Holiday Happenings

7 Tishrei 5782 - October 1, 2021

​​​​​​​

When I was a child my parents purchased a shofar for our home.  It was the horn of an ibex, long and curly and large. We—my siblings and I—loved it.  We learned to blow its blasting sound.  (Our dog, Simcha, was less of a fan).  And, so, at a young age I thought of myself as someone who could blow shofar.  But, as I grew I had the opportunity to blow other shofarot, and I learned something interesting: the ibex is the easiest to blow.  Smaller, shorter shofarot are more difficult to play.  There is a reason that has to do with physics and the science of how sound travels.  Those are not reasons I am going to share with you today.  I am going to share what we can learn about the soul from this long shofar/short shofar observation. 

We blow a tiny squeak through a tiny hole.  The sound travels through the cavernous tube of the animal’s horn, and it comes out the other end as music; as a calling; as a reminder; as a song.  Our breath is transformed as it makes its way through the horn.

Teshuvah, too, begins small.  We begin with our first, tiny reflections in the month of Elul. And the reflections and self-examination deepen as we move closer and closer to these Days of Awe.  Our prayers and apologies grow.  Our yearning for closeness to God and to others fills our hearts and ears.  When we at last reach the closing Gates of Repentance in the Neilah service at the end of Yom Kippur, our meticulous accounting of the soul emerges with forgiveness and rebirth. Teshuvah transforms from sorrow to song.

The shorter shofar often (at least when I blow it) makes a clipped or stunted sound.  And, if our teshuvah is done quickly, and without energy, focus or honesty, its song, too will fall flat.

Perhaps the longer ibex is easier, because, like teshuvah, the sound makes a long journey; it makes no shortcuts as it wends its spiral way through the horn, until, finally, it reaches the shofar’s mouth and sings of a new day.

May all our prayers and repentance cause our hearts to sing into a new year.

Rabbi Shoshanah Tornberg