The Sounds of Our Lives
A Sermon delivered on the Eve of Rosh Hashanah
The New Year 5773 – September 16, 2012
Rabbi Howard A. Berman
Central Reform Temple of Boston
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Shema…Listen…Hear!
Our minds and hearts - and ears - resonate this evening with the distinctive, timeless sounds of
this sacred season:
The majestic poetry and prose of the Prayer Book… the beautiful, and beloved melodies of the
High Holy Days…the plaintive strains of the Avinu Malkaynu petition…the haunting chant of
the Kol Nidre on the Eve of Yom Kippur…
Then, also, there are the evocative sounds of heartfelt holiday greetings… words that link us to
our heritage, across the centuries and around the world…words unique to us as Jews: Good
Yontiff…L’Shanah Tovah… even the distinctiveness of saying “Happy New Year”…in the
middle of September…
And there are also the sounds of our memories…the reminiscences welling up within us
now…of these holy days in years past…the recollection of the warm and loving voices of those
no longer with us…whose presence is nevertheless felt so keenly at this time of year… when the
boundaries of time and the divide between yesterday and tomorrow is so mystically permeable.
Yes..there are many special sounds of this season – sensory impressions that blend together to
create the unique moods and emotions that continue to exert such a powerful hold upon us each
year at this time.
And of course, the most distinctive and unique sound of this Rosh Hashanah observance, is the
oldest holiday sound of all… one that links our celebration here tonight, to every generation of
our people who have gathered to usher in this sacred season for over 3500 years…the ancient,
stirring call of the Shofar.
From the earliest days of Jewish history, at the very dawn of our faith’s beginnings, the New
Year has been heralded by the blast of the Ram’s Horn. In the ancient Middle East, among the
people of the desert - from whom our distant ancestors emerged - this ancient instrument was the
means of calling people together…for prayer – for assembly – or as an alarm in the face of
danger. Early on, the Shofar became particularly linked with the celebration of Rosh Hashanah,
the New Year. We began our worship this evening recalling the words of the Torah, in which
Moses commanded the people of Israel to keep this” first day of the Seventh month as a sacred
assembly…proclaimed by the sounding of the Shofar.” In the centuries that followed, at the great
Temple in Jerusalem, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur were ushered in and formally
1 inaugurated with a majestic fanfare of blasts of ram’s horns and brass trumpets, sounded from
the ramparts of the city walls.
And from those ancient days, down through ages, the sounding of the Shofar remained one of the
major highlights of the High Holy Days – lovingly preserved long after the hollowed-out antler
became obsolete as a musical instrument… and had to be painstakingly acquired and hand
crafted in the far corners of the world where Jews scattered… far from the desert hills… to
places like Boston, where herds of rams aren’t exactly roaming down Newbury Street… and
where their horns are hardly a readily available commodity… although admittedly, perhaps a
more readily available commodity in Coolidge Corner…
The Shofar became a symbol of the most fundamental themes of this holy season – the horn’s
ancient functions linked anew to the call for spiritual awakening and repentance…for the
gathering of the community together… an alarm, as in ancient times, but now warning us to gird
for the battle against apathy and indifference… and the struggle against injustice and oppression
in our world.
But there are, as well, deeper, more personal dimensions to the timeless meaning of the Shofar’s
calls…messages that are brought to our minds by these ancient, exotic and ethereal sounds…that
continue to exert such a compelling hold upon our modern consciousness and imaginations –
which are usually far more attuned to the dissonance of urban life…to the ceaseless blaring of
televisions… the constant background of iPod playlists… and the endless electronic buzzing of
e-mail and text alerts, and the ringing of cell phones.
This evening, as we have ushered in this New Year hearing those ancient sounds once again, I
want to share with you my own individual interpretation of the deeper, more personal meaning of
the Shofar’s calls. Through the years, as I have listened to the Shofar each Rosh Hashanah- for
more new years than I care to count – I have reflected on the many levels of symbolic meanings
that I have come to see – or better- to hear – in each of the four traditional notes of the ritual
soundings. I have come to sense them as dramatically evocative expressions of the different
levels of human experience and circumstances each of us face in the course of our lives…
Now…the four calls of the Shofar, each one of them used as a different signal in ancient times,
are still designated by their Biblical Hebrew names – and each encompasses different
combinations of sounds. The first call is known as TEKIYAH. This was the clarion - the general
call to attention in ancient times…listen once again to its sound:
[TEKIYAH is sounded]
Notice that this first call of the Shofar has a clear, smooth, balanced sound. It begins on one
steady note, and gradually, gracefully, ascends to a higher one.
This smooth, harmonious, first sound of the Shofar seems to reflect those wonderful times in our
lives when everything is also smooth, balanced and harmonious…moving in a constantly upward
direction. These are the good and happy times – when we are surrounded by those we
love…when we are happy and healthy and contented. Our professional lives are secure and
fulfilling… and everything seems – like the Shofar’s blast – to be moving forward and gradually
upward- to ever higher levels of achievement and fulfillment. And at such times, it is easy to
feel secure and in control…self reliant and often, in our pursuit of our daily routines and
2 successes, a bit smug and complacent. It is fitting that the Shofar note that most symbolically
resembles these good times in our experience, is the TEKIYAH… the original call to attention
and mindfulness. For so often, we take these happy times for granted… as if they will never
end…and in the midst of our preoccupations and our pursuits of those higher notes, we forget to
acknowledge and embrace these fleeting moments with gratitude and appreciation…
But they are – inevitably- fleeting…and all of us also come to know times in our lives more
accurately symbolized by the second Shofar call – SHEVARIM.
[SHEVARIM is sounded]
The SHEVARIM is a series of alternating, opposing tones…more abrupt transitions from the
lower to the higher notes. In ancient times, this call was a signal of alert… indicating that danger
was possibly imminent. And as we all know, there are many more times in our lives when this is
what we actually experience – a constant series of low notes and high notes…of ups and downs.
Times of pleasure and joy are mingled with sudden, unexpected moments of disappointment and
trial… we go from health to sickness, and God willing, back to health again. Success and failure,
victory and defeat, all unfold in a constant, often abrupt series of ever-changing notes – very
much like those of SHEVARIM.
This is, indeed, the more common pattern of our life experience…so complex in its constant
transitions. And these shifts between the happy moments and the difficult challenges is as
constant, abrupt and alternating as this second Shofar call. It is so significant that there are three
of these short, changing notes in the series of SHEVARIM – not a tidy even number…but an odd
amount of shifts… underscoring the random nature of such changing patterns in our lives,
Things can be going so well at one moment, only to be overshadowed in the next by unforeseen
trials and disasters. And just as this call was one of alert in ancient times, we are challenged to be
aware - to confront and prepare for this unavoidable reality by consciously building the inner
resources of strength, of faith, and of circles of support that can help us cope confidently with the
constant shifts in mood and melody that are – in the end – the multi-textured symphony of our
lives.
And this brings us to the third of the Shofar calls… TERUAH.
[TERUAH is sounded]
Originally, this was the call to immediate alarm – to emergency and danger - for our ancestors.
And doesn’t this sound very much like the times of danger and alarm in our lives? TERUAH is a
series of short, stark, wildly staccato high pitched sounds – urgent…disjointed… They vividly
call to mind those difficult times when our own experiences are similarly disjointed and
unraveled…when the sounds in our consciousness are the cacophony of pain and despair.
All of us encounter times of TERUAH… and some of us hear and live these shrill, alarming
notes for extended periods of trial and suffering. We all know such times of pain and illness and
loss… of failure and rejection… of loneliness and grief… when life seems to resemble this
jarring series of hard, shrill sputtering blasts…sounding so much like a high-pitched scream…so
much like breathless, heaving sobs… shattered, broken notes that seem to reflect shattered
dreams and broken hearts.
3 And so we see how this ancient ritual cycle of very specific and distinctive sounds clearly moves
through a pattern that powerfully evokes the cycles of our own life experience. We move from
stage to stage…from the TEKIYAH call’s reflection of those times in our lives when things are
good and, like this first Shofar sound - seem to move in a steady upward direction of happy
fulfillment. This calm and peaceful image is followed by the more nuanced counterpoint of the
ups and downs of joy and sorrow that are embodied in the second set of notes, SHEVARIM.
This call symbolizes the complex mixture of good times and difficult moments – the mingling of
laughter and tears - that are, unavoidably, the reality of the human condition. And equally
inevitably, all of us must also find ourselves in times evoked by TERUAH …the disjointed tones
reflecting the more painful trials of life’s continuing journey, echoed in the abrupt and broken
notes of this third sound.
Now this is where the Shofar cycle might have ended… and where we might have concluded our
encounter with the different stages and textures of life’s journey – were it not for the
transcendent promise of our faith. Judaism, early in its development, rejected the view of other
ancient religions that human beings were powerless pawns - at the mercy of the whims of
capricious deities and random natural forces…forever imprisoned in an endless cycle of pleasure
and pain, joy and sorrow, over which we had no control. Our faith proclaimed, instead, a radical
and revolutionary new vision of a God of perfect Unity - who created a universe with a sense of
harmony and purpose. Our tradition taught the transcendent truth of a loving, merciful God, with
whom human beings, created in the Divine image, had a covenantal relationship…a caring,
compassionate Parent and Partner, who fashioned us with deep inner resources of strength and
courage. The Torah, using the paradigm of Jewish history, taught the promise of liberation from
the enslavement of endless suffering and pain… and offered a clear moral and spiritual guide to
enable us to achieve healing, renewal and redemption... in our own lives, and in the world.
And it is because of this vision of our faith, that we come to the fourth and final Shofar call. We
return to the steady, calm, ascending notes of the first call, TEKIYAH…but now mightily and
powerfully prolonged and renewed in the climax of the TEKIYAH GEDOLAH - the ‘Great”
TEKIYAH:
[TEKIYAH GEDOLAH is sounded]
We return to that first, idyllic stage – the balanced harmony…the graceful, steady ascent… but
now, reaching an even stronger and more powerful crescendo. This dramatic conclusion of the
series of Shofar calls proclaims the promise of hope and healing… renewed possibilities and
broader
horizons to aspire to… as we pass through the trials of life and emerge again into the light.
Friends, this is the great and transforming message of this sacred night…this threshold of a New
Year. All of us have been through each of these stages in our lives…some among us may well
have indeed experienced all of them in the course of the past year. But the wondrous gift of
Rosh Hashanah is the renewal of hope and the possibility for joy and fulfillment in the future.
4 We need not be imprisoned in the cycle of old patterns and failures…we are given the
opportunity tonight to start again and to aspire to higher levels of growth and fulfillment.
As we hear, once again, the timeless sounds of this holy season… in those blasts of the ram’s
horn, let us listen for the sounds of our lives!
And in that majestic final crescendo, may we each hear this sacred day’s great message of
hope…The triumphant call of the limitless possibilities for renewed life and health… joy and
peace, as the New Year dawns.
Baruch atah Adonai, Elohaynu Melech ha-olam, asher kidshanu, bi’mitzvotav vitzivanu,
l’shmoah kol Shofar.
We praise You, Eternal God, Ruler of the Universe, Who sanctifies us by Your commandments
and calls us to hear the sound- all the sounds - of the Shofar…Amen!
[TEKIAH GEDOLAH prolonged]
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