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Rabbi Benji Levy

The Three Shofars

n 1933, on Rosh Hashanah, in the When Rav Kook began to talk of the least biblical proportions for the Jewish nation
Old City of Jerusalem, Rav Kook preferred shofar, the horn of a non-kosher and is reminiscent of other legendary
I delivered a powerful speech about animal, he burst into tears. Six years before shofar blasts such as the giving of the
the different types of shofars that we are the Holocaust, he talked of the third shofar Torah at Sinai (Exodus 19:19), which
allowed to use, comparing them to different as a wake-up call from anti-Semitic nations, transformed the moral landscape of
types of Aliyah (immigration to Israel). urging Jews to escape to Israel as a place of civilization forever, or the announcement
refuge. In this scenario, evil people become of the Jubilee year (Leviticus 25:9),
The preferred shofar is a ram’s horn, instruments of redemption, sounding a introducing one of the most decisive
representing Akeidat Yitzchak – the final warning to leave foreign lands. If one statements about freedom ever made.
Binding of Isaac. Its source is spiritual doesn’t respond to the first two wake-up Joshua employed the shofar in conquering
and compared to the motivations of calls, there is no blessing recited on this Jericho, the first stage of claiming Eretz
Nachmanides, Yehuda Halevy, Bartenura, sounding. Yisrael for the Jewish people, and Isaiah
the students of the Vilna Gaon, the saw the shofar as the instrument of
Chasidim of the Baal Shem Tov and other Rav Kook closed his speech with a prayer reunification, captivating the hearts and
righteous individuals who moved to Israel for the ‘great shofar of redemption,’ one minds of those lost in exile (Isaiah 27:13).
as a response to a spiritual calling. awakened from within and not from And this was the same sound heard on that
without. Today, in 2018, the State of Israel fateful day next to the ancient stones of the
The second best option is the horn of is indeed a spiritual treasure and boasts a Western Wall.
any other kosher animal (except that of a Jewish army and government. At the same
cow), which albeit not the absolute ideal, time, anti-Semitism is still rampant in many This Yom Yerushalayim, may we, and
still contains greatness – the calling to countries. We need to choose which sound our entire people, heed the call of the
return for other benefits, such as to live as we will hear. first shofar and continue to grow in our
a free people in our ancestral homeland, faith, our relationship to Israel and our
with a Jewish army and government, It is no coincidence that the famous picture connection with one another.
punctuating our calendar with the Jewish epitomizing the reunification of Jerusalem
festivals in a Jewish environment. A at the Kotel is that of Rabbi Shlomo Goren
blessing is recited over both of these blowing the shofar. Yom Yerushalayim in Rabbi Benji Levy is CEO
shofars on Rosh Hashanah. 1967 heralded a miraculous awakening of of Mosaic United

Rabbi Shlomo Goren blowing the shofar at the Western Wall in 1967 (GPO)

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