It is God’s turn to blow the shofar
My shofar smells. When thinking about it honestly, it is a hollowed-out horn of a beast that many passionate human mouths have blown into. Yet, somehow, I always expect more of this animal appendage that emerged from the wild.
When our sages describe the sound of the shofar, they skitter away from the growl of beasts in favor of characterizing the shofar’s sound as an echo of the human. Abaye, the 4th century talmudic sage, who the Talmud reveals is born into the world parentless (his father dying during his mother’s pregnancy and his mother at his birth (Kiddushin 31b), describes the shofar as mimicking the human expression (Rosh Hashanah 33b). He focuses on the scriptural reference of a wailing, nameless, forlorn mother gazing out the window, waiting for her son, a military general, to return from war — until she learns that he will not. A child should expect to be born into this world with parents and a parent should expect to release a child into the world to return home safely. The shofar is the blaring noise unleashed into the universe when these normal ideas are shattered. Abaye describes the shofar as the dissonant sound of the human experience taken off course.
Particularly powerful in Abaye’s reference is that the mourned general is none other than the leader of Israel’s enemy army, Sisera. Regardless of the moral context of the battle, the human understanding that war is a gut-wrenching journey of flesh and blood, not a sterile journey. Loss, pain, and heartache remain.
A year ago, I walked through the gates of the Zichron Yaakov cemetery, down its wide ramp when I heard the surprising sound of the shofar. Given the location, I was confused. Then I stepped further into the crowd and realized that it wasn’t a shofar at all. It was the wailing of Maya Foder’s z”l mother. Maya, a 25-year-old promising film student who attended the Nova music festival on October 7th, was brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists. Her mother, Ayala, stood in the center of our town after Maya’s body was identified and released the primal cry of a mother mourning her daughter’s life interrupted.
Last week, on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, my own daughter, on leave from the army, went to visit a friend. She was still wearing her IDF uniform when she began ascending the steps of the apartment building. A door opened on the floor above, and a pale woman poked her head out to see who was coming up the stairs. Immediately upon spotting the unfamiliar uniformed soldier, a howl escaped from her, mistakenly fearing that my daughter was coming to impart devastating news of a fallen loved one on the front lines.
The shofar is the sound of a civilized world disturbed.
But the promise of the shofar is more.
Christina Rossetti, the 19th century British poet, paints simple images and alliterative sounds depicting the beauty of human ingenuity sailing through this world, but reminds us to consider the qualitative value of the transcendent.
Boats sail on the rivers,
And ships sail on the seas:
But clouds that sail across the sky
Are prettier far than these.
The biblical shofar extends beyond our human expression to include a shofar sounded by the Divine heralding a time of peace and freedom. This very same shofar sound accompanies Moshe and God as they ascend Sinai to forge a second set of tablets after the disappointment and shattering of the first. The shofar is also the soundtrack of healing and future possibilities (Psalms 47:6; Pirkei D’Rebi Eliezer 46b).
We approach Yom Kippur, the anniversary of Moshe’s return with the second tablets understanding that this very day demonstrates the promise of mercy and a reconstructed covenant between God and His people. The world’s opportunity for our next step forward, As our soldiers continue to valiantly battle to vanquish evil, 101 hostages languish in captivity and our entire nation is on edge, struggling with loss. We turn to God in prayer to heal the brokenhearted and raise the primal shofar to sound a sublime call of wholeness and liberation.