Hearing the Cry

As we approach the High Holy Days, we know that this is a time when many prayers are spoken—all the special prayers for Selichot (the service of forgiveness) and an entire book of special prayers for Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur, the machzor. But many Hasidic tales lift up the power of the wordless cry that reconnects us instantly with the Source, the Beloved. Here’s one from the Maggid of Mezeritch*, primary disciple of the Baal Shem Tov:

There was a king who sent his only son away to a distant land, for some reason known only to him.As time passed, the son became accustomed to the ways of the villagers among whom he lived. He became a wayward fellow (a bum), forgetting the niceties of life with the king. Even his royal mind and his most intimate nature grew coarse. In his mind he came to think ill of the kingdom. One day the son heard that the king was going to visit the province where he lived. When the king arrived, the son entered the palace where he was staying and began to shout out in a strange voice. His shout was in wordless sound, since he had forgotten the king’s language. When the king heard his son’s voice and realized that he had even forgotten how to speak, his heart was filled with compassion. This is the meaning of sounding the shofar.

So many words in the machzor! So much verbiage of pleading, confessing, acknowledging, then pleading some more. The sobbing, trilling cries of the shofar cut through them all—startling, raw, alive, wordless. But remember––the mitzvah as described by our Sages is not to sound the shofar, but to hear the shofar. So, I wonder, is the shofar our cri de coeur to God, or is it God’s voice crying out to us? Or is it both? 

In the Book of Exodus when the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy are called out (Exodus 34:5-7), it’s not clear who is doing the calling, whether God or Moses or both at the same time. Similarly, the blasts of the shofar crack our hearts open, wash our minds clean, call us home; at the same time they send our yearning out like radio signals, reaching for a response, for a sign of life in the Cosmos. 
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This is our faith and our Jewish practice at its best, multi-directional, ever reminding us that we humans are meant to be in partnership with the Source, and It with us, to bring forth the best that this created realm can muster: kindness, mercy, fairness, mutual assistance, awareness, listening, embrace…. all the qualities we would wish to manifest in this world.

We sound the shofar and we hear the shofar to rekindle, renew, reaffirm this sacred partnership, to open the ears of our hearts to the wordless cries of the human and the more-than-human world––the sounds of truth and need, love and connection––flowing steady like an underground river beneath the thrashing rapids of verbiage flooding our minds. We blow the shofar, and we feel the blows of the shofar, a reminder that we are here l’takeyn olam b’malkhut Shaddai, to repair and redress our world in these challenged times through dynamic alignment and realignment with the Nurturing Life of the Worlds, the Holy Blessed Oneness. We give and receive the wail of tekiah as a soul call, a sacred call to action.

* with thanks to R. Art Green for his sensitive teaching of this tale