/1/07), www.zootorah.com/essays/ExoticShofars.pdf, August 16, 2007. This refers to species with “true horns,” with bone cores and a horn sheath. See Schochet pg 98 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloven-hoof August 11, 2007.

[36] Mois Navon, “The Hillazon and the Principle of ‘Mutter be-Fikha,’” The Torah u-Madda Journal, October 2001, www.yutorah.org/_shiurim/%2FTU10_Navon.pdf, March 4, 2006. This article is also the source for other information in this paragraph.

[37] Sukkah 23a

[38] According to Megillah 26b, “These are tashmishei mitzvah: sukkah, lulav, shofar, tzitzit..”

[39] Berachot 51b

[40] Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, adapted from Mo'adei HaRe'iyah pp. 67-70, www.geocities.com/m_yericho/ravkook/ROSH_65.htm, March 23, 2006.

[41] Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, Shulhan Aruch (Orach Chayim) 586:3 translated by Rabbi Eliyahu Touger and Uri Kaploun, Kehot Publication Society, 2004.

[42] Rabbi Eliyahu Touger and Uri Kaploun, citing Mishnah Berurah 586:8 in note 126 of citation referenced above.

[43] Leviticus 17:13 says, “And if any Israelite or any stranger who resides among them hunts down an animal or a bird that may be eaten, he shall pour out its blood and cover it with earth.” Deuteronomy 14:5 names roebuck, wild goat, ibex, antelope, and mountain sheep – horn-bearing animals – among those that we are permitted to eat; presumably these wild animals would be slaughtered by hunting. While these verses appear to permit hunting for food, making the animals kosher by pouring the blood into the earth, many rabbinic sources appear to disparage hunting.

[44] Compare Genesis 1:28 and 2:15.

[45] www.iucn.org/themes/ssc/red_list_2004/main_EN.htm, January 5, 2006.

[46] Genesis 2:15

[47] Images from http://commons.wikimedia.org, September 12, 2009. Oryx from American Museum of Natural History, Fritz Geller-Grimm, 2004. Ibex by Nino Barbieri, 2004. Kudu, 2008.

[48] Edmon J. Rodman, “Seeing Green in Shofar and Its Call to Action,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, September 18, 2008, www.jewishexponent.com/article/17130/ December 26, 2008

[49] For additional information, see “Materials from Endangered Species in Musical Instruments” by

Laurence Libin, www.music.ed.ac.uk/euchmi/cimcim/iwt3.html#spec, March 30, 2006.

[50] See also: “How to Make a Shofar,” Michale Albukerk, Historical Brass Society Newsletter Issue 7, pp 13-14 and Biological Museum Methods, Vol 1 pg 331.

[51] Shabbat 133b. There are limits, however, on how far one should go to beautify a shofar. “The idea is that we expend additional effort and resources in order to raise our level of observance from the minimally acceptable (e.g., ‘any shofar will do’) to the aesthetically pleasing (‘we ought to use a bigger shofar that makes a deeper sound’), so as to show that our performance of a mitzvah is a joyful privilege and not merely a rote act in fulfillment of an obligation. While understandable, this desire might easily lead to unreasonable and burdensome expenditures; the Rabbis therefore placed a limit on this extra effort. Our expenses on behalf of hiddur mitzvah should not exceed more than one-third of the original cost of the object (B. Bava Kama 9b).” Mark Washofsky, Jewish Living, Union of Reform Judaism, 2001, pg. 374.

[52] For more on the characteristics of horn and the technology for fabricating it, see Arthur MacGregor, Bone, Antler, Ivory and Horn, Barnes & Noble Books, Totowa, NJ, 1985.

[53] Denis Diderot (1713-1784) and Jean Le Rond d'Alembert  Tabletier Cornetier [Animal Horn Preparation] from Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des métiers et des arts, www.georgeglazer.com/prints/industry/Diderot/Tabletiercorn.html September 18, 2007.

[54] Private correspondence with Martha Sonnenberg, MD, Marina del Rey, CA.

[55] Laurie Ball-Gisch, “Rams: Respect Them but don't Fear Them,” Sheep! Magazine, May-June 2004, www.sheepmagazine.com/issues/05_06_04.html, September 23, 2004

[56] Sam Apple, Schlepping Through the Alps: My Search for Austria’s Jewish Past with Its Last Wandering Shepherd, 2005, Ballantine Books, NY, pp 113-114. For more information on this theory of animal domestication, see the writings of Stephen Budiansky.

[57] The use of a bison horn is acceptable according to Rabbi Barry Dov Lerner writing in conjunction with United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism for Hadash #45, September 2005, http://www.jewishfreeware.org/downloads/folder.2006-01-07.0931447103/SHOFARHandbookForWebsite9-13.pdf. Other sources disagree.

[58] 1 Samuel 16:4

[59] Stephen H. Hinshaw , “Use of Dermestid Beetles for Skeleton Preparation,” www.ummz.umich.edu/mammals/dermestid.html, September 16, 2006.

[60] Bob Ulshafer, www.rmi-online.com/pages/sheephorns.html, December 10, 2005

[61] BT Rosh Hashanah 26b has an indepth debate over whether a shofar should be straight or bent and whether a straight or bent shofar is preferable on Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and other fasts. Compelling arguments are made for both straight and bent shofarot. The preponderance of latter sages establishes the Halachah for bent shofarot. While not stated in the exegesis of the sages, I believe the curved horn prevailed because of the deep-rooted memory of the ram totem and its curved horns.

[62] Pinchas Richard Wimberly, www.jewisheart.com/tefillin.html June 19, 2006

[63] ibid

[64] Based on examination of mosaic depictions of shofarot (such as the mosaic from the ancient synagogue in Jericho), Braun says, “Portrayals from the Roman period show a separate mouthpiece.” (page 27; see also page 302) Since no ancient shofar survives, the record is open to interpretation.

[65] Bob Ulshafer, www.rmi-online.com/pages/sheephorns.htm, December 10, 2005.

[66] www.tzivos-hashem.org.

[67] Compare, Yeshaya Halevi, October 8, 1997, www.ottmall.com/mj_ht_arch/v27/mj_v27i12.html#CCR, January 29, 2006.

[68] Genesis 27:27

[69] Journal of Biological Museum Methods, Vol. 1, Page 331

[70] Fran Manushkin, illustrated by Rosalind Charney Kaye, UAHC Press.

[71] Réunion des Musées Nationaux, Paris on long term loan from the Musée d'Art Juif.

www.mahj.org/en/2_collections/oeuvres_detail.php?niv=4&ssniv=3&coll_id=3&oeuv_id=18 March 30 2009. Photo Gilles Berizzi.

[72] Anonymous.

[73] There are counter opinions. For example, “the mitzvah of the shofar lies in producing the sounds. In this sense, listeners fulfill their obligations through the principle of shomea keoneh – one who hears a prayer is considered to have recited the prayer himself. The sounding of the shofar thus may also be thought of as a form of prayer.” Linda Leshnik, Bereshith, Sep, 2003, www.njop.org/html/Yamim%20Norayim%202003.pdf March 6, 2006. Another says, “Rabbi Meir Simcha of Dvinsk the author of the Meshech Chochma and Or Sameach ruled…that…with the blowing of the Shofar on Rosh Hashanah, where one person blows …the rest of those present fulfill their obligation by listening… This is in accordance with the Halachahic principle "Shomea Keoneh" (listening is tantamount to saying) Shomea Ke'oneh means that although I am not reciting the beracha, the very fact that I am listening accords me with the ability to fulfill my obligation as if I had been saying it.” Rabbi Chaim Kanterovitz, www.hgss.org.uk/home/5763/Naso.htm, March 6, 2006.

[74] Rabbi Burton J. Bledstein, from the synagogue bulletin of K.A.M. Isaiah Israel Congregation in Chicago, reprinted in Moments of Transcendence: Inspirational Readings for Rosh Hashanah, edited by Rabbi Dov Peretz Elkins, (Jason Aronson). http://www.myjewishlearning.com/holidays/Rosh_Hashana/Overview_Rosh_Hashanah_Community/Sounding_Shofar/ShofarBirth.htm, May 20, 2007

[75] Exodus 24:7. Translation by Shlomo Riskin, www.ohrtorahstone.org.il/parsha/5765/mishpatim65.htm, July 1, 2007.

[76] Exodus 19:5-6. Translation by Shlomo Riskin, www.ohrtorahstone.org.il/parsha/5765/mishpatim65.htm, July 1, 2007.

[77] Deuteronomy 6:4-9.

[78] Rabbi S.R. Hirsch, cited by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin at

www.ohrtorahstone.org.il/parsha/5765/mishpatim65.htm, June 25, 2007.

[79] Based on Braun, Moshe, The Jewish Holy Days, page 400 commenting on Exodus 20:18.

[80] Exodus 19:19.

[81] Mechilta, www.chabad.org/library/article.asp?AID=9880&showrashi=true, May 8, 2006.

[82] Technique taught by Rabbi Jonathon Omer-Man for use when distracting thoughts interfere with prayer.

[83] Carl Sandburg, 1936.

[84] Source unknown.

[85] See www.aleph.com, for example, for teachers.

[86] “Blow Your Own Horn,” Micah Gill, http://killingthebuddha.com/dogma/blow_horn.htm May 14, 2006

[87] B. Chaitanya Deva describes a similar experience in the meditative music of India. “The mind of man has to be emptied and made hollow like the instrument so that He can play His tune on it and His breath may flow in it. Finally, it is an authenticated fact that in certain para-mental conditions the sound of the flute…the thunder and the bell are heard.” www.4to40.com/discoverindia/index.asp?article=discoverindia_windinstruments#Wind%20Instruments, February 10, 2006.

[88] Joshua Levine Grater, a Google cache of http://tikkun.org/magazine/index.cfm/action/tikkun/mode/printer_friendly/issue/tik0001/article/000118e.html as retrieved May 1, 2004.

[89] Pirke Avot 1:6.

[90] Adapted from Mo'adei HaRe'iyah 61-2; see also Celebration of the Soul pp. 37-8, www.geocities.com/m_yericho/ravkook/ELUL62.htm.

[91] Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, Advice, pg 18-19. Also at www.breslov.org/torah/pdf/Advice.PDF. August 8, 2006.

[92] Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn of Lubavitch, Likkutei Dibburim vol 4, pg 720 as cited in Days of Awe, Days of Joy pg. 116).

[93] Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Makom Ohr Shalom.

[94] Rabbi Jonathon Omer-Man, Metivta, Los Angeles, CA 1992.

[95] See, primarily, 27a and 27b.

[96] Tzofnas Paa'nei'ach on Parsha Vo'eiro, cited by Zvi Akiva Fleisher www.shemayisrael.co.il/yomtov/rosh-yk/fleisher64.htm, July 1, 2007.

[97] Buber, Tales of the Hasidim, Book 2, pg 68.

[98] Exodus 19:9.

[99] Buber, Tales of the Hasidim, Book 2, pg 316.

[100] Rosh Hashanah 26a.

[101] Stern, Days of Awe, pg 44.

[102] Deuteronomy 5:19.

[103] Stern, Days of Awe, pg. 131-132.

[104] David A. Cooper, 1994

[105] Exodus 24:7.

[106] Shemos Rabbah 27.

[107] Stern, Days of Awe, pg 135.

[108] Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh, www.inner.org/times/tishrei/shofar.htm, March 2, 2006.

[109] Kovetz Eliyahu, Translated by Yaacov Dovid Shulman, p. 14, www.baalshemtov.com/ten-principals.htm, March 2, 2006.

[110] Leshon Chassidim, quoted by Meisels, pg 111.

[111] Sanhedrin 99a.

[112] Kabir, translated by Robert Bly, Poem 25, The Kabir Book, The Seventies Press, 1977.

[113] Workman Publishing, NY, 2004.

[114] Psalms 71:23

[115] Proverbs 20:15. “Skilled lips” is usually translated as, “intellgient speech.”

[116] From Bibliotheque de l’Alliance Israelite Universelle, Paris as shown in Encyclopedia Judaica.

[117] There are teachings that support bare-footedness, especially on Yom Kippur. For example, “The teshuvah of Kal Yisrael brings an atmosphere of holiness to the entire world. The earth on which we walk becomes spiritually hallowed and uplifted. We must not step on such holy ground while wearing shoes – just as HaShem told Moses, (Exodus 3:5) ‘Remove your shoes from your feet, for the place upon which you stand is holy ground.” (Menachem Tzion) and “In the wake of Adam’s sin the earth was cursed. We wear shoes so our feet will not touch the doomed earth. But on the holy day of Yom Kippur the curse is lifted, and the earth becomes sanctified. We do not have to avoid stepping on it, and therefore there is no need to wear shoes.” (Agra DePirka). Both quoted by Meisels; Agnon pg. xvi identifies the author of the first quote as Rabbi Menahem Mendel of Rymonov. Joshua was also commanded, “Remove your sandals from your feet, for the place where you stand is holy.” (Joshua 5:15), as he approached Jericho, suggesting that connecting with earth is an appropriate preparation for shofaring. Agnon, pg. 173 says that on Yom Kippur, “There are some who take off their shoes and walk bare-footed to the House of Prayer.”

[118] If you can’t locate your diaphragm, place your hand on belly just below your ribs, and cough. You should feel the diaphragm contract or firm up as you cough.

[119] Deuteronomy 6:5

[120] Hebrew has this same linguistic connection between breath and spirit. Neshamah translates to “soul” and has the same root as neshēmah that translates as “breath.” Ruach) can mean either “wind” or “spirit.”

[121] Zechariah 4:6.

[122] Some teach that the shofar should always be blown from the left side of the mouth.

[123] See Ami Schattner, MD, “One Blow Too Many”, The American Journal of Medicine, Volume 116, Issue 2, January 2006, Pages 139-140. The article states, “Blowing the Shofar, or playing wind instruments, is just one of many activities in which straining occurs, including coughing, defecation, lifting heavy loads, and labor. All involve a transient marked elevation of intra-abdominal and intrathoracic pressures as well as substantial circulatory changes. An effect simulating the Valsalva maneuver is a common denominator of all these activities… The Shofar is a particularly high-resistance wind instrument requiring an intense expiratory strain and the generation of especially high pressures in order to produce the desired sounds. Mouth pressures of >150 mm Hg [3 psi] and an extreme increase of intrathoracic pressure up to 300 mm Hg [6 psi] for several seconds have been reported for similar types of strain. The associated Valsalva maneuver was found to lead to marked increases of cerebral blood flow velocity that may reach 100% above baseline, even at moderate intrathoracic pressures of 40 mm Hg. This is of particular importance because of the simultaneous decrease in the protective extravascular cerebrospinal fluid pressure and increase in arterial pressure. The resulting major increase in the transmural pressure gradient may place patients with cerebral aneurysms or arteriovenous malformation at high risk of rupture and bleeding following the strain.” Additional information is at Charles R. Meyer, M.D., “The Perils of Trumpeting,” Minnesota Medicine, Minnesota Medical Association, February 2003/Volume 86.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Book 1 – The Call of the High Holy Days Click Here.

Book 2 – For the Shofar Blower

Book 3 – The People of the Ram Click Here.

Introduction

Chapter 2-1 – Why Shofar

An Even Simpler Reason

What is Your Reason?

Chapter 2-2 – Kavanah of Sounding Shofar

Teachings on Kavanah

The Master Key[28]

Compensation

The Sound of our Liberation

Chapter 2-3 – Buying, Making and Caring for a Shofar

Should a Horn be Kosher?

Endangered Species

Buying a Shofar

Make your Own[50]

Step-by-Step Instructions

Other Uses of Horn for Judaica

Care and Maintenance of a Shofar

Caring for and Displaying your Shofar

Chapter 2-4 – Hearing Shofar

Being a Duplex Communication Channel

Hearing the Still Small Voice

Exercises in Listening

The Voice of Shiva

How to Listen

Shema Yourself

The Talmud on Hearing Shofar

Teachings on Hearing Shofar

Chapter 2-5 – Preliminary Exercises

In the Beginning, Make Funny Noises

Now, Rise-Up

Next, Learn to Breathe

Sounding the Lips without a Shofar

Your Health, Safety, and Comfort

Chapter 2-6 – Getting Sound from a Shofar

Time for Prayer

All Sounds are Acceptable

Chapter 2-7 – Sounding the Notes of the Shofar Service

Making Music

The Basic Blasts

Remembering the Names of the Blasts

The Sequence of Blasts

Call and Response

Chapter 2-8 – Tips for Common Problems

Where to Practice

Chapter 2-9 – Staging Shofar

Keeping Shofar Covered

Solo or Tutti Shofar

Spatial Dynamics of Shofaring

Outdoors and Open Doors

Chapter 2-10 – Shofar Service in the Greater Community

Guidelines for Blowing Shofar for the Sick and Confined[153]

Teaching Shofar

Chapter 2-11 – Secrets Of An Awesome Tekiah Gedolah

Appendix: Quick Reference Sheet

Blessing before Hearing Shofar

Shofar Calls

Rosh Hashanah

Yom Kippur

Yasher Koach – May You Have Strength