Categories
High Holy Days Social Justice

Hearing the Shofar As a Wake-Up Call is a Sign of Our Privilege

This Elul, a group of Maine rabbis have been posting videos of shofar soundings from across the state. Many of us are talking about the shofar as a wake-up call. An alarm bell. A reminder that the holidays are coming.

The implication, of course, to waking up at the sound of the shofar is that we need a reminder. A reminder of what is broken in our world. A reminder of how we ourselves have fallen short. A reminder that we had better get to work, because Rosh HaShanah is coming. The need for a reminder implies that we live through the rest of the year with the privilege to forget the pain and suffering that exists in the world. The ways that we as a people, as a society, have gone astray. The need to hear the shofar means that we have been able to close our eyes.

The killing of George Floyd, and more recently the shooting of Jacob Blake, are a shofar sound calling us to attention. But, the shofar has been wailing continuously for years, for decades, for centuries, we just have not heard it. As Jacob Blake’s sister, Letetra Widman said, “So many people have reached out to me saying they’re sorry that this has been happening to my family. Well don’t be sorry because this has been happening to my family for a long time, longer than I can account for. It happened to Emmett Till, Emmett Till is my family. It happened to Philando, Mike Brown, Sandra.”

As the powerful lynching memorial in Montgomery, with its hanging steel rectangles reminiscent of coffins reminds us, we don’t know the names of all those who were murdered. The slaves who were bought and sold and beaten to death were known by name to their families and friends, but their names are unknown to us today. We have the luxury of needing the shofar to wake us up.

When the murder of George Floyd ripped through our national consciousness like the blast of a shofar, I, like so many concerned white people, went to a Black Lives Matter protest. I wore my social justice tallit, the one made by members of my congregation with colorful quotes about equality and justice. My family and I listened to speakers and marched and held up our signs. And then, like so many others across the country, we lay on the ground in silence for eight minutes and forty six seconds. The time it took George Floyd to suffocate to death. As I lay there on the pavement, next to my seven-year-old son, I was powerfully reminded of the Grand Aleinu on Yom Kippur. During that holy time of the year I bow on the ground, face down, before the Holy One blessed be God, who spread out the heavens and established the Earth. It is a voluntary act of humility. A reminder that there is something bigger than myself in this world. I need that reminder, because my heart doesn’t catch in my throat every time I see a police officer, because I don’t worry about my safety when I walk through the trails in my neighborhood, because I don’t have to remind my children of how to act respectfully before they leave the house each day.  Choosing to be reminded, choosing to lie face down, comes from privilege and is born out of the willful ignorance of the day to day lives of others.

Shofarot: A Prayer for Righteous Anger, from Mishkan HaNefesh

Misery for breakfast;
morning coffee with the news of distant deaths –
because someone’s always suffering,
and there’s bound to be a crisis raging somewhere,
or a quieter catastrophe
barely at the threshold of our notice.
We’re accustomed to the feeling
of something going wrong.
Like static in the background,
tuned out so we can get on with our day.
And it’s just the same as yesterday
and nothing can be done;
so there’s not much point
in getting too upset.

But if something were to shock us
like a baby’s piercing wail or a fire bell in the night,
like a punch in the stomach
or a puncture in the eardrum,
like a savage call to conscience
or a frantic cry for help –
would we scream like a shofar
and get mad enough to act?
“When a ram’s horn is sounded in a city do the people not take alarm?”

So let us get mad.
Let us scream.
Let us be punched in the stomach.
Let us end, for once, without a nechemta.



After ordination, Rabbi Asch worked as a community organizer with the Industrial Areas Foundation. She currently serves as the rabbi of Temple Beth El in Augusta, Maine and Assistant Director of the Center for Small Town Jewish Life. Rabbi Asch serves as Vice President for Leadership on the CCAR Board of Trustees.

Categories
High Holy Days Machzor Mishkan haNefesh

Why Is the Shofar Service in Three Sections in Mishkan HaNefesh?

With Mishkan HaNefesh now close to being published, the decision regarding the Shofar sections made by the editors many years ago, and piloted for many a season, is naturally coming under review by colleagues.  The responses range from, “So excited” to “Wait, what is going on with the shofar service?”  It therefore seemed like a good time to review why we made this choice and why it has been so popular in the piloting – and why you should be excited about it.

As you will see when you open Mishkan HaNefesh, each service has a certain theme that we focus on throughout the liturgy.  The point is not to reduce a complex, theologically rich and poetically vibrant worship service to a slogan.  We do wish to privilege a certain message, however, because there are certain themes that ground the worship service.  As an example, if you can reduce a sermon to one essential sentence (which many homiletics professors suggest) that does not mean the rest of the sermon is redundant verbiage.IMG_2402

Early on in the creation of the machzor, the editors looked at Rosh HaShanah morning and decided that there is a particular symbolic act that permeates the whole morning.  Like synecdoche in literature, the one thing represents something far greater.  For us – and quite possible for you – that is the sounding of the shofar.  But it is more than the sound; it is the liturgy surrounding the shofar sounding.  And more in particular, it is the tripartite themes of malchyuot (Sovereignty), zichronot (Remembrance) and shofarot.

Reform Judaism did away with the musaf service on Rosh HaShanah (and everywhere else) long ago but kept the practice of the three shofar sections.  The editors of Mishkan HaNefesh realized that these themes and the sounding of the shofar could be developed and dramatized in a pervasive way by splitting the three sections into three different places in the worship service, each positioned in some logical place.  After experimentation during the piloting phase, we settled on the following: malchuyot would come in the Amidah, following the M’loch declaration.  Zichronot would follow the scriptural readings, including God remembering Sarah and Hannah.  And Shofarot would precede the closing prayers and the redemptive message of the second part of the Aleinu – l’taken olam b’malkhut Shadai.

Dividing the shofar sections means the congregation can spend more time with each theme.  Chevruta, musical selections, min-sermons, iyyunim, much can be innovated.  Or not.  The choice is up to the worship leaders.  One could even decide to feature the three sections one after the other if preferred.

When the editors first introduced this model of separating the three sections of the Shofar liturgy and blasts, it was admittedly met with some skepticism.  Because we were in the early piloting phase at that point, we decided to give it a try and evaluate after the piloting.  The feedback was so overwhelmingly positive about the way in which it impacted on the overall feel, flow, and meaningfulness of the service, even from those who had been the most resistant, that we chose to maintain this innovation.

Mishkan HaNefesh is not so easy for worship leaders not because it restricts choice.  Quite the contrary.  Because there are so many choices. Depending on the choices you make, these three shofar sections can become high points throughout the Rosh HaShanah morning service.

You should know that, in addition to the three shofar sections, the shofar also can be sounded earlier in the service as well as the night before.  These are possible soundings to once again focus on the prime imagery of the day.  Like the rest of the book, the idea is not to do everything.  Rather it is to decide what matters most for you and your congregation and employ the machzor in that endeavor.

Rabbi Edwin Goldberg is the senior rabbi of Temple Sholom in Chicago, and part of the editorial team of Mishkan HaNefesh.

Categories
Social Justice

Remembering September 11th

Every day this month, prior to the Jewish High Holy Days, Jews will sound the Shofar, the rams horn, to herald the coming of the Days of Judgement and Atonement. One of the reasons given for the call of the shofar is to remind us of the eternal voiceless cry of the soul.

This thirteenth anniversary of September 11th and the symbolism of the shofar are expressed by this soulful prayer for our time of remembrance this Thursday:

*May the cry of the shofar remind us of the 2,973 lives that were taken that day. May the shofar’s sound echo like the sirens of the firefighters. police officers and first responders whose heroic sacrifices were extraordinary on that day.

*May the shofar’s plaintiff call remind us how fleeting and fragile this life is.

*May the voice of the shofar serve to comfort all who were wounded in body and spirit; those who lost loved ones and friends, and all whose hearts were broken by witnessing the pain of others.

*On this 13th anniversary, may the blast of the shofar drown out the shouts of cruel extremists who threaten us and who would destroy our lives and our freedom.

*On this 13th anniversary, and every day yet to come, may we find hope and strength in a world that is broken and needs healing. And let us pray that all caring and compassionate human beings will not surrender to evil and will summon the courage to repair our fractured world.

And let the shofar be like a siren that alerts us to danger and summons us to act.

May there come a day when we, and our children, and our children’s children, will live unafraid in a more tolerant, just, and peaceful world.

Rabbi Hirshel Jaffe has lived a courageous life of involvement and dedication. He led a Unity March against the Ku Klux Klan, rallied to free Soviet Jews, and was a member of the Clergy Delegation who visited the American Hostages in Iran. His participation in the New York City Marathon earned him the nickname, “The Running Rabbi.”