The Shofar's blast: an abrupt, tragic realization

By Rabbi Avi Billet

Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik recounted a personal episode that took place shortly after his wife passed away.

As the rain and wind blew through the window of his room, half-awake, Rabbi Soloveitchik jumped to close the window. He thought his wife was sleeping downstairs; the window had been left open, and were it to remain open, in her weakened condition she might catch pneumonia.

He ran downstairs, rushed into the room and shut the window. Turning around to see whether she had awoken, “I found the room empty, the couch where she slept neatly covered.”

His wife had passed away the previous month.

“The most tragic and frightening experience was the shock that I encountered in that half second when I turned from the window to find the room empty. I was certain that a few hours earlier I had been speaking with her, and that at about 10 o’clock she had said good night and retired to her room. I could not understand why the room was empty,” Rabbi Soloveitchik wrote.

The shofar on Rosh Hashana is meant to be a wake up call. It is meant to remind us of where we were last year, what we’ve done since then, where we are today, and of our renewed commitments for the coming year.

According to Rabbi Soloveitchik “the required response to the shofar is the abrupt, tragic realization that the false assumptions upon which we built our lives have come crashing before our eyes.”

The wakeup call is meant to say, “Jew! How far have you strayed from your connection with God? How have you allowed all the material and trivial pursuits to consume your existence?”

We do not know how to express remorse or regret over our inadequacies. Even the chazzan who leads the service cannot find the right words; they are given to him in the form of the “Hi’n’ni” prayer, through which he describes himself as a pauper of deeds who is unworthy of representing the congregation. (It’s nice to say it along with him - he’s not the only one pretending to be something he is not.)

Rabbi Soloveitchik asks, why does the story of the pagan mother of the general Sisera crying over her son who has not returned from the battlefield form the basis for our hearing 100 blasts from the shofar on Rosh Hashana (based on Tosafot in Rosh Hashana 33b)?

He answers that the shofar must cause us to experience a similar emotion. “We must witness our own illusions being relentlessly shattered,” Rabbi Soloveitchik explained.

The Jerusalem Talmud Rosh Hashana (Chapter 1, page 57 Halakha 3) describes the reason for a custom to wear white on Rosh Hashana: a confidence that we have coming into the court room of the Almighty.

Whether one actually wears white or actually has such confidence, the fact of the matter is that Rosh Hashana is such a serious day, that even though we remind ourselves it is the Judgment Day (Yom HaDin), and the Day of Remembrance (Yom HaZikaron), we need the shofar to wake us up regardless because in our human imperfection, we still don’t “get it.”

New Year’s resolutions don’t work. Commitments to change don’t usually last more than 10 minutes past Rosh Hashana or Yom Kippur.

Yet we come back every year to hear the shofar, hoping we will finally be moved and inspired to move on to the next stage of our lives and Jewish experiences.

Let us try an experiment this year. We only have one chance because the shofar will only be sounded on Sunday.

Let us experience the shofar like we never have before. Instead of thinking about how good the shofar blower is (or is not), let us be grateful that he can get 100 blasts out of the shofar.

And now we can focus on how the sound of the shofar is meant to remind us of our own inadequacies

When we hear the shofar, let us think for a moment about how it shatters our dreams. Let us think for a moment, that as wonderful as we are, we could be better. Let us think for a moment, that as much as we do, we could be doing more. Let us think for a moment, that even the greatest confidence can benefit from a little bit of healthy “what if”-ing.

The shofar is there to remind us. Hopefully we will hear and heed the call.