L’Shana Tovah.
I would like to speak on this Rosh Hashanah about the Shofar.
The Torah itself doesn’t tell us very much about Rosh Hashanah. In Leviticus 23, we read that Moses is instructed by God to tell the Children of Israel: In the seventh month, on the first of the month, there shall be a day of rest for you, a remembrance with shofar blasts, a holy convocation. Later, in Numbers 29, a similar instruction calls this day Yom Teruah, the day of shofar blasts, and then spells out the ritual offerings for the festival. That’s pretty much it for Rosh Hashanah and the Torah.
One of my most lasting memories of going to temple with my parents as a young child for High Holy Days is certainly the thrill of hearing the Shofar blasts. Most of the service, to my young self, was a somewhat boring chain of standing and sitting, songs and readings that seemed to go on for much longer than ordinary Friday night services. But I knew, somewhere in there, we were going to hear the Shofar. The anticipation would get me fidgeting, leafing forward in the prayer book, trying to figure out when they would happen. When it finally came, it was like fireworks! When I really try to put myself back there, I can still get goose bumps from the thrill. That was serious stuff!
What is this all about? In Numbers (15:37) we are commanded to wear tzitzit, “that you may see it and remember all the commandments of God and perform them.” Like a string around your finger, a gentle, constant reminder, to live the kind of lives that we should. Now, hearing the Shofar is different. Not a gentle, constant reminder...more like a biblical version of what modern-day sages Tom and Ray Magliozzi call the “dope slap.” For those who might not be familiar with this bit of Car Talk wisdom, Tom and Ray explain it as:
a light “whappp” to the back of the head, done with an open palm in an upward motion.They go on, saying “We should point out that the dope slap is not meant to inflict pain. It is used strictly as an attention-getting device.”
The Shofar definitely works for me as an attention-getting device.
One of the central prayers for today is the Unetaneh Tokef, which tells us “On Rosh Hashanah it is written, and on Yom Kippur it is sealed...” Near the beginning of the prayer it reads:
A great shofar is sounded and a still small voice is heard
The angels in heaven scurry about
and are seized with fear and trembling
They say: "Behold, the Day of Judgment!"
I admit that as a Reconstructionist, I don’t read this prayer with the literalism that was nearly universal a few hundred years ago. And still, the poetic imagery of the heavenly hosts trembling at the Shofar blast gets me every time.
So now we hear the Shofar, and it has our attention: what now? The Torah tells us this is a day of zichron, remembrance. But of what?
Writing almost a thousand years ago, Rashi sees “remembrance” as calling upon God to remember Israel for good, with the Shofar symbolizing the ram that Abraham offered in place of Isaac. There is even a tradition, ascribed to Rabbi Eliezer of the 9th century CE, that holds that the mighty Shofar blasts that were heard at the Revelation at Sinai, amid the thunder and lightning, as the mountain trembled, came from the shofar made from the left horn of the very ram offered by Abraham.
Maybe 800 years before Rashi, the Mishna records Rabbi Aqiba teaching that three themes shall accompany the Shofar blasts: Malchuyot, God as King; Zichronot, God’s remembrances of creation; and Shofarot, the Shofar itself. Today, we find these three themes woven into the biblical passages read during the Shofar service.
Maimonides comes in fairly close with the Magliozzi brothers. In the Shofar blast, the Rambam hears: “Awake, you sleepers, from your sleep! Arise, you slumberers, from your slumber! Repent with contrition! Remember your Creator! ... Peer into your souls, improve your ways and your deeds.”
For me, my understanding of the Shofar’s call is back in the Unetaneh Tokef, which, after listing the grim fates that hang over humanity, reminds us that
Tshuvah, Tefillah and Tzedakah, Repentance, Prayer and Just Action,It is the “dope slap” that tries to tell me: Hey! Wake up! Pay Attention! Do some soul searching and turn back with tshuvah, get your head and heart in the right place with tefillah. And realize that there’s work to be done that won’t do itself—it takes tzedakah!
Have the power to change The character of our lives
Of course, life comes barging in almost as soon as I’m crossing the parking lot after leaving shul. I try to keep a little of that focus during the week, but work and school and carpools and soccer and... well, I suspect you get the picture. I get one more good try at Yom Kippur, and then I’m back to the tzitzit. Gentle reminders, when I remember to pay attention to them.
That’s one of the reasons I love hearing the Shofar. It always cuts through, always gets my attention, at least for a still, small moment.
May we all be inscribed in the book of life for a good, healthy, and peaceful year. L’shana Tovah.
1 comment:
Folks at Keddem know how much I enjoy the shofar at Rosh haShanah, and how much I enjoy teaching people to sound shofar. It seems a most unusual mitzvah, though, to be commanded to hear the sound of shofar. Typically, we have the mitzvot under our personal, individual control: we light, we say, we don't say, we love, we write, we bind, we affix, we read, we don't wrong, we don't curse, we don't exclude, etc., etc.
But how do we control hearing?
To me, this represents another instance of Judaism's dedication to and depence on community. "To be a Jew means first belonging to the group..." according to Kaplan. We are not commanded to sound shofar, but to hear it. For most people (who don't sound shofar), then, we need a group (of at least two) to fulfill this mitzvah.
And those who are able to sound have an obligation to others to help them experience this mitzvah.
Yashir koach, Matt, for your thoughtful words.
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