Blowing the shofar an awakening for every generation

Stirring our souls and reminding us that it’s never too late to change and repent, hearing the shofar during the month of Elul is an important precursor to Rosh Hashanah. From students who blow the shofar for the elderly to rabbis who awaken a love of Jewish tradition in the next generation, we examine the impact of blowing and hearing the shofar.

Having honed his shofar-blowing skills from a young age, Grade 10 Yeshiva College pupil Gadiel Rogoff has blown the shofar for the school for the past three years. This year, appointed as Yeshiva’s head of shofar-blowing, Rogoff decided to arrange shofar blowing not only around the school’s campus, but to take it to the wider community. Together with his classmates, he did so during the first of the school’s annual Elul visits to Sandringham Gardens. The teens were inspired by the reactions of the residents to their shofar blowing.

“So many people eating in the Nosh Bar commented on how it really touched them and told me how amazing it was to hear the shofar again,” Rogoff says. “I then blew it in one of the home’s residential corridors and a man came out.” Praising his shofar-blowing skills, the man asked what Rogoff’s name was.

“He said that he was actually good friends with my great uncle, which is quite cool. We spoke for a bit about how he knew him, and I found out that he also knew my grandfather a little. He mentioned that they hadn’t been very religious and said it was really great to see that I was now a Yiddishe boy blowing shofar.”

Wherever he went, Rogoff saw how struck the residents were by the sound of the shofar. “While we were blowing the shofar by the ladies’ wards, I saw a woman smiling,” he says. “She wasn’t able to move her body, but she was smiling, and it was really moving – it shows the power of the shofar.”

Robyn Levin, who runs the volunteers’ programme at Sandringham Gardens, and accompanied the shofar blowers, was also touched by this moment. “Her whole face lit up. She was just so excited. It was amazing to see. The boys brought so much happiness to the residents in the wards, it was really special,” she says.

Levin tells how deeply one new resident in his 80s was impacted by the sound of the shofar. “We went into his room and one of the boys blew the shofar for him. In preparation, the elderly man stood up and got his yarmulke out. He was visibly moved, his whole demeanour changed – it was amazing to see. He hadn’t heard the shofar in a long time and he so appreciated it and asked the boys to come back.”

Even the staff at the home were intrigued by the shofar blowing, Rogoff says. “Two of the workers came up to me and asked me what the blowing was for. They said it sounded like a reminder for something and I said that’s exactly what it is. I explained that the shofar blasts are a call to look at where you are now and to realise that you must start improving on yourself during Elul, which leads up to Rosh Hashanah, the day of judgement.”

Rogoff says he’ll be returning to the home before Rosh Hashanah. “I want to go and blow it there as often as I can, it was really amazing to see their reactions.” Expressing the joy he gets from blowing the shofar, he says there’s nothing like the feeling of helping a person get to the right place in their lives in this way. “Just by blowing a shofar, a simple ram’s horn, you spread a beautiful message that one can’t explain in words.”

Ari Levin, also in Grade 10 at Yeshiva, blew the shofar alongside Rogoff. “I first grabbed a shofar at around the age of 12 and just tried to blow and eventually, it just worked,” he recalls, “Nobody taught me, I just figured it out.” While the deep meaning behind shofar blowing cannot be denied, its pitch is not to everyone’s taste. “Some people are annoyed by it, but I just like the sound of the shofar and the message it brings,” he says.

The Yeshiva boys visited other residential facilities run by the Chevrah Kadisha. “It was nice to see the Selwyn Segal residents happy and smiling,” says Ari. “Making people happy through blowing the shofar – and in general – is very important to me.”

Levin says the shofar blowing is undoubtedly beneficial for the young men themselves. “I think it’s very important to see how much the boys get out of doing this mitzvah by blowing for the residents.”

On the other side of the generational divide, seeing how children light up when hearing the shofar is also heartwarming. “When I blow the shofar for the Sydenham Hebrew Pre-Primary School kids, they’re so excited, they bounce up and down, they can’t wait to hear it,” says Rabbi Yehuda Stern of Sydenham Shul. “They especially love the tekiah gedolah [the extra-long shofar blast]. They want to see how long I can hold my breath for,” he laughs.

Stern says he sees blowing the shofar as a way of providing an awakening. “It awakens the heart of the people who listen to it,” he says. “I’ve seen adults who leave a room and when they see someone walk in with a shofar, about to blow it, they turn around and walk back in. Their hearts ignite when they see the shofar. To get people to introspect, to dig deep, and to reflect is very difficult today, but the moment the shofar comes out, that’s what happens.”