Jack once asked his friend Sam, “Why don’t you wear a watch?” Jack asnwered that he does not need one, because he can always ask someone else the time.
“But what do you do if you get up during the night and you want to know what time it is?”
Jack responded, “I have a shofar! I simply open the window and start blowing the shofar. Soon the neighbors start yelling. Are you crazy??? Why are you blowing the shofar at 3 in the morning? Then, I know what it is exactly.”
Rabbi Simon Dolgin wrote, “We blast more than we hear.” Yet, the mitzvah of the shofar is to listen. We live in a world filled with noise. Our tablets, podcasts, and our voices. Yet, do we hear the cries inside our hearts- shouts of joy and shouts of sorrow?
Rav Cook explains that the series of shofar blats represents who we are; the past, the present, and the future. As we listen to the tekiah, with intent and purpose, may we remind ourselves of the time…it’s time to renew our lives, renew our souls, renew our sacred community.
