Rosh Hashanah: Shofar

A new year in the Jewish calendar, 5787, begins this Friday evening with two days of Rosh Hashanah prayer services—and the blowing of the shofar.

Wm. Carpenter blowing a shofar in sunlight

shofar (שֺׁפָר, שׁוֹפָר) = A ram or goat horn with the tip cut off and modified slightly so that it can be blown like a natural trumpet, buzzing one’s lips against the mouthpiece. (Plural: shofarot, שׁוֹפָרוֹת.)

Here is what a shofar blast sounds like:

https://audio.com/stephen-1836267568609607/audio/shofar-sound

Every shofar has a different pitch, depending on the size and shape of the animal’s horn. An experienced shofar blower can get two different notes. But unlike a natural trumpet, a shofar is never played with other instruments.

The first time anyone hears a horn blowing in the Hebrew Bible is at God’s revelation on Mount Sinai.

And it happened on the third day, in the morning; and there was thunder, and lightning flashes, and a heavy cloud on the mountain, a very strong sound of a shofar. And all the people that were in the camp trembled. (Exodus 19:16)

The sound of a shofar is also part of a divine manifestation in the book of Zechariah.¹ But elsewhere in the bible, human beings blow the shofar. In the book of Joshua, shofar blowing makes the walls of Jericho fall down.² King David has the shofar blown when he brings the ark into his new capital in Jerusalem.³ The shofar is often blown as a signal in battle,⁴ to rally troops,⁵ to sound a general alarm⁶, and to inaugurate a king⁷. The sound of the shofar means that something important is about to happen, and everyone should pay attention!

In four verses, the Hebrew Bible calls for shofar blowing to announce a holy day. One of these occasions only happens every fiftieth year, on Yom Kippur. Then the book of Leviticus prescribes shofar blasts to announce the year of Yoveil (“Jubilee” in English), when all Hebrew slaves are freed and all farmlands are returned to the families that originally owned them.⁸ The shofar is also blown to announce the more ancient festival days observed every new moon and every full moon.⁹

And two biblical verses call for blowing the shofar on the first day of the month of Tishrei. But neither verse says why the first day of Tishrei is holy.

Tishrei 1 in Leviticus

In the seventh month, on [day] one of the month, will be [like] a Shabbat-observance for you, a zikheron by a blast, a holy convocation. Any servile work you must not do. You must
bring a fire-offering to God. (Leviticus 23:24-25)

zikheron (זִכְרוֹן) = reminder, memorial, remembrance.

Sometimes the first day of the month of Tishrei is called Yom HaZikheron (“Day of the Reminder”), but the bible never says what the day is a reminder of. The text continues with the next holy day in the calendar:

However, on the tenth of this seventh month, it is Yom HaKipurim. A holy convocation will be for you, and you must afflict your throats [fast], and you must bring a fire-offering to God. And you must not do any work at all this day, because it is Yom HaKipurim, lekhapeir for you in the presence of God, your God. (Leviticus 23:27-28)

Yom HaKipurim (יוֹם הַכִּפֻּרִים) = Day of the Atonements (now called “Yom Kippur”). (From the root verb kapar, כָּפַר = atone, reconcile; cover over.)

lekhapeir (לְכַפֵּר) = to make atonement, to make a reconciliation; to cover over. (Also from the root verb kapar.)

Since the first day of the month of Tishrei is Yom HaZikheron (“Day of the Reminder”), perhaps it is a reminder that Yom Kippur is only ten days away. Blowing the shofar might remind people to prepare for Yom Kippur. But holding a holy convocation with extra offerings at the altar implies something more.

Tishrei 1 in Numbers

No zikheron (reminder) is mentioned when the first of Tishrei comes up in a list of holy days in the book of Numbers.

And in the seventh month, on [day] one of the month, a holy convocation will be for you. You must not do any servile work. A day of a blast it will be for you. (Numbers 29:1)

Here, the text continues with the usual itemization of additional offerings at the altar for a particular holy day—in this case, one bull, one ram, seven lambs, and flour mixed with oil,

And one hairy goat, a guilt offering, lekhapeir for you. (Numbers 29:5)

This is not the goat chosen by lot in the ancient Yom Kippur ritual, but just an animal used in a general guilt offering. Still, the verse does introduce the idea of atonement for guilt.

Rosh Hashanah

What instrument is supposed to be blown to make the blasts on the first day the month of Tishrei? Neither of these Torah passages says. The ancient Israelites blew blasts on both a shofar and a metal trumpet. After the fall of the second temple in 70 CE, the rabbis decided that the shofar was blown on the first day of Tishrei.

They also (in a divided opinion) decided that the first of Tishrei was the first day of the year: Rosh Hashanah (“Head of the Year”), even though it was the seventh month after Nissan, the rabbis’ other candidate for the beginning of the year. (A whole tractate of the Babylonian Talmud is devoted to Rosh Hashanah.)

And why is the first day of the year a holy convocation, holy enough to suspend most kinds of work for the day? The Talmud says that it is because ten days later we observe Yom Kippur, the annual day to return to God and to pray for God to forgive our misdeeds of the past year.

So the shofar blowing on Rosh Hashanah announces the next holy day, sounds a general alarm that we need to wake up and turn back to God, and annually inaugurates God as the king of all living beings.¹⁰ (The liturgy of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is full of references to God as king.)

Services with shofar blasts

Rosh Hashanah begins with an evening service, continues the next day with a long series of prayer services and a late afternoon Tashlikh ritual, then goes on for a second long day of services.

The morning services are similar to Shabbat morning services, but they have Rosh Hashanah additions to the liturgy, and especially juicy Torah and hafatarah readings.¹¹ Then there is a short Shofar service before the Musaf (“Additional”) service. Both the Shofar Service and the Musaf service include shofar blasts (unless the day is Saturday, since the Talmud ruled that the shofar should not be blown on Shabbat).¹²

In the Musaf service, three special sections are embedded in the repetition of the Amidah (“Standing prayer”). These sections are titled Malkhuyot (“kingships”), Zikhronot (“reminders”), and Shofarot (“shofars”). Each section begins with biblical verses applying its theme to God, followed by shofar blasts, followed by singing.

According to the Talmud, Rabbi Akiva said that God said: “And recite before Me on Rosh Hashanah verses that mention Kingships, Remembrances, and Shofarot: Kingships so that you will crown Me as King over you; Remembrances so that your remembrance will rise before Me for good; and with what will the remembrance rise? It will rise with the shofar.”¹³

Malkhuyot

Rosh Hashanah services add many references to God as king, since this is the season of divine judgement. The Malkhuyot section of the Musaf service includes this exultant verse from the ancient Song of the Sea in the book of Exodus: God will reign forever and ever! (Exodus 15:18) Every year, we symbolically coronate God as our king once again, with blasts of the shofar.

Zikhronot

The sound of the shofar may startle us into remembering God, but on Rosh Hashanah we ask God to remember us and let us live another year. So the Zikhronot section includes the story of the binding of Yitzchak (“Isaac”) and God’s substitution of a ram for the sacrifice, and a prayer that the ram’s horn (shofar) will remind God of this act of mercy.

Shofarot

In the Shofarot section, we tell the story of how God manifested to the people at Mount Sinai with the sound of the shofar.

On Rosh Hashanah, someone blows the shofar, and everyone hears the sound of the blasts. Some of the liturgy imagines God hearing us blow the shofar, then being moved by our allegiance, remembering the old love for us, and returning to us as a father and king.

When we human beings hear the shofar, we wake up, straighten up, and remember God. We, too, work on teshuvah, which means “returning”. In traditional language, we need to return to God. In modern language, we need to return to the good soul inside us, to whom we really want to be.

It is easy to drift away from God, or from the good. What will sound the alarm to bring you back?

Zechariah 9:14.
Joshua 6:4-5, 6:8-20.
2 Samuel 6:15.
Judges 7:18-22; 2 Samuel 2:28, 18:16, 20:22; Jeremiah 42:14; Nehemiah 4:14.
Judges 3:27, 6:34; 1 Samuel 13:3-4; 2 Samuel 20:1.
Jeremiah 4:5, 4:19, 6:1; Ezekiel 33:3-6; Joel 2:1, 2:15; Amos 3:6.
1 Kings 1:34, 1:39; 2 Kings 9:13; Psalms 47:6, 98:6.
Leviticus 25:9.
Psalm 81:4.
Babylonian Talmud, Rosh Hashanah 16a, 34a.
Genesis 21:1-21 and 1 Samuel 1:1-2:10 on the first day; Genesis 22:1-19 and Jeremiah 31:1-20 on the second day.
Talmud Bavli, Rosh Hashanah 29b.
Rosh Hashanah 16a.

Haftarot for Rosh Hashanah & Shabbat Shuvah—1 Samuel & Hosea: From Smoke to Words

This week is especially rich in haftarot (plural of “haftarah”) because it includes the two days of Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish new year) and Shabbat Shuvah, the “Sabbath of Return” to God—all before we dive into Yom Kippur (the “Day of Atonement”) next week.

The haftarah for the first day of Rosh Hashanah is 1 Samuel 1:1-2:10. The reading for the second day is Jeremiah 31:2-20. And the haftarah for Shabbat Shuvah this Saturday is Hosea 14:2-10. Perhaps it is no accident that during this time of intense prayer from Rosh Hashanah through Yom Kippur, two of these three haftarot show that praying with words is better than slaughtering an animal and burning it up into smoke for God.

Prayer is not a dialogue with God, although persons in the Hebrew Bible from Adam to the prophet Malachi do talk with God and hear God’s responses in words—in fact in complete sentences. Sometimes prophets report what God said; other passages are like conversations between two human beings of different rank and power.

Prayer is more like smoke; it rises up toward God, but God does not answer in words.

Besides having many conversations with God, Moses also prays on behalf of the Israelites when they are traveling through the wilderness south of Edom, 40 years after their exodus from Egypt. The Israelites complain again about their diet of manna, and God sends poisonous snakes.

Then the people came to Moses and they said: We did wrong when we spoke against God and against you. Hitpalleil to God so He will clear away from us the snakes! Vayitpalleil, Moses, on behalf of the people. (Numbers/Bemidbar 21:7)

Hitpalleil (הִתְפַּלֵּל) = Pray! (Probably from the same root as pilleil = reassess. Prayer may be asking for a reassessment from God.)

Vayitpalleil (וַיִּתְפַּלֵּל) = And he prayed.

Here the Israelites confess their misdeed, but they do not believe they can pray to God directly, so they ask Moses, God’s prophet, to do it for them.

Smoke, not spoken prayer, is the primary way to worship God in the first seven books of the Bible. If you want to bring God your devotion, you slaughter an animal and burn up part or all of it on an altar, turning it into smoke. God appreciates the smell of the smoke. (See my post Pinchas: Aromatherapy.)

The book of Leviticus/Vayikra lays out five categories of offerings burned up into smoke, and each one was transformed into a type of prayer.

1) olah (עֹלָה) = rising-offering, to maintain the relationship between the worshiper and God. This became liturgy, written prayers to read, recite, or sing at specific times and occasions.

2) minchah (מִנחָה) = allegiance-offering, to show homage or respect. This corresponds to prayers of praise.

3) shelamim (שְׁלָמִים) = wholeness-offering, to thank God or to express devotion. This corresponds to prayers of thanksgiving.

4) chataat (חַטָּאת) = reparation-offering, to fix an unintentional transgression against one of God’s laws; and 5) asham (אָשָׁם) = guilt-offering, to atone for an intentional wrong (after making amends with the human whom you wronged). Instead of these two animal offerings, we have prayers of confession asking for God’s forgiveness.

(For more on these smoke offerings, see my posts Vayikra & Tzav: Fire Offerings without Slaughter, Part 1 and Part 2.)

A additional type of prayer in the Bible is the petitionary prayer, in which we ask God to do us a favor. This category includes intercessory prayer, in which a prophet or someone else who is known to be on speaking terms with God utters a petitionary prayer on behalf of a community.

In the book of Genesis/Bereishit, any male head of a household can worship God by building an altar and turning an animal into smoke on it. Gradually this right is restricted in the Hebrew Bible, until animal offerings can only be made at the temple in Jerusalem and under the supervision of priests. Meanwhile, the tradition of individual prayer expands until anyone can do it, and God will hear.

The first prayer in the Bible is an intercessory prayer. King Avimelekh takes Sarah into his household thinking she is Abraham’s sister, not his wife. God responds by afflicting the king and all his women with a disease. Then in a dream, God tells Avimelekh: And now restore the wife to the husband, because he is a prophet vayitpalleil on your behalf, and you will live. But if you do no restoring, know that you will certainly die, you and all that are yours. (Genesis/Bereishit 20:7)

After the king gives Avraham his wife Sarah along with some gifts, Avraham does pray, and God removes the disease.

Intercessory prayers continue to be mentioned in the Bible, including Moses’ prayer regarding the poisonous snakes. But not until the first book of Samuel, in the haftarah for the first day of Rosh Hashanah, does someone who has never conversed with God pray for her own sake. On her own initiative, Channah, who has been childless for many years, walks up to the doorway of the temple in Shiloh and prays for a son.

Channah praying from etching by Marc Chagall — Channah praying
from etching by
Marc Chagall

And she was bitter of spirit, vatitpalleil to God, and she wept continually. And she vowed a vow, and she said: God of Armies, if You really see the wretchedness of Your maidservant and You remember me and do not forget Your maidservant, and You give to Your maidservant a seed of men, then I will give him to God for all the days of his life… (1 Samuel 1:10-11)

vatitpalleil (וַתִּתְפַּלֵּל) = and she prayed.

God does not answer Channah in words, but she does have a son (a “seed of men”), and she brings him to the temple in Shiloh once he is weaned. There she and her husband sacrifice a bull, following the established ritual, then give him to the priest so the boy can serve as an attendant at the temple. (Channah’s son, Samuel (Shmu-eil), later becomes a prophet and a judge of Israel.)

…and they bowed down there to God. Vatitpalleil, Channah, and she said:

My heart rejoices in God…

There is no holy one like God,

Because there are none except for You. (1 Samuel 2:1-2)

Channah continues with a long psalm praising God’s power. This time her prayer is not petitionary, but a prayer of praise, like a minchah offering.

This Saturday, on Shabbat Shuvah, we read in the book of Hosea:

Shuvah, Israel, all the way to God, your god,

For you have stumbled, through your wrongdoing.

Take devarim with you

And shuvu to God.

Say to [God]:

May You forgive all wrongdoing

And take the good.

And we will make amends of the bulls

Of our lips. (Hosea 14:2-3)

Shuvah (שׁוּבָה) = Return! (singular, addressing Israel)

shuvu (שׁוּבוּ) = Return! (plural, addressing the people)

devarim (דְּבָרִים) = words; events, affairs.

Hosea asks the Israelites to make amends and return to God not by slaughtering bulls and burning them on an altar for God, but through the words of their lips, praying for God to forgive them. Instead of the smoke from a chataat or an asham offering, God wants people to return and atone with spoken prayer.

As we approach Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the haftarah from 1 Samuel reminds us of the power of individual heartfelt prayer, and the haftarah from Hosea reminds us to return—shuvah!—to God through prayer.

A priest cuts the animal’s throat, blood gushes, smoke roils up into the sky—that kind of worship was sure to have an emotional impact. But even if someone brought the animal for an asham offering to atone for his own misdeed, or even if the high priest was killing the goat for God on Yom Kippur, people watched the show from a distance.

Channah worked harder, pulling out her own words to plead with God. Hosea asks us to work harder, bringing our own personal words of confession to God, and returning to the holy one by praying for forgiveness.

It is possible to mouth formulaic prayers without thinking about them. But I believe it is better for our souls if we plumb our own depths, find our own words to bring to God, and do the work.