The sound of the Shofar

 

 

I have been practicing my shofar blowing out of my grandmother's machzor. I run through all the shofar blasts twice each time I practice. I begin with the lighter colored shofar, because it is harder to blow. Then I do a second round with the dark shofar.

Oddly enough,my grandmother's machzor, (High Holiday prayer book) is Nusach S'fard, that is the version of the liturgy that is used by Chassidim. My grandmother as a rule detested the practices of Chassidim and prefered the dryer Lithuanian influenced practices.  To put this in a Christian context, the practices of the Chassidim are more congruent to that of Holy Roller evangelicals and my grandmother was more comfortable in the Jewish equivalent of Congregationalist practice.

Nusach S'fard adds all sorts of intentional prayers for people to say before they start any part of the service. Last night I discovered no less than three different intentional prayers for the shofar blower to recite before they blow the shofar one after the other in my grandmother's machzor.

Below is one of them written by Rabbi Isaac Luria, the great  Kabbalistic mystic of the 16th century.

I am not going to translate this text word for word because part of the power of this text is incantation made up of the first initials of the names of various angels -- Like my grandmother, I firmly believe that that sort of incantation is hooey. What I do love is that you ask the angels to bring the sound of our shofar calls before the very throne of glory.

In this prayer we ask that some of the angels bring our good deeds carried along in the sound of the shofar before God. We also ask that the sound of the shofar reminds God of his promise to Abraham and to Isaac.

What I love about this prayer is that it captures the role of the shofar blower not as a performer but as a messenger. When I blow shofar it is to carry the yearning of my community before the Throne of Glory.

About a month or so after October 7, my friend Rochelle's moshav gathered together as a community in their community amphitheater. Rochelle's moshav is a religious one a mix of S'fardim and Ashkenazim. Someone from the community began reciting the Psalms you recite in times of trouble.  That community had already lost a few members to the horrors of October 7. The service leader called out each verse and the community, men and women together, chanted each verse back.  Whole families were there, old people, babies, just chanting the Psalms. At the end they blew shofar. . I watched a video of the ceremony and just wept. It was just so raw, so moving.

So much of Judaism is about mountains and mountains of words and sometimes it is about the rawness of the sound of the shofar.

Some of the power of this holiday is in the liturgy. Some of the power is in the sounds of the shofar and some is in the food.

I did most of the cooking for the holiday last week. My challot are rising as I type this.

I just finished cooking the two chickens that are a product of Jewish Hostess Derangement Syndrome.

(What if I didn't make enough food???)

These chickens are flavored with hawaj, black pepper, dried lime, fresh lime juice and stuffed with dates.