The cry of the shofar

Rosh Hashanah is over, but the sound of the shofar is still ringing in my ears. I wonder: is it still ringing in yours?

The shofar is meant to be a wakeup call, a spiritual alarm clock, rousing us from the routines of our everyday lives. The shofar demands that we stop going through the motions and pay attention. It calls us to turn and turn, again and again each year, striving to live up to the very best we can be.

But what good is an alarm clock that goes off once a year and then we go back to sleep? An alarm is meant to go off every day, rousing us over and over to wake up, to be present, to notice and feel and act. That is why we need the sound of the shofar ringing in our ears, long after the final blast of tekia gedola.

Our ancient Sages did not have alarm clocks or cell phones. (Does anyone have a clock anymore?) They rose with the sun or with the sound of the rooster’s crow. So, they needed a different metaphor for the sound of the shofar. They might have likened it to the crowing of the rooster or to joyous shouts in the street or to the cry of a newborn baby. Instead, astonishingly, in Mishna Rosh Hashanah, the Sages describe the sound of the shofar as the sound of weeping, and specifically the weeping of Sisera’s mother.

Some of you may be thinking, who is Sisera? Good question! We might have thought the Sages would want us to recall the weeping of our matriarch Rachel, who according to the prophet Jeremiah weeps by the side of the road as the tribes of Israel are taken into captivity. But Sisera was an enemy, a Canaanite general. After losing a battle, he hid in the tent of a woman named Yael, who drove a tent peg through his head.

Though he is our enemy, the Hebrew Bible pauses to show us his mother, gazing out her window, weeping as she waits for him to return.

This is the sound that the ancient rabbis wanted us to experience when we hear the shofar — the sound of our enemy’s mother weeping.

I have heard this story before and have been moved by the reminder to widen our circle of care and compassion. But this year, I understood the teaching in a different way. Perhaps it was the confluence of Rosh Hashanah beginning on September 11 that made the idea of hearing the weeping of our enemies more striking. Perhaps it was a teaching I heard from Rabbi Miriam Margles who said, “We are required to open our awareness to the reality that the mother of our enemy feels pain and loss, that her son is loved and grieved. Before we move into action, we are required to think of the very people whose pain we may be inclined to dismiss, excuse or turn away from.”

Rabbi Margles emphasizes the brilliance of the ancient rabbis. They do not ask the impossible of us; they do not require us to feel the pain of our enemies, but to feel the pain of our enemy’s mother. I cannot weep for those who have committed horrors, those who continue to inflict untold suffering on innocent people. But I can imagine the pain of a mother, who, despite everything, loves her child.

The sound of the shofar is still ringing in my ears, reminding me to hear the wailing of all the grieving mothers — ours and theirs. The sound of the shofar is still ringing in my ears, inspiring me to keep moving toward a world where everyone is safe and cherished. It is a wakeup call I need to hear every day throughout the year.

Rabbi Hannah Orden lives in Summit and is rabbi emeritus of Congregation Beth Hatikvah there. She is a past president of the Summit Interfaith Council.