The Sounds of the Shofar
Thoughts on Rosh HaShanah 2019
Click here to view as PDF
The Jewish nation
has long been referred to as “The People of the Book.” For good reason. After
all, God instructed that the many covenants and experiences underwent by Am
Yisrael be eternalized as written words in the form of Torah. “Other
religions had holy places, holy times, and holy people,” R. Jonathan Sacks
wrote, but “Judaism was the first faith to focus on holy words, on a book and
its power to transform the lives of those who learn and live its teachings.”[1]
It is fitting,
then, that our tradition consistently insists on “the word” in its various
practices. Devotional prayer finds a home beyond the contemplative heart and
mind – in the spoken words of the siddur. Thought upon the words of
Torah is similarly insufficient, as we instead gather for its public reading
three times a week and on holidays.[2]
Sounding the shofar on Rosh HaShanah, however, is altogether different.
By characterizing Rosh HaShanah as a yom teru’ah – “a day of trumpeting”
(Bemidbar 29:1), the Torah hinted at the uniqueness of this day. Instructing us
to part ways with speech, the Torah prescribed a day that is dominated by the wordless
sounds of the shofar. Why?
Consider, in this
context, the perplexing statement of Ramban that “the whole Torah is names of
God.” He explained that closing the gaps in between words and sentences and
reading the letters of the Torah in a single flourish – as one long word – reveals
an entirely incoherent name of the Divine.[3]
Scholars have long pondered the significance of this cryptically “meaningless”
reading of the Torah.[4]
Contemporary thinker David Gelernter, however, suggested: “It captures the
conviction that there is more to the text than just its sense. The extra
ingredient is holiness. And you can see sanctity better when you blank out the
distraction of meaning.”[5]
Ironically, the text reaches this particular depth by means of an initial
rendering of its words “meaningless.”
The “meaningless”
sounds of the shofar present a similar possibility. R. Yehuda Amital
wrote: “The sound of the shofar expresses more than one can convey in
words.”[6]
David Gelernter similarly explained that the “territory of the shofar”
is the territory beyond language.[7]
The cries of the shofar signify our transition from the realm of
confined definition into one of unconstricted potential.
The sounds of the shofar
are unsolicited invitations to all who hear them. They beckon us to listen
closely, encouraging us to courageously determine the meaning of those
mysterious sounds as they pertain to our lives. Hearing the shofar, each
member of the am yod’ei terua, “nation who knows the trumpeting”
(Tehilim 89:16), is given a personal key. Grabbing hold of that key, we are
tasked with unlocking the meaning of those voiceless cries for ourselves.
The unique nature
of the shofar manifests itself in another context, as well. The Torah’s
mandate to sound the shofar on Rosh HaShanah is different than all
its other commandments. Whereas the Torah accompanies its command of various
active missvot with a description of their background and meaning – why
men don tefillin every morning, why we sit in the sukkah on
Sukkot, etc. – there is nary a textual hint regarding the purpose or meaning of
the shofar.
But there is, to be
sure, a long history of sounding the shofar in our tradition. The Shofarot
section of Musaf on Rosh HaShanah bears mention of the shofar’s
blasts at Har Sinai and those that will sound at the coming of Mashiah.
Paradoxically, the calls of the shofar represent both the crowning moment
of our nation’s past as well as its anticipated future. “Not only the infinite
past but also the infinite future,” R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik wrote, “that
future in which there gleams the reflection of the image of eternity, also the
splendor of the eschatological vision, arise out of the present moment,
fleeting as a dream.”[8]
The cries of the shofar, then, transcend not only a world of words, but one
of time as well. What is the significance of a reality that exists “above
time”?
Of the many case studies
written by the great neurologist Oliver Sacks, “The Lost Mariner” remains a
classic. It is the story of Jimmie G., the man suffering from retrograde
amnesia, who met with Dr. Sacks in the mid-1970’s. Sacks described Jimmie G. as
“isolated in a single moment of being.” Unable to retain any memory after 1945,
he lived with “a moat or lacuna of forgetting all round him.” Troubled by his
patient’s sorry state of life, Sacks then wrote in his notes, “He is man
without a past or future, stuck in a constantly changing, meaningless moment.”
Uncertain about the
proper treatment for this patient, Dr. Sacks sought the advice of his mentor,
the Russian neuropsychologist A.R. Luria. “There is little or no hope of any
recovery in his memory,” Luria wrote to Sacks, “But a man does not consist of
memory alone. He has feeling, will, sensibilities, moral being – matters of
which neuropsychology cannot speak.” The people who surrounded Jimmie G.,
however, were unsure. They spoke about him as a “lost soul,” an individual
whose soul was tragically claimed by disease. But then Sacks began to observe
his patient outside of the office, in several different contexts: at prayer in
the chapel, listening to music, and outdoors gardening. He found an altogether
different personality in these contexts, observing that Jimmie G. then
“absorbed in an act, an act of his whole being, which carried feeling and
meaning in an organic continuity and unity.”
Oliver Sacks
discovered in Jimmie G. a reality wherein one transcends the constrictions of
“spatial time,” and enters into an “intentional time.” It is a realm that parts
ways from cognition and mental understanding, and is governed instead by
emotions and spirituality. And although this realm is rendered incoherent by
empirical science, Sacks importantly learned, “empiricism takes no account of
the soul, no account of what constitutes and determines personal being.” [9]
The wordless cry of
the shofar opens our hearts and minds to reveal what it says to us.
Transcending the confines of words, traditional intellect and time, listening
to the sounds of the shofar inspires a uniquely personal experience for
each individual. It is our brush with transcendence, offering us the
opportunity to intuit its message to our particular lives. Don’t miss it!
[1] R. Jonathan Sacks, “Foreword,” Books of the
People (New Milford, CT, 2017), pg. xiii.
[2] Shulhan Arukh accordingly
ruled that one need not recited a birkat ha-torah upon mere thoughts of
Torah, see Orah Hayim 47:4 and Biur HaGra ad. loc.
[3] Commentary of Ramban to the
Torah (Makhon Yerushalayim, Jerusalem, IS, 2006), pg. 7. See, as
well, Responsa of Radva”z vol. 3 (siman elef 68).
[4] See, most, recently R. Aharon
Lichtenstein’s comments in R. Chaim Sabbato’s In Quest of Your Presence:
Conversations with Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein (Tel Aviv, IS, 2011), pg.
43-44.
[5] David Gelernter, Judaism: A
Way of Being (Grand Rapids, MI, 2009), pg. 80. Cf. Moshe Hallamish’s An
Introduction to the Kabbalah (New York, NY, 1999), pg. 212-213, regarding talmud
Torah without comprehension.
[6] R. Yehuda Amital, When God is Near: On the
High Holidays (New Milford, CT, 2015), pg. 76.
[7] A Way of Being, pg. 73.
[8] R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man
(Philadelphia, PA, 1983), pg. 113.
[9] Oliver Sacks, “The Lost Mariner,” in The Man
Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales (New York, NY,
1998), pg. 23-42.