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<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:85%;">(Hat tip to my daughter Shifra, who made this point the centerpiece of her speech at her bas mitzvah celebration.)</span><br /><br />Halachically, a <span style="font-style: italic;">shofar </span>must be a simple instrument. If it has a crack or anything that might shape the note, it is invalid. A cow's horn, which is layered and therefore not a <span style="font-style: italic;">shofar</span> but a <span style="font-style: italic;">shefarferet</span>, is not usable for the mitzvah. It has no keys, no valves, no strings to tune.<br /><br />And yet from an aggadic perspective, the sound of the <span style="font-style: italic;">shofar</span> is quite complex:<br /><br /><ol><li>We associate the <span style="font-style: italic;">shofar</span> with crying. We blow 100 sounds because Sisera's mother cried 100 times when learning her son (off to war against the Jews) was killed and would not return. There is a dispute whether the broken sound required by the Torah is more like <span style="font-style: italic;">yelulei yalal</span> (uneven wailing) or <span style="font-style: italic;">genunei ganach</span> (sobbing), so we blow both the <span style="font-style: italic;">teru'ah</span> and the <span style="font-style: italic;">shevarim</span>, as well as the two together as a pair.<br /><br /></li><li>The <span style="font-style: italic;">shofar</span> is also a royal sound. "With trumpets and the sound of a <span style="font-style: italic;">shofar</span>, call out before the King. The mishnah describes Hashem as saying, "Call before Me with the blast of the Shofar - to show that you accept of Me as your King." In the same way they blow trumpets to announce that the king or queen is entering the room, we blow Shofar on Rosh haShanah to announce a new year of Hashem's rule.<br /><br /></li><li>The <span style="font-style: italic;">shofar</span> is used by the army, to alert the troops that it's time to break camp and go off to war. Similarly, in the desert, they also blew shofar to tell everyone it was time to move each time the <span style="font-style: italic;">Benei Yisrael</span> broke camp. Rav Hirsch explains the <i>shofar</i> of Rosh haShanah similarly. It is a warning to get ready, to stop what we were doing all last year and do something new and better this one.<br /><br /></li><li>Then there are the historical reminicences associated with the <i>shofar</i>:<br /><ul><li>The horn of the ram that Avraham found when told not to sacrifice Yitzchaq at the <span style="font-style: italic;">aqeidah</span>.<br /></li><li>The sound of the <span style="font-style: italic;">shofar</span> heard during the revelation at Mount Sinai.</li></ul></li>These might be additional meanings, or they might derive from the previous ones.</ol>We are required that <span style="font-style: italic;">shofar </span>be something that looks simple at first, and yet what it says to us is complicated. A shofar expresses many different emotions at once. If you just look at it without spending real time, you miss the whole thing!<br /><br />This in itself is an important lesson of the <span style="font-style: italic;">shofar</span>, one critical to prioritizing our lives and to <span style="font-style: italic;">teshuvah</span>: If we rush through life, everything looks trivial. It is only when we take the time to look deeper do we see the real beauty within.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">(In addtion Shifra linked this notion to learning a similar lesson while volunteering every Shabbos to help a mother with two autistic sons. Autistic people seem like they are in their own worlds, not feeling much, not relating to the rest of us. Only if </span><span style="font-size:85%;">you take the time to see through the shell to the child trapped inside can y</span><span style="font-size:85%;">ou get to know them and the beauty of their souls.)</span><br /></div> <br /><br />--<br><font color="gray" size="2">Posted by micha to <a href="http://www.aishdas.org/asp/2006/09/simplicity-of-shofar_115799402939660910.shtml">Aspaqlaria</a> at 9/11/2006 12:27:00 PM</font></body></html>