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Answer God's call from within
Torah Study
RABBI SHLOMO RISKIN
Yom Kippur
The outstanding symbol of the High Holidays is the ram's horn, or the shofar. The central prayer on Rosh Hashana is punctuated by the exultant and plaintive sounds of the shofar, and the great white fast of Yom Kippur reaches its climactic conclusion to the very same shofar blasts.
The Torah commands us to blow the shofar of freedom for all and the return to familial land lots on the Yom Kippur of the jubilee year - every 50th year, when slaves were freed and those who had been forced to divest themselves of their property would receive the opportunity of a fresh start with their initial holdings and property: "Then you shall sound the horn loud; in the seventh month, on the 10th day of the month - the Day of Atonement - you shall have the horn sounded throughout your land and you shall hallow the 50th year. You shall proclaim release throughout the land for all its inhabitants" (Leviticus 25:9-10).
But if we wish to consider the nature and the symbolism of the shofar's central role during these 10 days of repentance, perhaps the best place to turn is to the Book of Genesis, where we read about the first sin committed by humanity (Adam and Eve) and the sound of the Divine, which shattered their complacency.
Placed inside the Garden of Eden with only one commandment, Adam and Eve prove unable to keep even this solitary command to refrain from eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The first human beings sin, and what transpires in the Garden of Eden in effect becomes the model for the entire experience of repentance and atonement.
"They heard the sound (kol) of the Lord God moving about in the garden ..." (Genesis 3:8). This particular Hebrew word for sound - kol - resonates with another kol, the sound of the shofar. In the garden, Adam and Eve are addressed by the voice of God after their transgression, just as we are each addressed by a similar voice of God in the guise of the shofar.
And what is the sound of the shofar actually communicating to us? "The Lord God called out to the man and said to him, 'Where are you?' " (Genesis 3:9).
This is the famous question, "Ayekah?" Where are you? Where do you stand morally and spiritually? To what are you directing your efforts?
Clearly God knows Adam's physical location, just as God knows where each of us is on the corporate ladder, and where we are spending the holidays. But it's Adam's spiritual state that God is addressing, Adam's internal "image of God" with whom God is seeking to make contact.
Adam initially hides from God, just as we all hide from an uncomfortable confrontation with an incisive questioner, and we hide behind many physical objects, such as fancy garments and material accoutrements. It's not by accident that God sends Adam into exile (the punishment for his sin) with garments.
Clothes can sometimes "cover up" our truest, most godly selves, teaches our Torah. And so the opening passage in the third chapter of Talmud Rosh Hashana rules that the ram's horn must be devoid of gold at its mouth piece; it dare not have a crack so that it seems to be two shofars; and a sound heard from deep inside a pit or a cavern which gives off an additional echo is disqualified.
We must respond to the Divine call without the influence of material wealth, without the blandishments of gold or the appearance of additional substance or volume; we must look at our spiritual place without the comfort of slaves and extra property - which explains why the basic sounds of the shofar are derived from Yom Kippur of the Jubilee Year.
When we respond to God's agonizing question, "Where are you?", we must answer the Divine only from the depths of our internal beings! On Yom Kippur, we sound the shofar simply dressed in a white kittel, in a synagogue far removed from the beautiful surroundings of home and family. We must respond from our truest essence, which is the image of God within us.
If we understand the shofar as God's call, "Where are you?", and we respond from the essence of our Divine selves, we will of necessity move to a much higher place this Yom Kippur.
Rabbi Shlomo Riskin is the spiritual leader of the Jewish community in Efrat, Israel.
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