ROSH HASHANAH 5787 SECTION D, PAGE 23
As the sacred days of Rosh Hashanah approach, there’s a perceptible change in the air.
Once the Jerusalem breeze begins lingering, I can almost smell the approaching Days of Awe. Snippets of the selichot penitential prayers and the wail of the shofar are carried by this breeze.
Slip-ups that have felt inevitable, minor or even nonchalant come into sharper focus, seen now through the sepia lens of the reflective Days of Awe.
Like Abraham and Isaac’s ram caught in the thicket, flashbacks of when we were jammed and mired in our own thickets of disappointments, mistakes or wrong turns come into sharper relief. They time-travel swiftly, reawakening from our repressed pasts, making themselves known, with a bolt.
Like the shofar shattered those walls of Jericho long ago, the piercing shofar staccato and long wails puncturing the peaceful air charge it with an intensity and urgency, still managing to bring walls tumbling down — walls we have built around our own hearts, memory or souls.
Broken and whole. Broken and whole. So the shofar sounds go.
Broken, for the parts of us that have indeed broken. And whole — the shofar’s long flowing sound for that part of us that stayed moored, or can possibly be moored once again, in a kind of broken wholeness.
That oscillation.
In between the broken chords, and the whole uninterrupted one, that’s where much of our heart lies.
Those shofar blasts conclude with that one long everlasting sound that feels like it is touching eternity. Anchoring and re-mooring us in something more whole, more hopeful, filled with possibility.
A recovery of sorts, from the shattering wordless cries, whose texts are the brief, incomplete staccato thoughts engraved on each of our hearts and minds, as the pained broken sounds envelop us.
Then — the long blast, soothing.
I can’t remember the year it was, when I walked home from shul on Rosh Hashanah, a dark starry night with the sliver of the moon floating above, and it struck me. That thin arc, bow-like glowing moon, almost resembled the crescent-like bow of the shofar.
For a moment, it felt like one and the same.
Like the compass of these days, it was floating in the dark canopy of the twinkling Rosh Hashanah night sky above me, guiding, shining, uplifting.
Like that waned moon, which two weeks hence will gleam in its fullness, bathing us in its luminescent light, we too have waxed and waned — and waxed again.
While we might have been caught in a thicket or two, more than what we would have wanted, the sounds of the shofar, like a full glowing moon, rescue us.
The spiritual, emotional, logistical terrain we walked this past year lives within us, re-emerging stronger in its memory now, as the extraneous blocking layers somehow peel away. The sounds of the shofar invite us in.
Each year, as Rosh Hashanah moors and re-moors us, as we confront limitations, as we navigate disappointments and hope, as we feel grateful for the blessings we have been given, we want more within this spiritual mooring.
One more year.
“Katveinu l’chaim.” Write us for life! Each of us, and for those we love.
We pray to be granted the blessing of beginning anew, of receiving yet again the challenges and opportunities of life.
Each Rosh Hashanah, there are more caught-in-the-thicket moments that arrive, be they my own, or of people who are dear to me, or of others who are in my orbit and may be struggling.
Each Rosh Hashanah, the understanding of just how fragile this life of ours is only deepens.
With it, that raw weeping sound of the shofar feels like it moors me, even if only momentarily, into eternity.
On each Rosh Hashanah, without knowing what the coming year will bring, within that uncertainty we are certain of one thing: With pray for another year. We want to be written in the book of life.
Another year. Another chapter.
As I keep my eye on that magical Rosh Hashanah sky, with that shofar-esque crescent moon floating above, I wish each and everyone of you, dear readers, to be inscribed in the book of life. L’chaim tovim. For a good, sweet, good news-bearing year, up ahead.
For now, that Jerusalem night air permeated by the call of selichot, of penitential prayers, beckons.
© IJN 2026
