The shofar reminds us
of the ram in the thicket.
Where are we ensnared?
It shatters complacency.
It wails with our grief,
stutters with our inadequacy.
The shofar cries out
I was whole, I was broken,
I will be whole again.
Make shofars of us, God!
Make us resonating chambers
for Your love.
That poem was written by Rabbi Rachel Barenblat, who writes a blog online under the fabulous pseudonym, The Velveteen Rabbi (if you’re not familiar with Margery Williams’ lovely children’s book, it’s called the Velveteen Rabbit). I’m actually not going to focus this whole sermon on the shofar, but rather on the concept of Kol, meaning Voice in Hebrew, but it seemed almost ridiculous to deliver a sermon about the power of one’s voice on Rosh Hashanah without beginning with the shofar!!
Indeed, the ram’s horn is a powerful example of sound resonating all around us as well as within us. As Rabbi Barenblat describes in her poem, “it shatters complacency, it wails with our grief, stutters with our inadequacy.” The three sounds of the shofar - Tekiah, Shevarim, Teruah - are indeed supposed to mimic various emotions. The long, clear, three-second blast of the tekiah is clarity, wholeness, strength. But then, Shevarim, a name that literally means “broken,” three shorter blasts that slice that long Tekiah into three, demonstrating that even when we strive for the clarity and strength of that single blast, much of the time we fall short - or at least we tell ourselves we did - and we feel broken and in pain, sometimes even like we’ve been cut or sliced with a knife. And the last one, Teruah, stutters out nine, tiny blasts, symbolic of how we try to march along and imagine everything is fine… right up until we start to stumble. And one stumble leads to another… There are a lot of pressures and stressors all around us. In the face of the pandemic, Russian invasion in Ukraine, environmental disasters, political turmoil and uncertainty; we viscerally feel the sputtering and floundering of the Teruah inside ourselves.
But then we end with the long call of the Tekiah Gedolah, which - like my High Holiday theme this year - reminds us to keep striving and aspiring to reach wholeness and holiness, to keep going and keep working on improving our lives. As Rabbi Barenblat states in her poem: “The shofar cries out: I was whole, I was broken. I will be whole again.” The blasts and cries of the shofar are indeed powerful examples of how sound can affect and reflect our moods.
As you may know, if you attended services yesterday, my sermons this High Holiday season develop the concept of aspiring, through four metaphors for God, as articulated by Rabbi Toba Spitzer, in her terrific, new book, “God is Here.” Yesterday, we imagined God using the symbolism of Water, and now I would actually like to skip Spitzer’s second metaphor (for those of you who know the book…), which I will instead discuss on Yom Kippur, and today move on to her third metaphor. The chapter in the book is called “If You Truly Listen,” and is indeed about the power of voice, and of listening… and of silence.
As I mentioned, I thought the shofar would be an excellent place to start; though perhaps for a reason that you might not have anticipated. In her book, Spitzer quotes a sound expert named Julian Treasure, who writes, “The human body is 70 percent water, which makes us rather good conductors of sound.” That makes complete sense to me… and yet I never before thought about the water inside us making our entire bodies into sound conductors.
But then I discovered that Barenblat’s poem kind of intimates that in her last line, where she says: “Make shofars of us, God! Make us resonating chambers of Your love.” Filled as we are with water, we are indeed brimming chambers waiting for a resonating sound wave to penetrate into and flow through us.
Rabbi Spitzer adds a spiritual dimension, writing: “We humans are conductors of the Godly Voice.” Though, in truth, I did write a note for myself in the margin, “potential conductors, anyway.” We can strive to emanate that Godly Voice, but too many human beings instead choose to use their voices to shame, mislead, attack, spread fear, and bully mercilessly. Nevertheless, our bodies are conductors; we just have to aspire to make them godly. It is not a given; it is a daily choice.
If you didn’t feel impacted during our Shofar service yesterday, I encourage you to prepare yourselves for later, when our shofar blowers will again sound out their powerful blasts. I invite you to hold this intention: Close your eyes and visualize that you are indeed made up of 70 percent water; it surrounds and fills every organ, muscle, and bone in your body. And when the shofar rings out, see if you can feel it inside your physical being, not just hear it with your ears. Because the shofar isn’t just meant to be a sound, it should hopefully make your whole body reverberate, and really feel affected and moved by the Kol Shofar, the Voice of the Ram’s Horn.
Rabbi Spitzer begins her chapter on Voice by highlighting God speaking to the Children of Israel at Mount Sinai. Talk about a resonating, booming Voice… Yikes! There’s a very odd claim in that section of the Torah, in Exodus, chapter 20, where it states, “וכל העם ראים את הקולות - And all the people *saw* the *voices*” (v. 15). In our Bible class last week, when we were discussing Spitzer’s chapter, someone suggested this was synesthesia, an actual medical condition where the five senses get all jumbled up. You can hear a word and see a color or a shape, or you can see sounds. I realize this might come across a bit psychedelic, but Spitzer reframes it, quoting another rabbi, Darby Leigh, who is profoundly deaf, and who does indeed watch people’s lips or how they sign words with their hands in order to “hear” them.
Rabbi Leigh interprets the word “Kol” here, not as sound or voice, but as “vibration.” It’s reminiscent of the stories told about Ludwig van Beethoven, who sawed off the legs of his piano, so it would lay directly on the floor and he could feel - and almost hear - the vibrations in his brain and in his body.
Back in that passage in Exodus, where the Israelites heard God speak to them, the text refers to the people “trembling” and even the mountain itself “trembling” as well, but now I’m wondering if maybe we should translate it instead as “reverberated.” Their bodies are, after all, very good conductors of sound.
Yesterday I told you that I didn’t just want to present these new metaphors for the Divine, but most importantly think about how taking them in and contemplating them can also lead us to developing a new relationship with God. Too often - meaning “constantly” - our texts refer to God in one way or another as Big Person Who Controls Our Lives. Whether that’s a King, a Judge, a Vindicator, a Father, a Shepherd, or whatever imagery you’ve heard or read or sung throughout your life. Think, “Avinu, Malkeinu - Our Father, our King.”
I know you’ve likely seen God that way your entire life, whether it has led you to believe in God or reject the notion of God entirely, or maybe somewhere in the middle. But what if we shake up those outdated metaphors for God? Again I want to reiterate, if we change the image, it can also change the relationship. Spitzer comes back to this time and again in her book, for example right here, in talking about God’s Voice booming at the people on Sinai. She quotes a rabbinic midrash (story) from Exodus Rabbah, stating that every person present at Mount Sinai heard the Divine Vibration differently. She states: “Each person present received what they needed to hear in that moment.”
Then comes the meaning-making; the shifting of relationship. Spitzer writes, “this rabbinic tradition makes clear that speaking and listening is an interactive process that depends as much on the listener as the speaker.” Too often we think of religion and religious laws as one-directional. “Thou Shalt…” and “Thou Shalt Not,” and “Thou” definitely shouldn’t question or waver! But if we don’t see God as a Big Person, but rather a voice, a vibration, a force that flows through us and resonates within us, AND which depends as much on our listening as on what is being spoken; that changes things quite a bit, doesn’t it?
Of course, you might respond, “How can there be a voice without a Speaker? Someone’s got to be on the other end of that microphone, no??” Well, that is perhaps coming from an entirely human frame of reference. For me, personally, God does not conform to those standards. The very beginning of the Torah has God speaking all of Creation into existence, and we never hear of any aspect of God’s Being, other than this Kol, this Voice, declaring “Let there be light” and so on. God can indeed be just the voice itself, moving us, not from outside, but from within our very bodies.
When we’re talking about voices and sounds and hearing, we of course can’t leave out our Jewish creed, the prayer we sing aloud three times a day, and which is often the very first thing we teach children to recite: “שמע ישראל ה׳ אלוהינו ה׳ אחד - Hear, O Israel, Adonai our God, Adonai is One.” It’s not a prayer directed at God, but rather to our fellow Jews: Shema YISRAEL. Furthermore, the Shema is not just a command to listen, but a call to action; we are meant to feel compelled to turn that listening, that reverberation that can make our whole body tremble, into Tikkun Olam, partnering with God in repairing our world. That’s what makes the Shema so potent and efficacious.
Does that sound like an exaggeration? Well, Shema Yisrael, listen up, people of Israel (and specifically, people of Congregation Ohev Shalom) - our voices carry tremendous power. Words are tools that can heal or harm. You may have heard me say this before, but I think we need to reverse the famous children’s rhyme: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” In fact, sticks and stones - and physical pain - can ONLY hurt my body, a body that can and will recover. But the sting of mean-spirited words? The deep wounds that we can never forget of being maligned or smeared or talked about behind our backs? Our voices, our words, and our intentions do indeed contain immense force. So too, by the way, does our silence. When our world leaders choose to remain silent in the face of oppression, persecution, and the killing of innocent people - or the attempted overthrow of our Democracy - that silence is absolutely deafening. Its reverberations are felt long, long after the moment has passed.
So voice and sound and hearing - and even silence - are actually very potent resources, and it is imperative that we see them as such. Certainly in a prayer setting, there’s no question it affects one’s experience. Take, for instance, the Kol Nidrei prayer on the eve of Yom Kippur. The words themselves are actually quite dry and not very spiritual. It’s essentially a legal formula denouncing any vows we may make from this Yom Kippur to the next. So why do people love it so much? Why does it feel like each and every one of us is right where we need to be, as soon as we hear those first few notes: “Kol Nidrei…”? Because of the power of song. Rabbi Spitzer writes about this in her book, and these could also be my words, relating to my lived experience here at Ohev Shalom as well: “I have heard many times from my congregants,” writes Spitzer, “ that while they don’t always understand the Hebrew words of our prayer book, they feel a sense of spiritual connection when we sing those words together.” Sound familiar at all? The Kol Nidrei isn’t about the words, almost at all, it’s the melody, the memories it evokes, and the feeling inside us when the song penetrates to our heart and our soul.
How wonderful that music, singing, chanting, even wordless niggunim, can have such a transformational effect on us! Again, what if we let go of the image of God as Commanding Ruler, Who demands that we recite every prayer correctly and at its appropriate, appointed time? What if we instead focused on a Divine Vibration that we let run through our bodies and fill us with connection, meaning, and spirituality? I think a lot more people would seek a relationship to God if theology was expressed more like that.
And it can be! None of us are required to accept the theological depictions put forth in our Torah or our High Holiday prayer book, the Machzor. One of the amazing things about Judaism is that we do not mandate belief. There is no singular creed or dogma that we must declare and accept as true and immutable. We have practice and ritual, tradition and history, music and social action and caring… but not required beliefs. Which is why I encourage, and even urge, us all to be more flexible in our theological understanding of God. You can of course still reject the notion of a Divinity, remaining an atheist or an agnostic. I know religion has done some terrible things, and the Bible can often sound really harsh and not believable.
Yet, a lot of that comes back to a rigid, insistent view of God as a Big Person, possibly in the sky, commanding and deciding. And our liturgy will continue to talk about God writing our names in the Book of Life or the Book of Death. So I know it’s hard to get away from that depiction. That’s why we aspire! Yesterday, I proposed we see these concepts as metaphors, not as a factual reality that Judaism insists we adopt. What if the Books of Life and Death are really for all of us to write ourselves into, with our actions, our commitments, and yes, our voices. Do not abdicate that power to anyone else, even God! Rabbi Spitzer writes, “The power of Kol (voice) is wielded both by God and by human beings, and seems closely linked to the ability to discern right from wrong.” We can lift up others, heal relationships, and lower tensions, simply by using our God-given voices… or we can use our words to injure, scar, and even cause permanent damage. Sounds a whole lot scarier than some sticks & stones, or even broken bones…
Speaking of “broken,” let us return to Shevarim; the shofar blast that means “brokenness.” It reminds us that there is a lot that is shattered in our world. Even our Jewish term for Social Action, Tikkun Olam - Repairing the World, assumes there is brokenness all around us that needs our help to become whole again. The shofar blasts are indeed a call to wake us up from our lethargy and apathy, and really make a difference. And the Kol Shofar, the Voice of the Shofar, reminds us that we too have a Kol, we have a voice as well. It is, in many ways, the spark of the Divine in all of us. And we should aspire, every day, to use our words to speak with kindness, honesty, and courage. To use our silence to hear - Shema - other people and genuinely listen to what they are saying and be there for one another. And sometimes to listen to the still, small voice inside ourselves, that can help us find our true-north when we feel lost and aimless.
We all have the capacity to become - like Rabbi Barenblat’s poem suggests - resonating chambers of God’s Love, sending and receiving Divine Vibrations to heal the brokenness of our world. We can aspire to grow in this new year, to use our shofar-like voices to help and to comfort, and to truly listen to others and to ourselves. We can become whole again.
Shanah Tovah!
That was my blog post from a few weeks ago. This week, I would like to explore the other side of the same issue; the person refusing to accept the feedback. What if we're not the person trying to make a "friendly" observation; what if we're the one being observed? We need to ask ourselves: Am I willing to be open to comments, even if they're painful and might require serious introspection and maybe even change? In our current Torah portion, we see that even Moses - one of our greatest leaders - struggles with this very question.
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The rabbis of the Talmud ask and answer an important question: "Who is wise? One who learns from all people" (Pirkei Avot, 4:1). Note that it says, "from all people." It's easy to learn from teachers, scholars, even an occasional rabbi. It's harder to learn from someone who is offering rebuke; though perhaps there is all the more to learn from that person. If/when you are
