Rosh Hashanah & Yom Kippur Sermons
The Silent Shofar
by Rabbi Elyse Goldstein
Ladies and Gentlemen, It’s my pleasure to call upon our ba’al tekiah, Peter Schure, to blow the shofar for us this morning. Peter…tekiah…(no sound) shevarim (no sound) teruah…(no sound).
What? You can’t hear it? We’re blowing the shofar…the problem is you’re not hearing! But I want you to hear it. Let’s try again…tekiah…shevarim…teruah…
Oh, that’s right, we didn’t really blow the shofar today because it is Shabbat. The rabbis decreed that the holiness of Shabbat is more important even than the holiness of Rosh Hashanah and they worried that the shrill cry of the shofar would disturb the peace of Shabbat, so they legislated in the days of the Talmud to postpone the blowing of the shofar until tomorrow, when first day Rosh Hashanah falls on Shabbat.
But I’m disappointed in not hearing that ancient cry today, and I’ll bet many of you are too. Hearing the shofar is sometimes the highlight of the holiday. Today is what Zalman Schachter Shalomi calls “the silent shofar” and it has to call to us, in a different way. Not blowing reminds us that it is in the sometimes terribly uncomfortable silences we have the opportunity to clear the mind of the clutter and racket, and to be alone with ourselves at last. It is in the pauses and quiet that the grand themes of the holiday can take shape in our minds.
Not blowing the shofar reminds us that we have to feel its vibrations deeper than just in our ears. We have to hear the shofar in our hearts, in our souls, under our skin, with our eyes, in our brains, in our kishkes.
When I was a student – rabbi, I had the unique opportunity of working with a deaf congregation. I had to sign the service and all my sermons. You can’t begin to imagine a Board meeting of deaf Jews – people shouting with their hands!
But the strongest memory I have of these years is Rosh Hashana and the blowing of the shofar. Because think about it; where’s the power of that primitive shriek if you can’t hear it? Oh, but my deaf congregants did hear the shofar – in their very beings, in the core of their insides, through their fingertips, literally. We would blow the shofar in 3 places in the room – in the back, in the middle and in the front and they would reach down and touch the floor and touch the air or even touch the shofar – and feel the vibrations. And they would be incredibly moved, like anyone here is at that awesome moment. And often I would see the deaf children watch in awe as the tekiah gedolah – the one long note – was blasted, and only I would hear it, but they would feel it and exclaim “that was a loud one!”
My deaf congregants taught me it is possible to hear the shofar in your heart. The blessing for the shofar is not to blow it, but to hear it. You’d think it’s a mitzvah to blow the shofar. It’s an an honour, to be sure, but it’s not a mitzvah. The blessing is not “litko'a bashofar – to blow the shofar, but “lishmo'a kol shofar”- who has commanded us to hear the voice of the shofar.” Lishmo'a– to pay attention – to the voice of the shofar. In Torah Hebrew lishmo'a means “to understand”. What does it mean to “understand” the voice of the shofar? Can we hear the voice of the shofar speaking to us even without hearing the tekiah? Like my deaf congregants we can hear the shofar today through our eyes. I want to look at the shofar with you and see what it can teach us.
(Show a ‘traditional” shofar.)
Growing up, this is the only kind of shofar most of us even saw. The “traditional” shofar, the one Ashkenazim use. We thought there was only one kind of shofar, like one kind of Jew – the kind we were. Firm and practical, this shofar from a ram’s horn was all we know.
(Show a curved shofar.)
Then the Jews from Yemen came to Israel and brought with them their traditions – including the curved shofar, made firm the horn of a kudu. Exotic and deep, like its owners we thought, this Yemenite shofar surprised us and reminded us of the varieties of Jews and of “tradition”. And suddenly, everyone wanted a big, curved shofar.
(Show a straight shofar.)
This past year, for the first time in my life, I saw a completely different kind of shofar. Totally straight, made from the horn of the Arabian oryx, animals you can see at the Jerusalem zoo. By the way, when they stand in a certain position, their two horns look like one, and they may be the origin of the mythological unicorn. Magical and strange, this shofar is proof positive of the evolution of Jewish “tradition”.
These three kinds of shofarot, I think are a midrash, a parable of the kind of Jewish lives we’ve had – and they contain a message of the kind of Jewish lives we can build for ourselves.
(straight shofar)
Some of us had very straight paths in our Jewish lives. We grew up in Forest Hill, we went to Harbord Collegiate, we live in Thornhill 10 minutes from our parents. We joined their shul even if we didn’t like it. We went to Jewish summer camp. Or CHAT or USY. Being Jewish is easy for us, it feels as natural as breathing. We don’t have to work hard at being Jewish; we don’t think about it at all that much but when we do, it's not a struggle or a challenge.
We went straight from Jewish childhood to Bar Mitzvah; we dabbled in Hillel in university, married Jewish, we’re raising Jewish kids.
The straight shofar is quintessential Toronto.
(curved shofar)
But for some of us, our Jewish path was – and still is – a roller coaster of loop – de – loops and surprise turns. It is a journey. We never expected to call in love with a non-Jew or marry one; it was a curve ball but we’re still on that Jewish line! We haven’t found our community, we twist and turn, going this way and that, this shul to that shul, this group to that group, looking for the wide end. Or what about those of us who didn’t start off as Jews at all but here we are, oh man how did that happen? Our path to Judaism wasn’t easy or a given. We’ve turned once, we’ve turned twice and ended up with a Jewish family or 3 rabbis at the long end of a table asking us why we want to be Jewish. Or we just like the adventure of changing and adapting and going round things to get at them.
The curved shofar is the modern Jewish experience.
But it doesn’t quite matter if your path here was the straight shofar or the curved one. Because in the end, all our Jewish lives are the question mark made by the shofar when it is held upside down. The Jewish lives we build are not so much marked by what we were in the past as much as by what we want to be in the future, and that is the question mark the shofar shouts out at us whether we hear it blown or not. The shofar asks us a simple question: who will I be next year as a Jew? Does the tekiah wake me up, as Saadia Gaon suggested, and ask me – what’s next? What will I do this coming year to explore and expand my Jewish life? Will I stay where I am, complacent and satisfied, or will I grow? Will my spirit be the same spirit as the last year and the year before? Who will I be as a Jew? The shofar asks us this, silent and sure.
This horn is the oldest musical instrument still in use today, unchanged for at least 3000 years. Its question is historical and it is contemporary and it is deeply existential, and that may be why it sound so moves us. I want you to know, I sometimes look out at all of you at the blowing of the shofar, and I am often moved to tears by the looks on your faces. Some of you close your eyes and just let the sound seep into you. You hold your breath till the last long note is over and I can see you praying– yes, praying silently – that this year will be better. Some of you watch with wide, open eyes, filled with wonder, and you wince should the note crack. You look straight at the ba’al tekiah while he’s blowing as if to say – I am up there with you, and that shofar is singing my prayer for health, or happiness, or love, and I will face it eye to eye.
And some of you reach out to the person next to you – and I love when you do this – and you hold out your hand to them, and in silent communication you pray for deeper connection. I personally watch my kids, and I remember when they were little, and then I picture them with their kids, holding up a little one to see better, and I get all misty about the chain of generations.
But as beautiful as all our reactions to the sounds are, the drama and pageantry of the shofar service, with all it’s excitement, actually makes it easier for us to hide from the question the shofar is asking us. Like an actor who raises her voice at the end if the sentence to turn it into a question – “are you going there?” – the shofar sounds each end on an up-note, tekiah: “dah dah dah” – the question mark posed and left hanging in the air for us to catch.
Today, the question does not go unasked just because the shofar is silent. The opposite: in the quiet, the question is so much louder.
It is said that Artur Schnabel was once asked, “How do you play pianos so well?” He answered, "The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes - ah, that is where the art resides!"
The silent shofar stands before us today, and it is waiting for an answer from each one of us: Who will you be this year as a Jew?
Tekiah…shevarim…teruah…tekiah gedolah…
Shana Tova.
