Qol Tamid The Shofar in Ritual, History, and Culture Jonathan L. Friedmann and Joel Gereboff, editors CLAREMONT STUDIES IN HEBREW BIBLE AND SEPTUAGINT Qol Tamid To Elvia, Lorenzo, and Eloise, and to the glorious The Shofar in Ritual, History, and Culture animals who gave us the shofar ©2017 Claremont Press -JLF 1325 N. College Ave Claremont, CA 91711 To Avi, Reachel, Arielle, Noah, Yonah, Rami and Elan “Praise the Lord with the sound of the Shofar” ISBN: 978-1-946230-04-1 (Ps. 150:3) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data -JG Qol Tamid: The Shofar in Ritual, History, and Culture / edited by Jonathan L. Friedmann and Joel Gereboff xii + 358 pp. 22 x 15 cm. –(Claremont Studies in Hebrew Bible & Septuagint 1) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN: 978-1-946230-04-1 Subjects: 1. Bible—Old Testament—Criticism, Interpretation, etc. Call Number: BM657.S5 Q65 2017 Cover Credit: Jason C. Mitchell Table of Contents Preface ix Joel Gereboff and Jonathan L. Friedmann Abbreviations xi Introduction 1 Joel Gereboff and Jonathan L. Friedmann The History and Ritual Uses of the Shofar 11 Jeremy Montagu The Shofar in War and Worship in the Bible 31 Marvin A. Sweeney The Emotional Resonance of the Shofar 57 and the Preacher’s Voice Joel Gereboff Of Sound and Vision 83 The Ram’s Horn in Medieval Kabbalistic Rituology Jeremy Phillip Brown Sephardic Shofar Practices 115 Theology and Mysticism Haim Ovadia Each One Blowing its Own Horn 139 Sounding the Shofar in American Maḥzorim Joel Gereboff Preface Ancient Symbols, Modern Meanings 165 The Use of the Shofar in Twentieth- This book brings together original essays on and Twenty-First-Century Music previously unexplored aspects of the shofar and its uses. Malcolm Miller Some of the essays analyze religious functions and meanings Same Signals, Different Meanings 221 of the shofar from biblical to contemporary times. Others The Shofar in Compositions examine the use and depiction of the shofar in music and by Elgar and Berio popular culture, especially during the past century. Kees van Hage The editors’ interest in the shofar emerges from their respective scholarly pursuits. As a historian of music in the Sounding the Shofar in Hollywood Film Scores 247 Bible, Jonathan is fascinated by the shofar’s survival (it is Aaron Fruchtman the only biblical instrument we can identify with any From Stale to Silly to Sublime 267 certainty); and, as a cantor, he has blown the shofar for many The Shofar in Comic Books years. Joel’s first paid position in the Jewish community was Jonathan L. Friedmann as the shofar blower in his synagogue. His larger academic focus on Judaism and the emotions, ritual, and American List of Contributors 297 Jewish denominational views informs his research on the Bibliography 301 shofar in rabbinic and modern American Jewish life. The editors would like to thank Thomas E. Phillips Index 325 and the staff at Claremont Press for embracing this project and guiding it to publication L[ Abbreviations AB Anchor Bible BO Bibliotheca Orientalis ECC Eerdmans Critical Commentary EncJud Encyclopedia Judaica. Edited by Fred nd Skolnik and Michael Beernbaum. 2 ed. 22 vols. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007 FAT Forschungen zum Alten Testament FOTL Forms of the Old Testament Literature HR History of Religions HUCA Hebrew Union College Annual JAP Journal of Applied Psychology JBR Journal of Bible and Religion JJML Journal of Jewish Music and Liturgy JQR Jewish Quarterly Review JRJ Journal of Reform Judaism JRPC Journal of Religion and Popular Culture NCBC New Cambridge Bible Commentary OTL Old Testament Library YAB Yale Anchor Bible [L Introduction Joel Gereboff and Jonathan L. Friedmann From biblical times until today the shofar has served an array of practical purposes and communicated a range of symbolic meanings. The roughly seventy references to the shofar in the Hebrew Bible show four stereotypical functions: announcing the divine presence (e.g., Exod 19:16; Zech 9:14); accompanying sacred ceremonies (e.g., Lev 23:24; 2 Sam 6:15); proclaiming kingship (1 Kgs 1:34; 2 Kgs 9:13); and signaling on the battlefield (e.g., Judg 3:27; 2 Sam 2:28). In addition, the shofar served as a symbol for messages of joy, fear, group identity, and redemption. Many of the references to the shofar occur in narratives and liturgical poetic passages, while only a few references are of an explicitly legal nature. Leviticus 25:9–10 stipulates the sounding of the shofar on the tenth day of the seventh month to proclaim the Jubilee. Two passages, Leviticus 23:24 and Numbers 29:1, require that the first day of the seventh month, what is now called Rosh Hashanah, be a day for teru’ah, the sounding of a horn, generally understood to be a shofar. Although biblical passages mention two words among those committed to such views and those, in with regard to the blowing of the shofar, tq’ (teqi’ah) time, opposed to them. The never-ending production and teru’ah, the exact nature of the sound is not fully of Jewish prayer books that continues unabated today evident, nor is how the shofar should be sounded for exhibits continual efforts to both detail the actual the different occasions. No passages detail the species sounds for different parts of the Rosh Hashanah of animals for making a shofar. services, and, more so, to frame the shofar blowing Rabbinic texts and halakhic deciders (posqim) with traditional and creative liturgical elements meant since the time of the Mishnah, the first rabbinic to impact all those listening to the sounds, including document, have developed and disagreed about the individuals at prayer and God in the divine realm. various stipulations regarding the materials for the Perhaps equally as important to its liturgical shofar, the specific character of the sounds, and the use is the shofar’s status as a national symbol. This is liturgical dimensions of its use. Moreover, local attested in the earliest artistic representations of the practices among different Jewish communities horn. From at least the Roman period, the shofar was emerged. In addition to comments on the legal aspects revered as a badge of Jewish self-identification. It was of the use of the shofar on Rosh Hashanah and other woven into architectonic elements such as the capitals, occasions—including its sounding in the period before stone reliefs, and mosaic floors of synagogues, as well and after that day, and its being blown to announce as smaller artifacts such as oil lamps, medallions, and fasts, communal bans, and the commencement of the coins. More often than not, it appeared as part of a Sabbath—rabbinic sages have also elaborated upon the symbolic grouping, which typically included a seven- purposes and meanings of the shofar blasts. Such branched menorah, a maḥta (incense shovel), a Torah views appear in the earliest homiletical midrashic scroll, and/or a lulav. For instance, a mosaic found at documents (Leviticus Rabbah and Pesiqta deRab Kahana), the sixth-century Shalom Al Yisrael synagogue in and find expression in later sermonic sources, as well. Jericho depicts a shofar, a menorah, and a lulav; and a Kabbalists, in particular, enveloped the shofar with seventh-century gold Byzantine medal features a extensive cosmic and personal mystical import, shofar, a menorah, and a Torah scroll. The shofar also thereby also shaping halakhic aspects of the ritual of appears in medieval and early modern illuminated shofar blowing. Such notions found their way into texts, such as a fourteenth-century German manuscript various liturgical texts (maḥzorim), with differences depicting two shofar blowers around the word litqo’a (“to sound the shofar”), and the Venice Haggadah of aesthetic and one part pragmatic. The aesthetic 1609, which includes an extra-biblical image of the position derived from the horn’s limited facilities and shofar as a shepherd’s horn, similar to those found in utilitarian purposes. Its normal range of two or three Europe. To this day, the shofar remains a multivalent pitches is not musical per se, although it is technically ethnic identity marker. an aerophone (wind instrument). Rather than having The shofar is the only musical instrument that the beautifying effect of music proper, the shofar has survived in Jewish practice since ancient times. functioned as a solemn and sometimes disconcerting Other types of biblical instruments (harps, lyres, frame tool of proclamation, commemoration, and alarm. drums, flutes, rattles, cymbals, etc.) are notoriously Pragmatically, the rabbis did not want to difficult to identify, both because the text reveals little interfere with the shofar’s national-cultic value. about how they looked or sounded, and because they According to the Torah, the first day of the seventh were effectively silenced after the destruction of the month (Rosh Hashanah) was a day for blowing shofars Second Temple and the subsequent unemployment of (Lev 23:24; Num 29:1). The only other Torah-mandated the Levitical musicians. A few archaeologists and action for that day was ritual sacrifice, which ended instrument makers have attempted the speculative with the fall of the Second Temple. Therefore, grouping (and controversial) work of reconstructing these long- the shofar with musical instruments, and thus barring lost devices. Such labors are not needed when it comes it from New Year observances, would have eliminated to the shofar. the holiday’s scriptural basis. The same problem would Two factors account for the shofar’s remarkable have arisen on the tenth day of the seventh month preservation. First, it is a biological instrument. Unlike (Yom Kippur), which was likewise mandated as a day human-made objects, which are influenced by for horn blasts (Lev 25:9). technological changes and cultural evolution, the Rabbinic opinions notwithstanding, historians undetectably slow forces of nature set the dimensions of Jewish music are unanimous in viewing the shofar of the shofar.