לַמְנַצֵּֽחַ Psalm 47. A coronation psalm proclaiming God’s majesty and kingship, making special reference to the sound of the shofar as the clarion celebrating His presence and majesty. The psalm contains seven mentions of the word Elohim, God in His attribute of judgment and justice, and many have the custom to say it seven times, thus ascending forty-nine rungs of the ladder to His presence at the fiftieth level.

מִן־הַמֵּצַר In my distress. Seven verses calling on God’s compassion. The initial letters of verses 2–7 spell out the words Kera Satan, “May Satan, the Adversary, be torn [confounded].” Satan appears in Tanakh, especially at the opening of the book of Job, not as an independent force of evil (an idea incompatible with Jewish monotheism), but as the counsel for the prosecution in a trial when human lives are passing under divine judgment. In essence we ask God not to heed the accusations that may be brought against us, but to focus instead on the good we have done and on the merits of those who came before us. The Talmud (Rosh HaShana 16b) says that we blow the shofar in two cycles, once before Musaf and once during it, “to confuse the Adversary.” Several explanations have been given as to what this might mean. One interpretation is this: before Musaf we fulfill the command as individuals. During Musaf we do so as a community (Maimonides, Laws of Shofar 3:7). To a unique degree Judaism emphasizes both individual and collective responsibility: on the one hand, “If I am not for myself who will be?,” on the other, “If I am only for myself, what am I?” (Avot 1:14). We blow the shofar twice as if to say, “If I have failings as an individual, judge me favorably in the merits of the community. If we have failings as a community, consider our merits as individuals.”

THE SHOFAR The Torah calls Rosh HaShana “the day when the horn is sounded” and its central event is the sounding of the shofar – the sound that more than any other has been the signal of momentousness in Jewish history, italicizing time for special emphasis. It sounded when the Israelites heard the voice of God and accepted the covenant at Mount Sinai: “There was the sound of the shofar growing louder and louder” (Ex. 19:19). It accompanied them into battle in the days of Joshua at Jericho: “When the people heard the sound of the shofar, they shouted with a great shout, and the wall fell down flat” (Josh. 6:20). In the jubilee year it became the sound of freedom: “On the tenth day of the , you shall make a proclamation with the shofar… You shall sanctify the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants: this is your jubilee and you shall return every man to his possession, and you shall return every man to his family” (Lev. 25:9–10). It was an alarm, warning of impending danger: “Shall the ram’s horn be blown in a city and the people not tremble?” (Amos 3:6). It was, said Isaiah, the sound of the great shofar that would signal the ingathering of exiles when Israel returned to its land (Is. 27:13). It was sounded in 1967 during the Six Day War at that intensely emotional moment when Jews were again able to pray at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. It is the sound of judgment: “Lift up your voice like a horn and declare to My people their transgression” (Is. 58:1). And it is the sound of God’s majesty: “With trumpets and the sound of the shofar shout before the King, the Lord” (Ps. 98:6). Why the shofar? One reason is that it is simple, easily available, a natural product, not a manufactured one. The shofar was not the only instrument to serve as a clarion. The Torah speaks about two silver trumpets that accompanied the Israelites on their journeys (Num. 10:1–10). In the Temple on Rosh HaShana two trumpets were sounded as well as the shofar. Yet the shofar survived; the trumpets remain only as a memory. In Jewish history the simple has tended to prevail over the sophisticated, for God seeks the unadorned heart. The very naturalness of the shofar gives it its power. The shofar is the wordless cry at the heart of a religion of words. Judaism is a profoundly verbal culture, a religion of holy texts, impassioned conversation and “argument for the sake of heaven.” Yet there is a time for emotions that lie too deep for words. The sound of the shofar breaks through the carapace of the self-justifying mind and touches us directly, at the most primal level of our being. On the meaning of the shofar of Rosh HaShana there are two radically different interpretations. The first is that of Rabbi Abahu in the Talmud: “The Holy One, blessed be He, said: Blow before Me a ram’s horn that I may remember for you the binding of Isaac, son of Abraham, and I shall account it to you as if you had bound yourself before Me” (Rosh HaShana 16a). The shofar recalls the ram, caught in a thicket by its horns, sacrificed in Isaac’s place. In this view the shofar is a cry from earth to heaven, from us to God. It represents Jewish faithfulness and sacrifice. For millennia Jews suffered for their faith yet, for the most part, they did not abandon it. The shofar, Rabbi Abahu is suggesting, is a way of saying, “Master of the Universe, we may have faults and failings, but we stayed true to You and to our covenant with You. We come before You with a history that began with Abraham and Isaac’s lonely ordeal. Forgive us for the sake of our ancestors’ suffering, loyally and willingly endured.” Maimonides gives the opposite interpretation: “Even though the blowing of the shofar on Rosh HaShana is a scriptural decree, nonetheless it contains an allusion, as if to say: Wake, sleepers, from your sleep, and slumberers wake from your slumbers. Examine your deeds and turn in teshuva. Remember your Creator, you who forget the truth in the vanities of time, spending the year in vanity and emptiness that neither helps nor saves. Look to your souls and improve your ways and deeds” (Maimonides, Laws of Repentance 3:4). In this alternate view the shofar is not a cry from earth to heaven, but a call from heaven to earth, God’s call to us to return to Him. Both views are true. In the tekia, the powerful clarion, we hear God’s call to us. In the terua, the broken tones of weeping, we hear our ancestors’ tears. On Rosh HaShana the primary sound is the terua, for that is how the Torah names the day. It is “the day of the terua” (Num. 29:1) or “the remembrance of the terua” (Lev. 23:24). On the basis of Judges 5:28, the sages understood terua to be the sound of weeping, as the mother of Sisera wept when her son failed to return from battle. There was a doubt as to whether this was a sigh (three broken notes, known as shevarim) or a sob (nine short notes, which we call terua) or both (shevarim-terua) combined. To avoid any possibility of error, we sound all three, each preceded and followed by the long, plain note called a tekia. Rav Hai Gaon explained that the practice arose not because of doubt but because different communities had different customs, and our current practice encompasses them all. The Torah mentions terua three times, twice in connection with Rosh HaShana and once in the context of the Yom Kippur of the jubilee year (Lev. 25:9). For that reason we blow each combination of notes three times. Originally the shofar was sounded in the morning service, on the principle that “the zealous perform commands at the earliest possible opportunity.” However, a tragic event happened during the Mishnaic period. Roman soldiers heard the shofar being blown at daybreak and thought that Jews were being summoned to do battle. They mounted an attack and many Jews died. Thereafter it was ruled that the shofar be blown at a later stage in the day, during Musaf, by which time it would be clear that the gathering was only for prayer (Rosh HaShana 32b). The shofar is sounded, during the Leader’s Repetition, at each of the three central blessings of the Musaf Amida: the passages relating to Kingship, Remembrances and Shofar. A further complete cycle of thirty notes was introduced before Musaf, though it is the notes sounded in Musaf that constitute the main fulfillment of the command. Some (notably Hasidim) have the custom of blowing shofar during the silent Amida also. Many have the custom, at the conclusion of Musaf, of completing a hundred notes. The end of each cycle is marked by an extended blast, the tekia gedola. There were differing views as to what constitutes the mitzva of shofar. Is it to blow (in which case the toke’a is fulfilling the command on our behalf) or is it to listen (in which case we all fulfill the command equally)? In the end, the consensus was that the command is to listen, and this is reflected in the blessing: “Who has commanded us to listen to the sound of the shofar” – meaning, to hear it with the intention of fulfilling the command. If the primary command is listening, we can understand it more deeply. Fundamental to Judaism was its revolutionary insistence that God cannot be seen. The pagans worshiped things and events that were visible: the sun, the stars, the rain, the sea, the earth – events and objects in nature. Judaism insisted that God transcends nature. God is invisible. Worshiping images is idolatry. Moses reminds the Israelites that at Sinai “You heard the sound of words, but saw no image; there was only a voice” (Deut. 4:12). As a result, listening is a fundamental category in Judaism, most powerfully expressed in the opening words of our most famous prayer: Shema Yisrael. Shema has a range of senses in biblical Hebrew: it means to hear, to listen, to understand, to internalize, and to respond in action. There is no equivalent word in contemporary English: the closest is the verb “to hearken.” When we say the first verse of the Shema we cover our eyes, as if turning from the world of sight to that of sound, no longer distracted by what our eyes can see, instead listening to the word, the voice, of God. One of the most remarkable features of biblical Hebrew is that, though the Torah contains 613 commands, there is no Hebrew word that means “to obey.” Modern Hebrew uses the word letzayet, which was originally Aramaic. Instead the Torah uses the word shema, meaning, to listen and respond. It is thus no accident that at the beginning of a new year, at the start of a holy period when we are called on to return to God – the God who is not an image but a voice, a summons, a call – we should begin with an act of pure listening to the wordless cry of the shofar, our call to God, His call to us. The ram’s horn reminds us of the binding of Isaac, when a ram caught in a thicket by its horns was offered instead (Gen. 22:13). Rabbi Ḥanina ben Dosa said: no part of that ram went to waste. Its ashes became the base of the inner altar. Its sinews were made into the strings of David’s harp. Its skin became the girdle of Elijah’s loins. Of its horns, one was heard at Sinai. The other is destined to be heard when the exiles are gathered in to the land of Israel, to fulfill the words of the prophet, “It shall come to pass on that day that a great shofar will be blown” (Isaiah 27:13), (Pirkei deRabbi Eliezer, 30). To be a Jew is to live between these memories and that hope. Rabbi Levi Yitzḥak of Berditchev told this story: Once a king was out hunting in a forest and became lost. He asked many people the way back to the palace but none could tell him. Finally he found a wise man who showed him the way and accompanied him. The king, wishing to reward the man, gave him high office and great wealth. Many years later the wise man sinned against the king, who became angry and threatened to send him for trial. The man knew that the judges would condemn him, so he begged to be allowed to come before the king in the clothes he wore on the day he first helped him. The king, seeing him in these clothes, remembered that day, his anger dissipated and he forgave him. So, said Levi Yitzḥak, are we on Rosh HaShana. We may have sinned before the King, but it was our ancestors who accepted the Torah. So we sound the shofar as it sounded on that day, as it is written “There was the sound of the shofar growing louder and louder” (Ex. 19:19), and we pray that God’s anger may dissipate and He will forgive us. (Kedushat Levi) One year, Rabbi Levi Yitzḥak of Berditchev interviewed a number of candidates for the blowing of the shofar for Rosh HaShana. “What will be your thoughts as you are blowing?” he asked each, but none of their answers satisfied him. Finally, one answered him thus: “Rabbi, I am a simple poor Jew. I have four daughters, none of whom is married, and I cannot afford dowries for them. When I blow the shofar I will be thinking, ‘Merciful One, I am fulfilling the commandments You have ordained. Give ear to the shofar sound beseeching You to fulfill Your obligation of providing dowries for my daughters.” The simple honesty of this man touched Levi Yitzḥak and he engaged him to blow the shofar. Once it happened in the days of Rabbi Abraham Isaac HaKohen Kook that a group of workers, under pressure to complete a building in one of the neighborhoods of Jerusalem, worked on Rosh HaShana. People living in the area sent word to Rabbi Kook, expecting him to order them immediately to stop. Instead he sent an emissary to blow shofar for the workers. They stopped working to listen. Some began to cry. When the blowing was completed, they decided of their own accord not to continue working on the holy day. Some ran home, changed their clothes, and went with the emissary to pray with the Rabbi. (Celebration of the Soul,* p. 41) *See R. Moshe Zvi Neriah, Celebration of the Soul: The Holidays in the Life and Thought of Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Kook, trans. Pesach Jaffe (Jerusalem: Genesis Jerusalem Press, 1992). In his early years Rabbi Kook would himself blow shofar, but in his later years, when the effort was too great, he would read out the order of the blasts and Rabbi David Cohen, “the Nazirite,” would blow. One year Zalman Shazar, later to become President of the State of Israel, visited Rav Kook during Elul and found the Rav and Rabbi David rehearsing the blowing for Rosh HaShana, together with the kavanot, the mystical meditations, that silently accompanied them. Shazar later told Rabbi David’s son, Rabbi She’ar Yashuv Cohen, Chief Rabbi of Haifa: “They both stood with closed eyes, Rav Kook reading out the sounds and Rabbi David blowing shofar. The blasts sounded as if they came from another world. I felt that I was hearing the shofar of redemption, the call of the shofar of Mashiach, which heralds the ingathering of the exiles. I was shaken to the roots of my soul, and will never forget that experience.” (Celebration of the Soul, p. 38)