Watch Haim Avitsur demonstrate the four sounds of the shofar in our video above.
This Rosh Hashanah, doing a mitzvah, or a good deed required by the Bible, can be as simple as listening to the sound of the shofar in your own home.
At the turn of the Jewish year, the shofar, a hollowed-out animal horn, sounds in synagogues around the world. For New Yorkers who want to observe the Biblical commandment central to the holiday but won't — or can't — do it at a house of worship, there are alternatives.
Five years ago, Yisrael Kugel, 31, a rabbi who runs the West Side Center for Jewish Life with his wife, Chanchy, 27, co-founded "Shofar in the Park," an event that broadcasts the horn's toot to everyone within earshot of the Naumburg Bandshell in Central Park every Jewish New Year. The couple also organizes "house calls," dispatching volunteer "blastmasters" to the homes of those who request their services via email.
The rabbi and his wife estimate that their volunteers from yeshiva schools in Brooklyn and the Jewish community center on the Upper West Side will make about 50 house calls this year, playing a sequences of the same one or two notes in three main rhythmic patterns. They may also stand on Broadway outside the Zabar's, asking passersby if they want to partake in the mitzvah, or virtuous deed, of hearing the shofar.
"It's the one time of the year that I can give back, that I can be part of the community, that I can do something that is needed, and I can do it well," said Haim Avitsur, a professional trombone player and an experienced ba'al tekiah, or shofar blower, who will log some house calls this year.
Avitsur will also sound his antelope's horn Monday evening at "Shofar in the Park," "a glorified house call" in Chanchy Kugel's words.
The shofar, an instrument without keys or valves, resists to some extent even the most experienced player's control; likewise, its sound resists strict dogmatic interpretation.
According to the Old Testament, shofars were blasted at Mount Sinai, where God delivered the Ten Commandments to Moses and the Jews, and during Joshua's siege of Jericho. They also summoned believers to the ancient Temple in Jerusalem.
"There is a definition to the different sounds" or rhythmic patterns, Kugel said, "but the main value of the shofar is just the simple call, the fact that...it’s just a sort of a guttural cry without any words."
The cry of the shofar can mean whatever the listener wants it to.
For one senior living at the Esplanade Manhattan, a residence for the elderly on the Upper West Side, it signified reconciliation with a heritage she'd foresaken after losing her entire family in the Holocaust.
A house call from a yeshiva student brought the woman to tears and a smile, as the rabbi tells the tale. She passed away later that week.
"It’s like her entire life she was waiting to hear the sound of her family and tradition again," Kugel said.
In Kugel's own ears and eyes, the sound of the shofar unites the Jewish community, from its most devout members to its least.
"Every Jew is entitled to a mitzvah ... even if they don’t feel like they’re interested, even if they feel very distant. The moment they decide to do a mitzvah, like keep shabbat or eat kosher or listen to the shofar, they are equally Jewish to the most religious person around," he said.
Many of the requests the Kugels get for house calls come from nursing homes and hospitals, where disability and illness may prevent residents and patients from worshipping at synagogue. But efforts to promote the service have found them a wider audience, the rabbi said.
"People see the signs and they say, 'Hey, that’s a great idea. We’re always into having a holiday party, or we’re watching the game and we know that it’s Rosh Hashanah, so why don’t we just invite a young yeshiva student for five minutes, and we’ll fulfill a biblical commandment ... and go on with our lives,'" he said.
