If you are alone on Days of Awe

This post offers a way for you to hear shofar during the High Holy Days, even if you are alone and do not have a shofar. It is excerpted from the writings of Norman R. Davies. He  is currently living a solitary contemplative lifestyle in Spain and is the founder of an online “Community of Jewish Contemplatives”  He wrote the following under the pen name, “Jewish Hermit” on his personal blog  “Jewish Contemplatives":

The Voice of the Shofar (September 2007)

If you are alone this coming Rosh Hashanah, will you be munching your honey-dipped apple with a feeling of connectedness to the world-wide Jewish Community or will you just be feeling marginalized and needlessly glum?

In the RSGB Machsor (Holiday Prayer Book) of 1985, Rabbi Jonathan Magonet wrote that on Yom Kippur we stand before God,

"All of us together, each of us alone."

This echoes the belief that, through Jewish collective responsibility, all Jews are reliant upon each other in the annual quest for community absolution. We are never truly alone on Yom Kippur.

Isaac Luria said: “Why was the confession composed in the plural? Because all Israel is one body and each individual Jew is a limb of that body. We are all responsible for each other …” (Yesod ha-Teshuvah vi)

The High Holidays are a time when all of us stand alone before God as we examine our lives and yet we simultaneously all act as “representatives of the community” for each other.

“The contemplative is always in community, whether that be a handful of neighbours, a family, a circle of distant friends kept often in mind, or the people they meet briefly or correspond with. Even if they were in total solitude they would still be part of the community of Creation: Responsible not only for themselves but for everyone. This is not just my own reflection. It is one which permeates the liturgy of Yom Kippur.” (Part One: Tikkun Contemplative Life as Active Life)

...this year, and every year, there will be millions of Jews who are unavoidably isolated and simply unable to attend any form of communal worship over the High Holiday season. There will be many who, rightly or wrongly, also feel unwelcome at such gatherings even if they are physically able to attend them.

This month’s short posting is for all those who are “alone” on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.


...in the many years... during which I was too far away from any synagogue or havurah to attend services, I continued to blow the shofar blasts at home. That felt quite strange at first as you can probably imagine. Initially I did it simply to make possible the mitzvah “to listen” to the shofar calls. I also made it a “wordless prayer” for God’s ears alone. (The weird and eerie language of the shofar tones can often be more explicit in meaning than words ever could.) For the last four years...I have also made a point of blowing it for “all those who are alone like me or unable to attend services” as a way of including them in my prayers.

This year I am extending that sentiment.

If you are alone this Rosh Hashanah… whether by choice or circumstance… I invite you to make a “special remembrance” in your prayers over the "Ten Days" for those of us who are also “alone”. Together, may it please God, may we make a sort of minyan which meets in intention if not physically. With all this in mind I have played and recorded the separate Shofar blasts during Elul for you to hear via this website.

For this little online para-liturgy, I have recorded the “soundings” in separate files so that you can arrange your own playing order or even set them to play simultaneously if you wish. This should also speed up the downloads for people who have internet connections which are as slow as mine.

(You would be well advised to set the individual volume control sliders on low when you first play them as they are very loud!).

The... minhag for grouping the Shofar calls was as follows:

Tekiah, Shevarim-Teruah, Tekiah.
(pause)

Tekiah, Shevarim, Tekiah
(pause)

Tekiah,Teruah,Tekiah
(pause)

Tekiah, Shevarim-Teruah, Tekiah Gedolah

Here then, are the Shofar calls as I blew them for you on 14th Elul:

[Go to original posting.]

Of course, you can find the Shofar calls played online in many places on the net (at "YouTube" for example)....but the difference is that THIS BLOWING IS FOR YOU: The readers of this blog and for all those who are alone and thus would not hear the Shofar blown this year.

I hope to blow it again "live" on Rosh Hashanah and for the Tekiah Gedolah which ends the fast on Yom Kippur.......but this internet version you can hear with your ears and not just your soul’s imagination.

The Machsor says:

The first is merely the prelude to the second.
A physical sign to mark a spiritual “event”.

Yes, I’ll be blowing the shofar.
Yes, (I hope) you will be blowing it or hearing it yourselves.

But the real “work” of the Ten Days is
listening to the true “Voice of the Shofar”,
the one which the Ram’s horn merely heralds:
and that Voice often speaks clearest in the silence.

In the silence between the multiple blasts of Rosh Hashanah
and the Final Blast after Yom Kippur.
And in any silence
in which we make space for it to speak
in the midst of our busy lives.

If you are “alone” for the High Holidays this year,
I hope you will make a blessing of it,
and not give in to needless gloom.

On Yom Kippur we stand before God

“Each of us alone, ALL of us together”

Above by Norman R Davies, September 2007

While a strict ruling on halachah - traditional Jewish Law - may not find a pre-recorded, electronically transmitted shofar blast acceptable for Rosh Hashanah, I believe can meet the Talmudic requirement when both the blower and the hearer have the kavanah - intention - of fulfilling the mitzvah. 

Drawings are by Norman R. Davis; the first is based on a medieval German Machsor. 

P.S. The audio links on the original file can be "played," with a fast download, to create your audio compositions.


Creative Commons License The author of the quoted material states, "You are free to use any of my own text, artwork, images, or music if you acknowledge author and source clearly, subject to these simple conditions.