What happens when you hear an alarm? Does your world narrow into the urgency of now and its attendant worries? Does your world expand as you open your eyes to a new day with new possibilities? Do you do your best to hit snooze until another alarm sounds?
This past week, my son begged me to let him take a shofar (a ram’s horn) to school so that he could blow it each morning for the Hebrew month of Elul that had just begun. It is one of his favorite times of year, a time to get ready for Rosh HaShanah (the Jewish New Year) and a time to demonstrate leadership in his Jewish day school. What I love about his enthusiasm is that he gets better at sounding the notes each year, and he also gets better within each year from the start of the month to the end. Can you think of a better metaphor for starting learning in school than having to practice something and returning to it to gain mastery?
One of the most moving teachings about the shofar that I have heard looks at the openings on each end. The mouthpiece is small and relies on our ability to fill the space with our lips to make a sound; the other end is open wide, emitting vibrant sounds. The shofar cannot make sound the other way. The call of the shofar literally goes from narrowness to expansiveness.
Alarms have been ringing for eleven months in Israel and Gaza and, as a result, around the world. Those alarms have narrowed the world, literally and figuratively. I have found myself pulled into many conversations and experiences where all I want is to withdraw into a small, safe space. And, I have also heard the alarms as a call to engage in hard conversations–careful listening and careful articulation–to expand the possibilities for others caught in constraints. It is exhausting.
So, when I hear the shofar calling to me to prepare my soul for the New Year, I honestly do not know what more I can do. And the shofar calls day after day. I hear its blast cry out; I hear its three-part note break; and I hear its staccato nine notes shatter. And then I hear the great blast go on and on until the person blowing can blow no longer. That is when I realize that it is not that I have more to do; it is that I also have to feel.
We are meant to take this season as a time of repentance and return. That work is too often made out to be about some idealized sense of ourselves. The shofar calls us, though, not to some ideal but rather to who we actually are. It asks us to root ourselves, to return to our experiences, and to find a path forward that acknowledges our narrowness and our expansiveness. The sound of the shofar is a model for the sound of our soul vibrating. We are each our own alarm. Can we hear that different alarm? I pray that this year, we find a way to hear our own and each other’s souls with all their calls.
About Rabbi Jeremy Winaker
Rabbi Jeremy Winaker is the executive director of the Greater Philadelphia Hillel Network, responsible for West Chester University, Haverford, Bryn Mawr, and other area colleges. He is the former head of school at the Albert Einstein Academy in Wilmington and was the senior Jewish educator at the Kristol Hillel Center at the University of Delaware for four years. Rabbi Winaker lives in Delaware with his wife and three children.
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