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D'var Torah: Sounds of the High Holidays [1]

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Date: 2023-09-14  

post a Sounds of the High Holidays diary every year; it’s become a tradition in itself. These sounds are worth hearing again and again. And listening to these prayers for this diary always helps me prepare for the High Holidays. However, though I missed last year.

Rosh Hashana begins this year at sundown on Sept. 15 and ends at sundown Sept. 17. Yom Kippur begins at sundown Sept. 24 (with Kol Nidrei beginning before that) and ends at sundown Sept. 25.

There are many sounds we associate with the High Holidays. Perhaps the best known is the blowing of the Shofar, the ram's horn. The commandment, interestingly, is not to sound the Shofar, but to hear it. Thus, the rabbis argued that a Jew passing by a synagogue on Rosh Hashana who stops and listens to the Shofar is fulfilling the commandment. The Shofar is not sounded if the holiday falls on the Sabbath as happens this year, but since there are two days of Rosh Hashana, we still can hear it once. Which is good, because in some synagogues the blasts are counted until there are at least one hundred have been sounded. These are not done all at once, luckily for the person doing the blowing. There are several times during the service when we have a Shofar service. I was lucky enough to find a video of that. Tekia is a long blast; Sh'varim is a blast broken into three, and Teruah is a series of short sounds. The reader calls out the particular blast that comes next. Tekia gedolah is the "great" blast at the end. There is also a Tekia gedolah that marks the end of Yom Kippur.

x YouTube Video On the second day of Rosh Hashana we read the story of the binding of Isaac. (Muslims believe it was Ishmael who was almost sacrificed.) Isaac is saved when an angel tells Abraham to stop, and shows him a ram caught by the horns in a thicket. There is Midrash that says that the ram was one of the few things created before the creation. One of his horns was blown at Sinai when God revealed himself to the former slaves. The second is hidden and will announce the coming of the Messiah.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/9/14/2193228/-D-var-Torah-Sounds-of-the-High-Holidays

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