Shofar in Music: Noam Sheriff, Composer

Mechaye Hamethim (Revival of the Dead) (1985), by Noam Sheriff (b.1935), an Israeli conductor and composer, is a 52-minute work for symphony orchestra, tenor, bass-baritone, mens choir, boys choir, and shofar chorus. It uses Ashkenazi and Sephardi melodies, biblical texts, ritual music, and Yiddish folk song along with shofar. It illustrates Jewish life through the Diaspora and Holocaust and gives thanks for Israel with a triumphant 'Hallelujah'.

One of several CD releases of the piece.

Shofar: Its Uses & Symbolism

ARTHUR L. FINKLE

What does the sound of the shofar symbolize? There are various interpretations. Let us explore the biblical origins.

Herald the giving and receiving of the Law at Mt. Sinai
Exodus 19:16-19 provides:

“THEN IT CAME TO PASS ON THE THIRD DAY, IN THE MORNING, THAT THERE WERE THUNDERINGS AND LIGHTNINGS, AND A THICK CLOUD ON THE MOUNTAIN; AND THE SOUND OF THE TRUMPET WAS VERY LOUD, SO THAT ALL THE PEOPLE WHO WERE IN THE CAMP TREMBLED.17) AND MOSES BROUGHT THE PEOPLE OUT OF THE CAMP TO MEET WITH GOD, AND THEY STOOD AT THE FOOT OF THE MOUNTAIN.18) NOW MOUNT SINAI WAS COMPLETELY IN SMOKE, BECAUSE THE LORD DESCENDED UPON IT IN FIRE. ITS SMOKE ASCENDED LIKE THE SMOKE OF A FURNACE, AND THE WHOLE MOUNTAIN QUAKED GREATLY.19) AND WHEN THE BLAST OF THE TRUMPET SOUNDED LONG AND BECAME LOUDER AND LOUDER, MOSES SPOKE, AND GOD ANSWERED HIM BY VOICE.”

EXODUS 20:18-20, “NOW ALL THE PEOPLE WITNESSED THE THUNDERINGS, THE LIGHTNING FLASHES, THE SOUND OF THE TRUMPET, AND THE MOUNTAIN SMOKING; AND WHEN THE PEOPLE SAW IT, THEY TREMBLED AND STOOD AFAR OFF.19) THEN THEY SAID TO MOSES, “YOU SPEAK WITH US, AND WE WILL HEAR; BUT LET NOT GOD SPEAK WITH US, LEST WE DIE.”20) AND MOSES SAID TO THE PEOPLE, “DO NOT FEAR; FOR GOD HAS COME TO TEST YOU, AND THAT HIS FEAR MAY BE BEFORE YOU, SO THAT YOU MAY NOT SIN.”

Shofar in Music: Hayden Wayne - Composer

Hayden Wayne (born 1949), a composer and librettist, used shofarot in In Memoriam: A Celebration, a work commissioned by the Interfaith Concert of Holocaust Remembrance. The sixteen-minute composition premiered at Saint John the Divine in New York in 1993 with orchestra, chorus, and six shofarists: Joel S. Goor, Mary Zamor, Arnold L. Sabin, David Parker, Roy L. Zisser, and Stuart Sachs. Later, the work was linked with Wayne's Sinfonietta No. 1: The Klezmer and An Elegy Into Madness and titled A Triptych (1998).

Photos by Mary Bloom, www.newmillenniumrecords.com/inmemph.html

Importing Horns

If you are thinking of importing horns to use for making shofarot, you will want to read the US Department of Agriculture Animal Products Manual, especially Chapter 3-4 Reference—Bones and Related By-Products. USDA requires all such imports to be certified by a vet at country of origin that the products are free of disease.  The Tables in the pdf show outline of how US customs determines whether to release the shipment or not. 

Shofar in Music: Prologue for Kurt Weill opera

The Eternal Road, (Der Weg der Verheissung) composed by Kurt Weill and written in German by Franz Werfel, is an "opera-pageant-epic" drama. It concerns a Jewish congregation hiding in a European synagogue throughout the night and awaiting a tyrant's decision whether to kill or exile them. To keep their courage and historical awareness up, the rabbi tells them Biblical stories.

The six-hour work proved too costly for complete productions, and World War II prevented it from getting much exposure. Its second half, Acts 3 and 4, was revived in 1998 by the American Symphony Orchestra.

Missing or damaged parts of Weill's orchestrations were replaced by Noam Sheriff and Edward Harsh. Jonathan Eaton adapted Ludwig Lewisohn's original English translation and directed for economic but useful action within a concert format.

Eaton also added a non-musical prologue with "a brief chorus of thrilling shofar calls from all over the hall."

The acoustic-spatial effect of being surrounded by shofarot must have been very dramatic, setting the tone for the drama that follows. It is tempting to speculate whether Eaton's use of shofarot in this manner was influenced by Sheriff's placement of shofar in the concert hall in Sheriff's earlier work, Mechaye Hamethim.

Highlights from the opera are on the Naxos 8.559402, but without the shofar chorus.

See Village Voice Review

This is not a shofar

"This is not a shofar."

Illustrator Phillip Fivel Nessen was created this drawing for the Sixth Street Synagogue in New York City especially to appeal to an artistic Jewish audience. The text translates as "This is not a shofar."

It is a parody of an iconic painting (shown below) The Treachery of Images (La trahison des images, 1928–29), by René Magritte. The picture shows a pipe. Below it, Magritte painted, "Ceci n'est pas une pipe", French for "This is not a pipe." The painting is not a pipe, but rather an image of a pipe, which was Magritte's point. He explains:

"The famous pipe. How people reproached me for it! And yet, could you stuff my pipe? No, it's just a representation, is it not? So if I had written on my picture 'This is a pipe,' I'd have been lying!"

"This is not a pipe."

We can take this concept further to bring us deeper into the meaning of shofar:

• The picture is not a rams horn.
• The rams horn is not a blast horn.
• The blast horn is not the sound it creates.
• The sound is not what one hears.
• What one hears is not how one responses.
• The response is not the teshuvah it elicits.
• The teshuvah is not a reawakening of the soul.

Seeing an image of a shofar can remind us of how hearing shofar can lead to a reawakening.

Shofar in Music: Edward Elgar, Composer

The oratorio, The Apostles - Opus 49, (1903), by Edward Elgar, is one of the first major pieces of Western art music to employ a shofar motif.  After a prologue, the first scene is "The Calling of the Apostles."  In it,

"we have the touching picture of Christ praying all night long upon the mountain, pleading for the world. In his loneliness, the angels watch over him, rejoicing in his goodness. Then comes the wonderful scene of the dawn. The watchers on the temple roof descern the first streak fo light. 'It shines,' they cry. 'The face of all the East is now ablaze with light, the Dawn reaches even unto Hebron!' (These words are taken from the Talmud.) The temple gates are thrown open with a clangor of brass. From within the temple are heard the notes of a morning psalm and the shofar call which for centuries has waked the shadows of Jewish synagogues. But the radiance of the newly-risen sun is but a symbol of the Dawn of Spiritual Enlightenment for mankind made possible by the Calling of the Apostles to preach the Word." (The American History and Encyclopedia of Music: Oratorios and Masses, 1908)

The reviewer characterizes the Dawn as "Oriental in its musical coloring, employing the queer sound of the shofar..."

Apparently scored for a ram's horn, a more contemporary instrument such as a flugelhorn is usually used.

The use of shofar references its historical use in the Temple, and employs the horn in its essential role of signaling or calling.

Is shofar a trumpet?

A conference of Jewish authors convened in 1908 to discuss the nature of Jewish literature. One of the issues that came to the fore was debate about whether Yiddish or Hebrew was the appropriate language for literature. It is told that,

...there suddenly appears on the stage a man with a long, red beard, wearing a traditional black kapote (kaftan) and yarmelke (skull-cap). He begins speaking by saying "I will tell you a story". The hall is full of quiet expectancy. We all listened carefully in order to hear a good, folksy anecdote. The man recounts in great detail a story about how two Jews once sued each other in court because of a shoyfer that had been stolen from the beys medresh (house of study and prayer). With great difficulty they explained to the gentile judge what a shoyfer is. Finally the judge asked: "In one word a trumpet?" At this point the litigants shuddered and one shouted to the other: "I ask you: is a shoyfer a trumpet?" The assembled participants in the hall were ready to smile at this "anecdote" which had long been well known, when the man suddenly began to shout at the top of his lungs: "You keep on talking about language, but is Yiddish zhargon (a language?)" (Kisman 1958)

 Oy! The problems of translation.

http://mendele.commons.yale.edu/wp/category/volume-08/volume-08-047/

So an ox can't blow shofar

Here is a parody, by Sholem-Aleykhem, of a classic aphorisms.

Yiddish:
"A ferd iz nit dermit oysgeshtelt, vos er kon nit kreyen vi a hon, er
iz umgliklekh nor demolt ven er farlirt dem gang." (Azoy zogt Epiktet.)
Un ikh zog: An oks iz nit dermit oysgeshtelt, vos er hot a lange tsung un
kon keyn shoyfer nit blozn; er iz umgliklekh nor demolt, ven men firt im
tsu der shkhite.

Translation:
"A horse does not take umbrage because he can't crow like a rooster;
he is wretched only when he loses his way." (So says Epictetus.) And I
say: An ox does not take umbrage because he has a long tongue and can't
blow a shofar; he is wretched only when he is led to the slaughter.

A commentary on Sholem Aleichem's aphorisms is at http://mendele.commons.yale.edu/wp/category/volume-04/volume-04-241/

From Aforizmen (1903), in -Felietonen-, by Sholem Aleichem, Tel Aviv: I.L.
Peretz Publishing House, 1976, p. 86.

Beth, the Hill Shepard

One of the delights of blogging is that it occasions contact with individuals that share interest. For example, I began corresponding with Beth, the Hill Shepherd, after she left a comment on www.HearingShofar.blogspot.com. Her online profile lead me to her website, www.ramshornstudio.com, where I discovered that she is a shepherd, and to her blog where I discovered she is erudite about shofar.

The following are excerpts from our email. I share them so others can benefit from her insights:

Dear Beth,
First, Thank you for following my blog. I welcome hearing your responses to my posts.  Living close to sheep and goats, I suspect you may have insights that would be valuable to my readers.

Dear Michael,
Yes being with my flock and having had different horned breeds, I know a lot about the horns and how they grow. I save all my ram horns but only get a big one every few years as we eat most of the rams before their horns are big.

I got my shofar in a trade at a frontier event, ironically. It is very precious to me. I have some Jewish ancestry back a couple generations, I understand, but don't know much about the history. I am mostly Norwegian and Scottish with some English in there as well.

Have you researched about the Norse rams horn instruments? It's quite fascinating. I make cow horn blowing horns quite often that are like hunting horns. I love living with sheep all around me and think often of the shepherds in the Holy Land. I blew my shofar in church and took a live lamb in for the children to see. They loved it all.

Scottish Blackface Tup ("intact" ram) from Beth's Farm.

Dear Beth,
I am very excited to meet you, at least on line.

While few things are grander than a large, full curl ram horn, I use small horns to make mezuzah cases and "piccolo" shofarot.

I have not researched the Norse horn. May I repost your blog article on them to my blog? [Click here to see her post.]

Is the oil lamp in the photo you sent one of your creations? Is the pin to adjust the wick? In Roman times, a popular "souvenir" from the Holy Land was an oil lamp decorated with a menorah, shofar, and lulav (symbols of the Temple). If you make an oil lamp reviving this tradition, enter me in for an order.

Dear Michael,
And I am excited about meeting you on line.

I am not Jewish, so I feel a little shy about claiming the shofar for my own and hope no one is bothered by me exploring more about the history. People are so odd anymore, it's like they are looking to be offended so they can go off on someone.  I was a little afraid to post on your blog in case I made some gaff and got scolded by some holy man or expert. Its sad I feel this way but over the years I have had some odd experiences.

The lamp you speak of is a bronze copy of a clay lamp. They were late 19th and early 20th century souvenirs sold in Rome and there are a number of them out there. I bought that one on eBay and yes the iron probe is a pickwick for adjusting the wick and probably is more suited to the 18th and 19th century fat lamps. I burn mineral oil in them; the medical grade stuff you can take as a laxative. I do that because its thick and doesn't spill and because when it burns there is no odor.

I like working with horn. I have been thinking of making some shofar jewelry. I have never tried making a lamp as yet.

Dear Beth:
Speaking as an individual, the ram's horn belongs to shepherds as much as to anyone. Before metal work, horn would have been used by all peoples that followed a herd or pursued game.

Dear Michael:
Yes indeed you are right about shepherds.

I think the style of the one I have is more a shofar as it has been flattened somewhat. I have blown the cows horn longer than I have used my rams horn. The rams horn is harder to blow and higher pitched as the airway is small. I also have made and blow horns made from conch and whelk shells and they sound wonderful as well.

I run a little page on Facebook called the shepherds bothy. I would be honored if you would join us. You may find you can get some horns through some of my friends. Three of the shepherds have horned breeds of sheep.

Bukkhorn with fingering holes and mouthpiece.

Dear Beth:
I saw your recent post about the bukkhorn. How easy is it to play a melody? Not a short sequence of notes, but say enough for a little dance? Do you run out of breath?

I posted a piece yesterday addressing some archeologists discussing the origin of music instruments. Have you ever made or blown a sheep bone flute? Can sheep be trained to come to the sound of a horn? A flute? Would a sheep favor one over the other?

The academics writing in their listserve have never cared for a sheep, so I thought I would ask someone who has.

Dear Michael,
You can use anything off my blog any time its just there for fun. I think there are a lot of Norwegian bukkehorn clips on YouTube of it being played so you can hear the style; its a melody but its very simple. Most have finger holes. It's almost like an ocarina if you know how they are played. There are several different types though. Like playing a bagpipe, you build up lung strength and lip strength so I don't think its so hard. It certainly could be used for a dance. Listen to one played here:
http://www.ramshornstudio.com/the_bukkehorn.htm

I would say sheep would come to a horn more than a flute just because horns carry so well over a distance. Also a horn is suited to sustained note call more. I think shepherds often played flutes to amuse themselves and it probably was attractive to the sheep after they came to associate it with their care giver.

Also there are some interesting flute like instruments from the British Isles that look like a flute with a horn on the end. The body was often made of bone and it may be the thing you refer to in your note to me. It was almost like an oboe from what I have read. Those may have been useful to call sheep. They were disappearing already in the 18th Century in Scotland. See illustration. A flute type instrument with holes can be blown three ways depending how its designed. It can be blown cross wise like a modern flute or set up with a reed to blow like an oboe or it can have a fipple. The Welsh had an instrument like this Shepherds pipe called a Pibcorn. The pibcorn was so suited to dance that even after the instrument had disappeared some dances were referred to as a pibcorn. Please see the link.

Please go here and listen it will melt you heart. It sounds very much like many of the instruments from India and the middle east too!

If I were to train my sheep to come to one or the other it would be very easy. All you need to do it blow the horn and then bang the feed pan and then feed them. I trained my sheep to come to a banging feed pan so I would just switch them over to the horn and stop banging the pan once they understood.

Did you know in the old days they milked sheep allot and called them to be milked just like they call in the cows? Often they would pull the lambs off and milk the ewes. It was most often done after the lambs were weaned but it was done slightly differently in different cultures. I have a whole collection of shepherding songs and just love this kind of stuff.

Please just remember one thing. Sheep are not stupid regardless of what you have heard. Modern commercial sheep are a bit dumber, but middle eastern breeds and Scottish blackface are sometimes too smart. I have a trained sheep I raised in the house and she comes like a dog when I call and is she is very bright. I would guess her intelligence is on par with the Border Collie I have. My sheep are amazing at figuring out how to escape and open gates and other things. If you raise animals in a deprived commercial environment they will act dumb but give them some stimulation and freedom and they are very bright. I have kept sheep now for 24 years. I love them above all animals but dogs.

It is so nice to hear from you again.

Your friend,
Beth, the Hill Shepherd

Easy Does It

The following question was posed on a health-related website:

"I recently blew a shofar at church and, because I'm a novice, I apparently strained my facial muscles. I have tightness and soreness. I did go to the doctor and he didn't think I had nerve damage, just strained muscles. But I have some spasms and pain. And my facial muscles have been hurting as if they were badly bruised, although I see no bruising on the skin. Any suggestions?"

I offer the following reply:

First, I hope you have completely recovered. I am a shofar teacher, and the author of Hearing Shofar: The Still Small Voice of the Ram's Horn, a major treatise on shofar. Volume Two is for the shofar blower, and will be especially useful to anyone trying to blow a shofar. It can be downloaded at www.HearingShofar.com.

My suggestion for the future is to use less effort when you blow. As the Bible says, "Not by might, and not by power, but by spirit alone..."  The Hebrew word for spirit also means breath. When I blow shofar, only a small stream of air passes through my lips, not even enough to blow out a candle 8 inches away. The sound is produced by the vibration of your lips. If you are experiencing pain, you are blowing too hard.

Beyond that, I suggest practice, practice, practice. Caught up in the passion of worship, you may have put all your energy into the blast. Use practice as a chance to build up strength and to warm up your kisser.

Contact me if you need more help. My info is at my website. Michael Chusid

The Women of the Shofar

This article, from Jewish Woman Magazine, provides a glimpse into how women have embraced shofar blowing. 

From Manhattan to Manitoba, women have embraced the role of baalat tekiah, shofar blower, bringing Jews a wake-up call for the New Year.

By Elicia Brown

Walking through Jerusalem on an autumn evening last year, Elana Roberts suddenly stopped short. She couldn’t believe her luck. There, along the edge of Ben Yehuda Street, a pedestrian mall known for its Judaica shops and sidewalk cafes, she spotted a barrel stocked with 20 enormous shofars. She peered around. Nervously, she picked up a horn and tooted it, then another. Her trip to Israel included three missions: to visit family and friends, to celebrate the rabbinical ordination of a friend, and to find her “magic shofar.”

Roberts, who, like a growing number of women across the liberal streams of Judaism, sounds the shofar for her New York City congregation on the High Holy Days, hoped to discover that special horn she could play with ease—one that will “resonate with a call that cannot go unnoticed,” says Roberts. “How will I know when I’ve found my magic shofar? It is kind of like love. I will know.”

Not that Roberts, who in 2007 became the first woman to blow the shofar for the main service at her egalitarian synagogue, feels anything but affection for her current shofar, a blond and black ram’s horn, approximately 17 inches in size. She fears though, that “something might happen to it.” She also believes that somewhere out there, another shofar, perhaps more resplendent, would be an even more perfect fit.

Shofar shopping, even in a more customary setting than the one Roberts discovered, can be a daunting experience for women. Some fervently

Orthodox shopkeepers expect only men to blow shofar. But that assumption may be changing with each passing Jewish New Year. Outside of Orthodox communities, the image of the baalat tekiah, or the female shofar sounder, no longer startles Jews. At least since the early 1970s, with the awakening of Jewish feminists, women have been blasting these ancient instruments for non-Orthodox congregations. In fact, the history of women sounding shofars for their own ears, for themselves, dates back hundreds of years, as far back as the 12th century, when Talmudic sages ruled that women could not only blow shofar, but also recite the blessing for themselves.

“It’s seen as totally normal and unremarkable for a woman to blow the shofar,” says Rabbi Jeffrey Kurtz Lendner of the Reform synagogue Temple Solel in Hollywood, Fla.

And yet, the experience varies from one community to the next, sometimes suddenly shifting when the man passes away who, for decades, held onto that long note of tekiah gedolah, that last blast of the High Holy Days. Penny Myers, 35, a cantorial intern at a large Reform synagogue in Buffalo, N.Y., says, “I don’t get a sense that it is common for women to blow shofar. I rarely see or hear of other women fulfilling this mitzvah—I suppose, until now.”

Within many Orthodox communities, of course, the image continues to mystify—and madden—onlookers.

Roberts, an editor for HBO in New York City, did not fulfill her third mission in Jerusalem last fall. She returned from Israel with a dazzling black horn of tremendous size, produced in a shofar factory in Tel Aviv. It reeked of dead animals. It was not magic.

As for that serendipitous opportunity on Ben Yehuda Street? A group of yeshiva boys had sidled past, laughing raucously at the sight of a woman sounding a shofar. “I felt really uncomfortable,” remembers Roberts. “I wanted to sound every one.” Roberts waited until the street cleared before attempting another sound. Once again, she began testing the contents of the barrel, when she felt the gaze of another pedestrian, who appeared to be an extremely religious woman. As Roberts recalls, the woman was dressed in black, her head covered, her eyes disbelieving and disapproving. The woman whispered: “Aht minageret shofar?” Do you play shofar?

“I looked at her, and I’m like, ‘Yeah,’” says Roberts. “She nodded at me, and then went back into her world. She left me with an understanding. It was a nod of approval, even though it was forbidden.”

Even within the world of liberal American Jewry, the baalat shofar is still a rare enough event that women remark on novel images and challenges, from choice of nail polish (not red) to lipstick (best without the glossy finish). The Women Cantors’ Network hosted a discussion a few years ago on the best lipstick brands for blowing shofar, e-mails Mary Feinsinger, a composer of Jewish music based in New York City. “The grease makes it difficult to make proper contact with the horn.”

Short stature can also distract worshippers. “People say, ‘You’re so small, and you get such a big sound out of it. You must have big lungs,’” says Pat Danoff, a retired teacher and Jew by choice, who blows shofar at the Conservative Congregation Beth-El in Bethesda, Md., and is 4-foot-11 on a good day.

In fact, size doesn’t matter, except occasionally in one area: the womb. Carol Goldbaum, a social worker living in a Chicago suburb, has been intoning the shofar since 1979—every year, that is, except 1981. She was pregnant. “I needed my diaphragm and abdomen to do it right,” says Goldbaum, who has designed a shofar resume to display her experience, and notes that she “gets a charge out of” blowing shofar. “I hear it in my ears and also in my body. It resonates; it’s my breath; I plant my feet a certain way and feel grounded. It’s not something casual.”

Some believe that to properly sound the shofar, one must appreciate its rich and vibrant history, its ancient use as a clarion call to war and as a signal of freedom, in announcing the Jubilee Year and the liberation of slaves. The primal cries of the shofar have called assemblies, marked time in announcing the new moon and celebrated the coronation of a king. It is a history that may include as many as 6,000 years of thunderous blasts, according to some sources. “It hasn’t changed while everything around it changed,” says Oded Zehavi, an Israeli conductor who has spent the past year at the University of Michigan researching the shofar.

Sounding Off

“There was just a slant of light and candles. I blew the shofar into complete darkness. We were aware of the souls that joined us from the Shoah for the blowing of the shofar. Somehow they filled the room, savoring that we were there, strong, connected, purified and ready to go forward.”
—Rabbi Dr. Goldie Milgram, author of Reclaiming Judaism as a Spiritual Practice: Holy Days and Shabbat (Jewish Lights), recalling her experience sounding the shofar in Holland on Yom Kippur

“Never has anyone remarked how unusual it was to see a woman blowing the shofar, except for one thing. I always turn my back to wipe off my lipstick right before blowing.”
—Rabbi Cookie Lea Olshein, Reform, Congregation Beth Israel, Austin, Texas

“The loud, piercing cry of the shofar is still striking, especially when produced by a diminutive woman.”
—Marcia Chaiken, Reform and Renewal congregations, Ashland, Ore.

“Some people are too invested in it. It should not be about Pat Danoff. I see myself as a messenger. Kids come up to the front, sitting at my feet; every eye, every ear is on me. But with a shofar, you never know what you’re going to get out of it.”
—Pat Danoff, Conservative, Congregation Beth-El, Bethesda, Md.

“It was definitely new for some people. As a halachic minyan, how can we find a way that says that women can blow shofar? We decided that the word, nashim, this category of passive women, is a term that doesn’t exist anymore.”
—Meg Lederman, Washington Square Minyan in Brookline, Mass.

“When I realized that a person who is not a cantor, not a rabbi, can do this, it led to other steps in Judaism. It led to my adult bat mitzvah in 1997, at the age of 47, an age which is about as awkward as 13.”
—Marcia Eisenberg, general counsel, Jewish Community Relations Council in New York, and a member of Ansche Chesed, Conservative synagogue in New York

“When Connie [the baalat tekiah] was pregnant, it was especially glorious. There she was, round and full of radiant light, sounding the wordless prayers of our alternative minyan.”
—Carol Rose, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

“The raw sounds produced by the shofar bring us back to ancient times; they return us to our basic modes and feelings—the foundations of human nature.”
—Rabbi Mary L. Zamore, Reform, Temple B’nai Or, Morristown, N.J.

“The first time I sounded the shofar, in 1981, Rabbi Stein raised his arms over his head as if a touchdown had been scored in the last three seconds of a tied football game. This was followed by spontaneous applause from the congregation.”
—Patti Freeman Dorson, Reform, Indianapolis Hebrew Congregation

“With the tallis as a wrapping that covers the head, it is hard to distinguish male from female.”
—Rabbi T’mimah Ickovits, founder of Ohr HaMakor, a home for Holistic Kabbalah, Santa Monica, Calif.

In modern times, the shofar continues to draw the rapt attention of many worshippers during the High Holy Days services, with 100 blasts blown on each day of Rosh Hashanah in traditional services. But it has also been adopted for a variety of other purposes, often by and for women, from Judith Shatin’s modern composition for string quartet and shofar to a Baltimore Jewish community event to call attention to domestic violence. At the event, several victims spoke, and “in between each one, a shofar was blown,” recalls Rabbi Nina Beth Cardin. “It was a call to assembly, a call to witness, a call to action. It was really powerful.”

Roberts helped craft a shofar ceremony to celebrate the Jubilee (50th) birthday of her friend Rabbi Pamela Wax. Along with Wax’s husband, the pair arose in the darkness of an early February morning, making their way through snowy streets toward Wax’s favorite destination in Central Park. There, at the edge of a pond, Roberts offered a blessing to the rabbi based on the Jubilee year. She spoke of letting go old debts, of discovering “the freedom to become who you really are.” Then Roberts lifted her ancient horn and emitted a series of blasts.

Roberts says that in her egalitarian community at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, “I’m a person who blows shofar; I’m not a woman who blows shofar.” She stands on a recent morning in the quiet sanctuary, where faint light filters through the stained glass windows. The small gathering of early worshippers begins to disperse, several members sharing a joke with Roberts before they leave.

This group knows Roberts from her year of Kaddish, which began in September 2006, when she rose every morning to pay respects to her deceased father. At the end of that period, she began to teach herself to blow the shofar, which, she says, helped her fully reenter the world after a year of slumber.

Her first toots didn’t awaken any souls, though they did make her teenage daughter cringe. “I sounded like an injured ram,” remembers Roberts. Unlike many talented shofar blowers, Roberts didn’t have prior experience with the brass horn.

But Roberts felt a natural affinity for the ancient instrument. That year, she blew it every morning for the daily minyan throughout the month of Elul, when Jews listen to the shofar in preparation for the High Holy Days. Just a few weeks after she first picked up the horn, she sounded it powerfully at her father’s unveiling at the tiny cemetery in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., where he was buried.

Within a month, she recalls, she developed a fan club of synagogue members who lobbied for her to blow the shofar during the main service for Rosh Hashanah, to serve as a baalat tekiah. Before she left her apartment that morning of the Jewish New Year, she spent 30 seconds thanking God for her blessings. In the synagogue, she asked to sit in the center of the aisle, an undistracted zone, so she could focus on the spirituality of the day.

“This is a very holy thing for me,” she says.

She was shaking when she reached the bima. “I thought, ‘This must be what it is to tremble before HaShem,’” she says. Wrapped in a large white tallis that enveloped her body and covered her head, Roberts closed her eyes, raised her shofar to her lips and blew. It may not have been the magic horn of her dreams, but the cries pierced the hush of the sanctuary, resonating into the lives of the men and women and children gathered for the Rosh Hashanah service.

“I am a messenger,” says Roberts, “but the sound takes on a life of its own within each person.”

Elicia Brown, a columnist for The Jewish Week in New York, writes frequently about religion for a variety of online and traditional media.

Shofar Sounds Accompanied Fasts

Shofar Sounds Accompanied Fasts

Arthur L. Finkle

The underlying theory behind a fast day is the idea that worldly occurrences are not happenstance. Just as there is a physical, rational explanation for a given event, so there is a spiritual explanation for it.

Such includes a basic belief in reward and punishment as well as attention bestowed by God on every individual, community and nation. Thus, a disaster or tragedy must be seen either as a warning or as punishment (Lev. 26), both of which demand a response of prayer and repentance.

A fast is a time of subjecting oneself to inuy (introspection), which is defined by the oral tradition as a day on which we neither eat nor drink, and by the Sages as a time when one also refrains from other physical pleasures - specifically abstaining from washing, anointing, wearing shoes and engaging in sexual relations, akin to mourning.

Nevertheless, it is clear from both the Talmud and the words of the prophets (Jeremiah 58) that the goal of fasting is spiritual rather than physical. This fact also comports with the the common explanation of Shofar sounding on Rosh HaShanah, which arguably, lifts up the soul to the spiritual level of repentance and redemption. 

Shofar sounds accompanied fasts, during the writing of the Gemorra, 200-525 was regularized for Yom Kippur. In Taanit maintains that they would “cry out” sounding the Shofar. Such fast days included drought periods so important to the Middle East.

In Taanis 16a, a severe drought involved bringing the ark out of the synagogue and into the public thoroughfare. The leaders would recite the Shemona Esrei (18 blessings essential to a service) with an additional 6 blessing, petitioning for rain. Mishnah Taanis 16 continues a scenario in wihch Rabbi Halafta and Rabbi Hanina ben Tradyon recited these blessings  ending with a series of shofar blasts.

Generally, people need to fast right away if the following things occur, even far away- heat wave, the grain dries up, locusts or any animal that destroys the crops, wild animals, if an army comes and desecrates a city….  (Taanis 19)

In  addition, a baraita (ruling not codified in the Mishnah) includes a situation where no “alarm” was rung but nevertheless required communal prayer accompanied by Shofars. Such other misfortunes (aside from drought), such as itching, locusts, flies, scorpions, hornets, mosquitoes or a plague of serpents and scorpions.

Such a plague of hornet swarms prompted the abandonment Canaanite nations from the land of Israel (Exodus 23:28 and Joshua 24:12).

Indeed, Taanis 19 provides any bad thing upon the community, the ritual is to sound the Shofar and to fast right away.

Taanis 19 provides specificity to fasting (accompanied by Shofar blasts). For example, if three people died in a place within three days, then the community fasts.

If rain has not materialized for 40-days, it is considered a drought and fast occurs. If a hard rain had not arrived by Passover (Spring), the community fasts.

When there comes a time when there is no water to drink, the community immediately fasts on Monday, Thursday and Monday).