When the Shofar Becomes Silent

When I recited Shacharit this morning and let my finger glide over the lines, I came to a sudden halt at the first insertion:

MI CHAMOCHA AV HARACHAMAN…

Stop, I said to myself.

Yom Kippur has passed!

But I miss it.

I miss those special words and substitutions, like HA MELECH HA KADOSH, which we say only during this extraordinary time of year.

And I began to wonder why I felt so different when I included those words in my davening. Perhaps because they remind us that for a brief period each year, we step outside our ordinary lives and enter a different spiritual space.

It reminds me of another feeling of being completely surrounded.

When I swim, my body is completely immersed in the water. Once I catch my rhythm and swim the length of the pool, I feel enveloped, almost as though I am inside a bubble. For those moments, the outside world evaporates.

During the twenty five hours of Yom Kippur, I experience something similar, but on a much deeper, spiritual level.

We are immersed in davening, surrounded by words we say only at this time of year, listening to the Ba’al Tefillah as he leads us to greater heights. For twenty five hours, the outside world seems to disappear.

And then we hear the final Shofar.

Suddenly, we come up for air.

Like a little child blowing bubbles and trying to catch them before they disappear, we want to reach out and hold on to that fleeting moment just a little longer.

But perhaps the beauty of Yom Kippur is that we are not supposed to remain inside that bubble.

We have to emerge.

We have to return to our homes, our families, our responsibilities and all the ordinary moments that make up our lives. Yet hopefully, we return a little different from the way we entered.

But the feeling does not have to disappear.

And almost immediately, we begin preparing for Sukkot.

We leave the solemnity of Yom Kippur and walk toward the joy of the Sukkah, from fasting to celebrating, from asking for forgiveness to giving thanks for everything we have.

The Shofar may have become silent.

But hopefully, something it awakened inside us continues to resonate.