There’s a children’s song sung frequently around this time of year that many of us will recognize:

“I like to hear the shofar blast,
Sometimes slow and sometimes fast…
I like to hear the shofar blast,
Happy, happy, happy new year!”

It captures the joy of hearing the shofar through the eyes of a child—playful, fun, a little silly even. For most of my life, that’s how the shofar has felt here in America—a sound we anticipated each fall with delight, a joyous reminder that another year has arrived. Music for celebration, not alarm.

But our tradition tells us that the shofar was sounded for a number of reasons, not all of them festive or delightful. It was an alarm in times of danger, a summons to battle, a cry of brokenness, a trembling before judgment. For Maimonides, for example, the message of the shofar was simple and urgent:

Awake, you slumberers, from your sleep—

עוּרוּ יְשֵׁנִים מִשְּׁנַתְכֶם

For many decades in America at least, we remained in this childlike mode. The world felt safe. There was no real cause for alarm, no need to sound the shofar in self-defense or as a call to battle. But in these past months and years, with rising antisemitism, global conflict, and uncertainty here at home and in our homeland as well, the shofar’s sounds land differently. Tekiah is still majestic, but it also demands our attention. Shevarim is the sigh of a fractured people, hearts broken for our hostages and their families, for the victims of 10/7, for all of the innocents suffering because of this terrible war. Teruah is the wail of alarm, reminding us that history’s dangers are never as distant as we might wish.

As we approach the Days of Awe, I wonder how we might hold both of these meanings together at the very same time: the carefree and playful shofar of our childhood—joyful and exuberant. We have to find a way to continue to celebrate and experience the joys of Judaism. And, sadly, we must sound the shofar of adulthood—serious, urgent, insistent, the shofar that makes us tremble before God in spiritual and even mortal fear. One shofar reminds us of innocence, the other of responsibility.

May this Shabbat give us strength to listen deeply, to hear both the sweetness and the warning, and to respond with courage and compassion.
Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Yoshi