With the New Year beginning this week, we’ll take a deeper look at one of its most distinctive symbols and sounds: the shofar.In just a few hours, we will stand together as the shofar is sounded throughout what is known as the Shofar Service. As we turn to the themes of shofarot (the sounds), malchuyot (God’s sovereignty), and zichronot (memory), we repeat one phrase: HaYom Harat Olam. Today, we proclaim, the world is born. On Rosh Hashanah, we celebrate the very moment of creation; it is a moment of birth, of bursting, of pain and joy. In fact, there is a teaching that likens the sound of the shofar on this day to the cries of a woman in labor. Birth is joyous, usually, but it is also messy and painful and profoundly difficult. So too is life, so too is this world.My colleague and the campus rabbi at my alma mater Northwestern University, Rabbi Jessica Lott, wrote a beautiful piece about [...]

As we prepare to enter the New Year tonight, we enter with renewed prayers of peace and safety for our friends and family in Israel, as well as those defending the country.With the New Year beginning this week, we’ll take a deeper look at one of its most distinctive symbols and sounds: the shofar.Like so much in our tradition, ancient teachings about the shofar are timeless—and feel particularly relevant for this moment. Turning again to Maimonides, I want to offer this teaching as we prepare to welcome the New Year tonight. In his Mishneh Torah, he reflects on what, exactly, the Torah is describing when it talks about the teruah the sounds of the shofar.This Teruah that the Torah discusses… we are unsure what it is. It may be the wail that women wail amongst themselves while crying. It may be the sigh that one does, one after the other, whilst they are worried about a great stress. [...]

With the New Year beginning this week, we’ll take a deeper look at one of its most distinctive symbols and sounds: the shofar. Since it is the season of such—I will start with a confession. Even as I wrote it, I knew that yesterday’s Daily Kavanah contained a mistruth—or at least a misstatement. When I wrote about the shofar sounding for the first time tomorrow night—that was not true. The tradition says that we are to sound—or hear—the shofar every day of the month of Elul (other than Shabbatot) except for tomorrow. Many mystical explanations are given for the extended period of shofar blowing, but the one that has always resonated with me is the one that originates with Maimonides—not a mystic! Of the sounding of the shofar, Maimonides famously writes: Wake up, sleepers, from your sleep! And slumberers, arise from your slumber! Search your ways and return in teshuvah and remember your Creator! Those who forget the Truth amidst the futility of [...]

For our Biblical ancestors, the sounding of the shofar was the central mitzvah—obligation—of what came to be known as Rosh Hashanah. Apples and honey, God on the throne of judgment, round challah, and a birthday of the world all came later. The Torah teaches, simply: וּבַחֹ֨דֶשׁ הַשְּׁבִיעִ֜י בְּאֶחָ֣ד לַחֹ֗דֶשׁ מִֽקְרָא־קֹ֙דֶשׁ֙ יִהְיֶ֣ה לָכֶ֔ם כל־מְלֶ֥אכֶת עֲבֹדָ֖ה לֹ֣א תַעֲשׂ֑וּ י֥וֹם תְּרוּעָ֖ה יִהְיֶ֥ה לָכֶֽם׃ In the seventh month, on the first day of the month, you shall observe a sacred occasion: you shall not work at your occupations. You shall observe it as a day when the horn is sounded. This is not the only time in Torah, or in our tradition, when we are commanded to sound the shofar. Saadia Gaon, the great 9th century philosopher, identifies ten ancient occasions when the shofar was used. According to his teaching, we were to sound the shofar to announce Creation and the Revelation at Mount Sinai; we needed to hear it to call [...]