Blow, Gabriel, Blow

The climactic moment in the service for the High Holidays is, of course, the blowing of the shofar. It happens three times on each day of Rosh ha-Shanah, and once at the conclusion of Yom Kippur. This year things will be a tiny bit different, since the first day of the holidays will take place on Shabbat and the shofar is traditionally set aside.

Part of the excitement is the element of surprise. In a traditional synagogue, instrumental music is forbidden, a custom that took root after the destruction of the Second Temple. The idea here is that music is the concomitant of joy, and true joy is no longer possible without the Temple. Many congregations have set aside this standard, with the result that services are livelier and more propulsive. Gregorian chant is mysteriously beautiful, rooted in the purity of the human voice, but I’ll take the combination of guitar and keyboard.

But imagine what it’s like to hear the shofar for a traditionalist. It suddenly throws open the doors of heaven, the sonic key to a resistant lock. It’s the horn of a ram, raw and unadorned, and yet the sound is sometimes otherworldly and transforming. Even when it is blown badly by a failed practitioner, the effort itself is somehow moving. I have heard shofar blasts that were simply unproductive breaths, and yet they helped me recall that the dream of atonement is possible, that our seriousness of purpose can rebalance the universe.

So it goes in the middle of the High Holidays, but I remind us all that there is a larger context. Unlike the eating of matzah on Passover, which is set apart as an isolated act, the better to savor its taste and texture when the first night of the holiday finally arrives, shofar blowing has an elaborate prelude. In the Ashkenazic world of European Jews, the shofar is blown every morning for the thirty days prior to Rosh ha-Shanah. This is the period of Selichot, the penitential prayers that serve as a kind of liturgical gateway.

It’s as if to say that once is insufficient. Failure requires heroic effort. Errors of judgment may take years to repair. Many of us thought that we’d bring the messiah by a single nation-wide No Kings rally, a letter to the editor, a vote in a primary. But one blast on the shofar—man or woman, adult or child—is never enough to tip the scales. At the very best, it accompanies a commitment to change, the hint of a realization that something is amiss and that we need to turn our energies to repair and restoration.

Every day, I hear smart people say that it will take years to rectify the damage of this decade, the depravity that has taken hold at all levels of government, the sickness of the courts, the self-erasure of the Congress. Those smart, sensible people are absolutely right, but they are already putting their lips to the shofar. I do not ask for rapid transformation, for the immediate unlocking of the gates of heaven, but the privilege of holding a ram’s horn in my hand. However long it takes, that’s what’s required. If not for me, then for my children after me. And after them, until the end of time.