There are more dignified ways to spend one of the most solemn mornings of the Jewish year than red-faced and perspiring, desperately attempting to wrestle a noise out of a particularly recalcitrant appendage of a long-dead animal beneath the searching gaze of several hundred pairs of eyes. Alas, this year, for the first time in my life, I was not spared such indignities. I had agreed—at rather short notice, might I add—to serve as the baal toke’a, the man charged with sounding the shofar (ram's horn) on behalf of the congregation during the morning services of Rosh Hashanah.
Despite how it might appear in the pews or on the big screen, such a responsibility is far from ornamental. The shofar is no charming liturgical flourish, added to the day because some bearded authorities decided that a long service could only be improved by the intermittent honking of livestock. Biblically speaking, the blast is the central observance of Rosh Hashanah. The day itself is called Yom Teru'ah, the day of sounding, of blasting, of crying out. Much of what we now heap upon the occasion, including reams of liturgy concerning repentance, judgement, and even the coronation of God as king of the universe, is a later overlay upon one starkly physical command: take a ram's horn, and make it wail.
Lest you, dear reader, be under any illusions, understand that the instrument in my hands was not the sort of miniature, handheld shofar generally seen in a Judaica store, or else brandished about the house by a pious child with insufficiently watchful parents. This one was enormous: a heavy, curved, keratinous trumpet, the illegitimate offspring of a vuvuzela and a cricket bat. There was something frankly zoological about it—as well there might be, given that a Kosher shofar must be the horn of an actual animal. Given the dimensions of this specimen, one can only conclude that its original proprietor had done rather well for himself in the evolutionary tournament, impressing ewes, terrifying rivals, and siring a string of mammoth-horned offspring, right up until he met his final shofar-maker.
Shofar, 20th c. (Source: Jewish Museum)
