Shofar So Good

By Laura Clumeck

From all corners, rooms, gardens, and patios across a very large synagogue in Los Angeles, the other children and I were gathered with urgency to make sure everyone was present. This was a moment of awe we were not allowed to miss. Facing the bimah in lines and little clusters, we were silenced by the strong, spiritually stern eyes of the elders of the community. And then our cantor would blow the shofar majestically. Growing up, it was not our tradition to call out Tekiah, Shevarim, and Teruah. It was simply our obligation to listen. I remember it feeling like a “Care Bear Stare” of emotions beaming from every direction in the room. Yet, as a child, I had no idea what the resonance of the commandment to hear the shofar truly meant, or what that sound would awaken inside of me in the years to come.

The shofar is a ram’s horn. It is one of the oldest instruments in Jewish tradition, and its voice and vibration have accompanied our people through generations of prayer, celebration, mourning, uncertainty, and renewal. Unlike most instruments, it isn’t played to create a melody. There is something wonderfully primal about it: breath enters a natural horn and emerges as sound. Its power is not in a tune, but in the sound itself, and in our willingness to listen.

On Rosh Hashanah, we hear several distinct sounds. The Tekiah is one long, steady blast. Shevarim is three broken sounds, while Teruah is a series of nine short, staccato blasts. We end with the Tekiah Gedolah, a long, extended blast. Each sound seems to carry its own emotional language: strength, brokenness, trembling, urgency, release. Perhaps that is part of the shofar’s magic. It doesn’t tell us exactly what to feel. It simply sounds, and asks us to listen.

When I talk about the shofar with my students, we often describe it as the proverbial spiritual alarm clock. An alarm clock wakes us up. But then we have to ask: What are we waking up to? And what are we waking up from? Are we waking up from habits that no longer serve us? From patterns we have repeated without really noticing? From distraction, complacency, fear, or the stories we have created about who we are and who we are supposed to be? And what if we aren’t ready to wake up?My students and I have talked about why the shofar has to be so loud. We discuss how the shofar is meant to interrupt us, to break through the noise of our everyday lives and demand our attention. But what exactly are we supposed to feel when we hear it? Should we be happy? Somber? Repentant? Frightened? Annoyed? Inspired? On alert? Perhaps the answer changes as we do.

At different stages of our lives, the same sound can awaken something entirely different. There are years when we may need to be shaken awake. There are years when we may need to confront something we have been avoiding. There are years when the sound may bring us to tears, and others when it may make us smile, feeling refreshed and curious and excited for what may surprise us in the year to come.

The central commandment of Rosh Hashanah is not to blow the shofar. It is to hear it, to listen. There is a difference. We hear with our ears, but we listen through the filter of our lives. Our experiences, circumstances, relationships, behaviors, patterns, hopes, disappointments, and questions all shape what reaches us. The same shofar sounds can meet us differently from one year to the next because we are different.
The shofar doesn’t give us the answers. Each of us hears something different because each of us arrives at the new year carrying a different story. Perhaps that is the beauty of this ancient commandment. We are not told what we must hear, only that we listen deeply enough to discover what the sound awakens within us.