Five Phases of the Shofar

The Five Phases of the Shofar
Erev Rosh Hashannah 5768 Sept. 12, 2007
Rabbi Dov Gartenberg, Temple Beth Shalom

Do you remember the first time you heard the Shofar? How old were you? Where were you? Who were you with? How was it explained to you? How did you feel when you heard the blast? Were you scared? Were you exhilarated?

The Blowing of the Shofar is one of the most dramatic rituals in Judaism. The Mitzvah, however, is not the blowing of the Shofar; rather the Mitzvah is to listen to its sound. “Lishmoa Kol Shofar- to listen to the Shofar sound.” Many Mitzvot involve the intentional use of a physical and sensory capacity. In the case of the Shofar we are commanded to listen with our ears.

In the age of the Ipod, this is especially hard to do. Never have human beings lived in a time when they can fill their ears with every pleasurable sound and shut out the rest of the world. It used to be we had a few stations we could hear, but now you can personalize what you want to hear, mix your own music, listen to your designer station, fill your time with the airwaves at every moment. I heard a story of a driver who drove off a cliff. At first, the authorities thought it was a suicide, but later they concluded that he was in a daze, listening to his Ipod and simply did not notice the turn and went flying to his death.

This is a new high in blissful unawareness.

But the mitzvah of listening to the Shofar is something entirely different. There is something mysterious about listening to this sound. What are we listening for?

Rebbe Nachman of Bratzlav said that when the Shofar blows one hundred times on Rosh Hashannah, a bridge is formed between heaven and earth. According to another sage, the Tiferet Uziel the sounds of the Shofar are a secret language that is only understood in Heaven. We might then imagine from these comments, that when we hear the sound of the Shofar, we are hearing the echoes of Heaven. We are, as it were, overhearing supernal worlds, capturing through a hint of God’s message, apprehending just barely the conversation of angels.

The heavenly voice of the Shofar is much more subtle than listening to the blasts on Rosh Hashannah. The blowing of the Shofar during this season does not all take place on Rosh Hashannah. In fact there are five phases to the Shofar season, some which feature the blast, some of which feature silence. All are part of the symphony of the Shofar, the movements of the Ram’s Horn that make it possible to hear Heaven a bit more clearly. What are these phases?

The first time we have the opportunity to listen to the Shofar is the period of thirty days prior to Rosh Hashannah. The first blast of the Shofar begins on the first day of the preceding month of Ellul. We blow the Shofar on each weekday morning after the daily minyan. We hear the notes, Tekiah-Shevarim-Teruah-Tekiah, but unlike Rosh Hashannah we do not hear the notes announced. Nor do we pronounce a blessing in advance of hearing the Shofar as on Rosh Hashannah.

Ellul in Jewish tradition is understood as an acronym for a verse in the Song of Songs, “I am my beloveds and my beloved is mine-Ani (alef) Ldodi (lamed) vdodi (vav) li (lamed)”, spelling Elul in Hebrew. This hints that Elul is a time of love and connection. The rabbis understood this time as an opportunity for renewed relationship with God. Any attempt to take God seriously in our lives involves self reflection. The Shofar blast is meant to trigger self reflection in us. There was a medieval tradition of taking an hour to meditate each day of Ellul after the blowing of the Shofar. Thus the Shofar during the month of Ellul serves as the equivalent of a mediation gong.

Phase two happens on Erev Rosh Hashannah, the day before the festival. Tradition has us refrain from blowing the Shofar. This abstinence parallels the practice of not eating Matza on Erev Pesah and not sitting in the Sukkah on Erev Sukkot. Listen to two explanations for this intentional omission.

“The ram's-horn is not blown after the prayer (on Erev Rosh Hashannah) as it is on the other days of Elul, in order to mark a halt between the optional blasts of Ellul and obligatory blasts of the New Year, that is to say, between the blasts during Elul which are but a custom, and the blasts on Rosh Hashannah, which the Torah commanded.” [Levush]

Another Explanation: “(The silence of the Shofar on Erev Rosh Hashannah) is done in order to confuse Satan, to keep him ignorant of the coming of Rosh Hashannah when he brings charges against men, and to deceive him to think that the Day of Judgment has already passed. “ [Mateh Moshe]

These sources claim that transitions matter. How we handle transitions is critical. Spiritual traditions value and give meaning to transitions. These passages cause in us an escalation of concern, a marked increase in anxiety, but also a window of opportunity. To help us do the mitzvah of Shofar listening, we must have a silence to get ready. . If Heaven is to become audible, we must have the quiet to listen. The absence of something helps us to feel it more strongly when it reappears. We should not become habituated to the Shofar, to become complacent to its shrill blast.

The tradition of confusing Satan feels more primitive and grates at our modern view of Judaism. But our ancestors felt very vulnerable, that their lives hung in the balance during this time. Rosh Hashannah is Yom Hadin-the Day of Judgment. Satan in Jewish tradition is not a devil, but serves as God’s DA, the prosecutor who presents the faults of each of us before God as Satan does to Job in the Bible. By not blowing the Shofar we ask the court to take a recess, to allow ourselves to prepare our case which we will present in full over the next 10 days.

Phase 3: On Rosh Hashannah the Shofar is blown 100 times. Because the blasts are critical to enabling people to fulfill the Mitzvah of listening, the laws concerning their placement, clarity, and accuracy are quite intricate. The main concern of the Halachah is that the Shofar be blown in a way that is distinct and clear. The law, as it were, wants us to invest in good speakers, to get a good surround sound system so we can hear well.

What is the purpose of the Mitzvah of listening to the Shofar on Rosh Hashannah? According to Maimonides the purpose of the 100 blasts serves to wake us up. He wrote,

“Despite the fact that the blowing of the ram's-horn on Rosh Hashanah is an explicit decree in the Scripture, it is also a crying out, as if to say: ‘Awake, O you sleepers, awake from your sleep! O you slumberers, awake from your slumber! Search your deeds and turn in Teshuvah. Remember your Creator, O you who forget the truth in the vanities of time and go astray all the year after vanity and folly that neither profit nor save. Look to your souls, and better your ways and actions. Let every one of you abandon his evil way and his wicked thought….’” [Maimonides, Hilkhot Teshuvah III.]

Phase 4: The critical period of the Days of Awe is neither Rosh Hashannah nor Yom Kippur. It is the days in between when we are commanded to seek Teshuvah- repentance. The tradition assumes that we have listened during the New Year and that we have moved it up a notch, gone into action mode. Thus the Shofar falls silent during the –‘Aseret Yemai Teshuvah-the 10 days of repentance.‘

This silence is as equally striking as the silence on Erev Rosh Hashannah. The blasts of Elul and Rosh Hashannah function as goads-like the irritating alarm tone in my bedroom alarm clock that grows louder and louder until my discomfort forces me to get out of bed and turn it off. The moment after I turn the darn thing off, I realize that I am standing there; I am out of bed; I am awake although very, very grouchy. This is the role of the Shofar and its immediate aftermath of sustained silence. I realize that I am standing there awake. I am grouchy, but I have work to do!

What are we waking to? I believe the voice of Heaven, the voice of the Shofar is God’s way of forcing us to see our reality without illusion. We can only change when we see the truth. Hearing the truth about ourselves can be very unpleasant.

Rabbi Alan Lew tells a story of a Rabbi who was invited to a congregant’s home to view the first showing of the videotape of the wedding he had recently performed for this man’s daughter. As the tape begins, the rabbi and the cantor are seen standing alone under the wedding canopy, blissfully unaware that the videotape is running. They can be heard making fun of both families and how poorly the parents are adapting to their new status as in-laws. Then the cantor makes a disparaging remark about the bride’s mother’s dress. He calls it a ‘shmatte’. Then the rabbi himself can be heard uttering a profane assessment of the groom’s uncle.

Now imagine if God was playing back an embarrassing tape of yourself and you are looking at it for the first time. We are looking at ourselves unmasked before the Holy of Holies. On the 10 days of Teshuvah, God invites us home to see the real tape, the tape we fool ourselves into thinking does not exist. But if we are awake then the tape is not so surprising. In fact we have taken action to repair the errors and mistakes and wrongs that are so blatantly revealed on the tape of life.

While the mitzvah to listen to the shofar blasts ideally awakens a new awareness within ourselves, the action plan of the 10 days is outwardly directed and focused on our relationships. Jewish tradition requires us to repair the broken human relationships in our lives during this period. We are commanded to face directly those we have wronged, renounce our sin, and ask for forgiveness.

On Yom Kippur we then return to our interior lives and face our relationship with God. On this long day of fasting, it is as if, God is playing back the tape of our behavior in which we assumed that God was not watching. Or better, God plays the tape of our actions in which we assumed we were God, that there was no one or no thing that could question what we were doing or cast doubt on the wisdom or righteousness of our actions. The tape that God plays back to us on the long hours of Yom Kippur is a record of our vanities, our arrogance, our self satisfaction, our obliviousness, our pig headedness, or insensitivity, our inhumanity, our stubbornness, our self-satisfaction. It is only after we have seen this tape that we can hear the Shofar again.

Phase 5 At Neilah, the concluding service of Yom Kippur, we listen to a singular blast of the Shofar, one long, prolonged note. The blast is preceded by the recitation of three short verses: the Shema Yisrael, the Baruch Shem, and finally a verse from 1st Kings, Chapter 18 from the narratives about Elijah the Prophet. In the story, the verse “Adonai Hu Haelohim-Adonai He is the God” are the words spoken by the people when they acknowledge the public miracle of God’s presence on Mt. Carmel. In that story 400 prophets of Baal receive silence to their offering, while Elijah the prophet’s sacrifice is accepted by God. Clearly the blowing of the Shofar at the end of Yom Kippur is meant to remind us of the greatest public vindication of God in the Jewish Bible. We are acknowledging at the end of the Yom Kippur that there is a recorder who makes and safeguards our tape. We are accountable for this tape; we are required to review the tape, make changes, and reconcile with people and God. And our tradition adds that God desires our reconciliation. Only we have to want it also.

The end of Yom Kippur is the purest monotheistic moment of all of Jewish ritual. It is the acknowledgment that there is a moral force in the universe greater than us to whom we are held accountable. The whole process I have described hangs on that very moment at the end of Yom Kippur and that final Tekiah Gedolah that concludes the cycle of the Shofar.

The Shofar cycle is a carefully layered ritual that both builds in intensity and sustains drama by an alternation between a blast of the sounds and silence. The teaching of the Shofar is that awareness must be nursed along. It does not come and go, but must be drawn out, teased out of us. It must be sustained and it must be let go. The ritual leads us to self-awareness and a reconnection with other human beings and ultimately with God.

This is captured by the blessing, a powerful catalyst for the harnessing of our awareness. At the very center of this process we hear the blessing of the Baal Tokea-the Shofar blower, “Baruch Ata Adoshem Eloheinu Melech Haolam Asher Kidshanu Bmitzvotav V’tzivanu Lishmoa Kol Shofar –Blessed are You Hashem, our God, King of the Universe, who has sanctified us with His commandments and has commanded us to listen to the sound of the Shofar.”

We must listen, during the short blasts, the long blasts, the single blasts and the multiple blasts, the silent blasts and the loud blasts. The blessing is the expression of hope for that we can really hear these blasts and these silences above the noise of our daily lived, the background music, the talk radio that mires us in mindlessness. To achieve this depends on our openness, our will, and our discipline to tune out the static, perform the mitzvah that enables us to hear the sounds of heaven.