The sound of the shofar is like white light, which, when passed through a prism, is refracted into infinite shades of color. We, the Jews hearing the shofar, are like that prism. We refract the pure sound of the shofar into colors that illuminate our individual souls.
Permit me to share some of the shades of meaning that the shofar sound has elicited within my own soul. All of us change over time and therefore the meaning of the sound of the shofar changes over time. However, there is one meaning of the shofar that overwhelms me every Rosh Hashanah, transcending the changes in my life. That meaning is silence. The piercing sound is met by an an inability to move beyond the sound, to give it any articulated meaning at all. Perhaps the message, most paradoxical, is this: Quiet. Stillness. The limitation of words, be they uttered or in the mind.
Sometimes, the meaning of the shofar is this: “I, G-d, offer you no message, only an undifferentiated (if rhythmic) sound. It is up to you to formulate the message for your life, to put into your own words the goals and the repairs that are incumbent upon you. I, G-d, can only compel you, through the wordless sound of the shofar, to articulate what you need to do. I provide the sound. You provide the message.”
Sometimes, the meaning of the shofar is this: Wake up. Pay attention. Cease your force of habit, look at the rut into which you have fallen. Perhaps it is a rut of doing good things. No matter. You can do better. What finer rationalization not to try to do better than to defend yourself by trotting out all of the good things you do? The sound of the shofar is relentless: Grow. Aspire. Look higher.
Sometimes the meaning of the shofar is embarrassment. The shofar tells me that I have found the way to rationalize my failures, but I can do so only with words. The shofar says: My sounds do not admit words. By robbing you of speech, I compel you to reject your rationalizing ways and face the error of your ways.
Sometimes, the meaning of the shofar is just the opposite. It inspires me with optimism that difficult moments are behind me, or that weaknesses will no longer plague me. The sound of the shofar fills me with hope.
Sometimes, the meaning of the shofar is a singularity of focus, just as the sound of the shofar is a singular communication. Sometimes, the shofar compels me to focus not on my life in all of its refracted colors, but only on one color. One source of pain. One single failure. One overwhelming challenge.
Sometimes, the sound of the shofar elicits, simply, fear. Can I get through the judgment of Rosh Hashanah unscathed? Can I focus? Can I change?
Can I do better?
Sometimes, the sound of the shofar is a distraction — an exercise in the memory of shofar sounds of years past, a comparison of the timbre, sharpness, length and smoothness of this year’s shofar sounds compared to those of years past. Sometimes, this superficial listening burrow deeper. It resummons in my mind’s eye the friends, mentors and beautiful moments associated with the different synagogues in which I have heard the varied sounds of the shofar over the course of my life.
Sometimes, the shofar sounds interweave all of these different meanings: silence, words, aspiration, embarrassment, hope, focus, fear, distraction, memory. All of them have colored my life from Denver to Berkeley, New York, Boston, Jerusalem, Atlanta, Santa Fe, and back to Denver again.
Tekiah . . .
Rabbi Hillel Goldberg can be reached at [email protected].
