When the shofar calls, what do you hear?
What do you hear when the shofar blows? It's Rosh Hashanah soon, the Jewish New Year, and though it is a mitzvah to hear the shofar at this time, there is no corresponding commandment about how its tones should be perceived.
The shofar calls, but to what? Our better selves? The parts of our lives we want to change in the New Year?
Each year like a klezmer clarinet solo that suddenly hits me with a new meaning, I find new meaning in this ancient instrument's call.
On Rosh Hashanah, a few years ago, all the tekiyah's and terua's made me think of global warming; the ice breaking and cracking, and our fragile relationship with the earth. It occurred to me that one day, if we don't take our stewardship of the earth seriously, even the creatures whose horns we use to produce this Jewish New Year sound, will not be able to thrive.
This year, as my wife, who blows the shofar in our small congregation, practices the different calls in our living room, I begin to hear a different tone; a blast to the right.
Maybe my perspective was influenced by watching an MSNBC interview with Louisiana Congressman John Fleming, whose investments bring in over six million yearly. In response to a question about what he would do if he had to pay more in taxes, he complained that after expenses he only had $200,000 a year to feed his family.
While my wife practiced, here's what I heard:
Tekiyah--hearing the shrill call sharpened my awareness of those who go without. Over 38 million Americans live in poverty. 
Why haven't I really heard this before? With my vote, what am I going to do about it? The current popular answer from corners of the congregation seems to be, "do nothing." But does that response live up to the shofar's call?
When the Torah commands, "You shall not oppress a poor or destitute hired laborer," our basic communal social contract between workers and management comes to mind. As I listened to my wife practicing the tekiyah again and again, I wondered if this Rosh Hashanah, when many in the Jewish community were nursing their own diminished resources, if this age old contract was literally being blown away.
Teruah-- I heard nine quick short bursts searing my ears as a call to action for economic justice. This year in Madison, Wisconsin, I heard a rabbi blow the shofar to end a rally for the rights of state and public workers, and that sound changed my hearing. Now when I hear the shofar, I remember those faces and wonder how in the near future will they put meals on the table?
Shevarim--three blasts rising in tone. My first inclination, upon hearing the shofar, was to internalize its sound as a call only for my own spiritual well-being. Now its piercing tone reminds me to raise my sights: we are supposed to leave a corner of the field for those less fortunate. Let me ask you what I asked myself: Has a shift in your personal politics shrunk that corner to a clod?
Tekiyah gedolah--one long blast, giving you enough time in its duration to wonder: Standing in the same synagogue, does a millionaire hear the shofar the same as the guy who was just laid off? Does one man hear a symphony of infinite possibilities, while the other hears the muffling of his way of life? How can the sound of the shofar connect them, bringing each to a good New Year?
Edmon J. Rodman has written about making his own matzah for JTA, Jewish love music for the Jerusalem Post, yiddisheh legerdemain for the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, a Bernie Madoff Halloween mask for the Forward, and what really gets stuck in the La Brea Tar Pits for the Los Angeles Times. He has edited several Jewish population studies, and is one of the founders of the Movable Minyan, an over twenty-year-old chavura-size, independent congregation. He once designed a pop-up seder plate. In 2011 Rodman received a First Place Simon Rockower Award for "Excellence in Feature Writing" from the American Jewish Press Association."
