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 | In Brief Repentance Prayer Charity |
 | Shofar As An Alarm
"The Alarm" - A parable by the Maggid of Dubnow 
The Shofar is more than just the
On his return home he reported to the village authorities: "They have a wonderful system in the big city; when a fire breaks out the people beat their drums and before long the fire burns out." All excited, they ordered a supply of drums and distributed them to the population. When, some time later, a fire broke out, there was a deafening explosion of beating of drums, and while the people waited expectantly for the flames to subside, a number of their homes burned to the ground. A sophisticated visitor passing through that village, when told the reason for the ear-splitting din, derided the simplistic native: "Idiots! Do you think a fire can be put out by beating drums? They only sound an alarm for the people to wake up and take measure to extinguish the fire." Said the Maggid of Dubno, this story applies to those of us who believe that beating the breast during the Al Chet (confessional), raising our voices during worship, and blowing the shofar, will put out the fires of sin and evil that burn in us. They are, the Maggid remarked, only an alarm, a warning to wake us up in order to resort to soul searching), so that we may merit the favor of God. The Maggid probably had in mind Maimonides' interpretation of the shofar sounds: "Awake all you who sleep, rouse yourselves all you who slumber and search your deeds and repent; remember your Creator."
by I. L. Peretz
"You must have something precious under your arm, Reb Simeon! You press it to your breast with a trembling hand, and your old eyes shine with joy!" "Yes!" says Reb Simeon, "it's my shofar, my festival shofar!" "Festival shofar?" "Yes! You see, it's my custom on an ordinary weekday in Elul to blow on an ordinary shofar. This one is for the festival, a beautiful, precious shofar." He took it out from under his arm and eyed it fondly. A little shofar, ash-gray, thin, but lovely to look at, bent like every other shofar, but bent charmingly, like a child's attractive waywardness. He stroked it with quivering fingers, lifted it to his beard and fondled it against the long, fine silver hair. And both holinesses mingled - the holy ash-gray shofar and the holy silver beard. The old eyes lightened up with childlike happiness. They looked so youthful!
"You love this shofar!" "Like my life! I love blowing the shofar. My father, peace to his memory, was a farmer. We lived in the village, and - I was a boy - I envied the shepherd with his pipe. He piped, and at the sound the sheep gathered round him, lay down round him and looked into his eyes. But a shofar is something higher - it gathers souls, Jewish Mount Sinai souls! They listen! I love blowing the shofar! "Not always'" he corrected himself. "Not the tekiah gedolah on Yom Kippur! I put the shofar to my lips, and already half the congregation lies prostrate on the floor, under the benches. I look round, and it is like a field after a storm, three-quarters of the community bowed to the ground - and there is the tekiah gedolah still to come! It isn't right! "And blowing the shofar all through Elul isn't the same thing! Why? It's a weekday congregation, small and scattered, one in, one out. The market keeps breaking in through the open windows. The women stallholders shout their wares; the peasants talk loudly. The youngsters play in the synagogue courtyard. It's terribly confusing! It's not right! "Rosh Hashanah is utterly different! The whole congregation stands, wrapped in their tallitot! They are the sons of kings! They sway like the green stalks in the blessed fields, and there is a rustling as in a forest or like the rushing of a stream."
"You can't get the village out of your mind, Reb Simeon...? "In the holy synagogue, when the congregation sways and shakes, I see the old good kindly forest before my eyes, and I hear the old good kindly stream. It roars louder and louder till it bursts out like a flame, like a sea of fire, and breaks through the walls, and rises up and breaks through the ceiling - it goes out into the world, up to heaven, this flame, this burning, boiling psalm of praise! "Then suddenly it stops! It disappears! Everything is quiet, utterly quiet! The congregation holds its breath. You hear the candles on the reading desk burning and hissing in the holy heat. "The congregation is waiting for my prayer, for my blessing! I put the shofar to my lips. The dayyan calls out the notes, and I sound the shofar - tekiah, shevarim, teruah! Sounds clear as water, silver sounds, pure." His eyes light up with childlike happiness. "You're wonderful, Reb Simeon, at your age!" "Yes, he says, "ordinarily I am a fly. But when I sound the shofar, I soar!" "Like an eagle! You are like a lion!" "Yes, indeed, like an eagle, like a lion!" "And you always get the right note?" "Always? No, not always! Sometimes there are obstacles..."
"I'll give you an instance: Satan come along, and I start coughing. An old cough. I've had it for forty years. It dates back to Tashlikh that year. The police chief had issued an order not to throw any Jewish crumbs in the stream.. "When you are in Jerusalem," he said, " you can do what you like! Not here!" "Well now, if the police chief says no, we've go to find a way of getting round it. So each of us goes to the stream separately, one by one, but we all meet there, all together. If we are seen, we run! We get hot running, and we cool off in the water of the mikveh. With my poor constitution, I got pneumonia! Thank G-d, I got over it, but it left me with this cough, as a reminder. Once it catches me, it tears me to bits. And just then it caught me, immediately after the blessing! "What could I do! The shofar trembled in my hand, like a fish out of water, and wouldn't go to my lips! When it finally did it knocked against my teeth! In those days I still had my teeth...!
"Something much worse happened a few years before that! I was sounding shevarim. I tell you it was a real broken shevarim, a lot of loud whistling in the street, shouting, bells ringing! The pogromists arrived in the marketplace! G-d in heaven, what a panic there was! The people tried to rush out, to escape. They ran to the doors, to the windows! The old rabbi, blessings on his memory, was still alive. A short, thin little man – but he was a rabbi! "He jumped up on a chair, and cried: "Stay, where you are!" and they all stayed where they were. "Shut all the doors and windows!" It was done. It made the synagogue pitch black! The few candles on the reading desk only threw black shadows! We were all terror-stricken! But not the rabbi! "Sound the shofar!" he cried. "I sounded the shofar! I put my whole soul into the tekiot!" "I may have conquered Satan," he added, smiling ruefully, "but not the pogromists! They laid the town in ruins! "Who can conquer them? Unless it is the shofar of Messiah!" (Translated by Joseph Leftwich)
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