Anatomy of the Shofar - Ari Abramowitz: The Land of Israel Fellowship

so most notably from a ritual perspective let's just get into a few details here every morning during the month of elul we wake up and we blow the shofar we blast the rams horn which as you may know is the most primal visceral call to wake up to return to god to take an accounting of ourselves the chauffeur is really the language of the soul oh my goodness ardell has a chauffeur she just pulled out right now how did you know do you just always have that there that's so cool it's the language of the soul the sound of the shofar and it affects us in a way that just it often can just bypass the mind and the intellect and just pierce our deepest and most innermost depths the chauffeur it also it represents the harmony that we're aspiring to create within ourselves and without all of mankind for consider what the shofar is i wanted to actually take a picture of you because we have on the farm this incredible shofar that we just got from one of our rams but um on a physical level it's the horn of iran it's it's about as animal as you get it's literally from an animal and there's a part of us our physicality that is we have an animal side to us but then we blow this thrust of our breath into it and as we know in hebrew the word for breath is neshima which is just connected to the word neshama it's if you when you're not vowels it's actually the same word neshima which means the soul for as our sages tell us as well as just basic physiology that our soul our life force it's tied in with our breath so we take our breath which is tied in with our soul that which makes us human and created in the image of the divine right god breathe the breath of life into adam and then we thrust it through this animalistic horn of the ram so spirituality the highest level of spirituality through the highest level of physicality and what emerges is an audible blast that is the harmonious synthesis of physicality and spirituality it's it's harmony it's a sound that represents the elevation of our physical world through our spirituality which is that really in a lot of ways it's our mission here in this world so uh of course it's it's uh it summons the vision of the akidat right when abraham was stopped at the very last moment from sacrificing his son on the altar on haramurya when we see the shofar we think of that on the temple mount in jerusalem abraham was about to slaughter isaac and then he did not it's it's the trumpet in which we coronate hashem as king of the world i mean god is the king of the world whether we coronate them or not but when we coordinate him in our minds and in our hearts and in our very existence our personal lives and the collective lives of the nation of israel as a whole when that is fully reflective of that internalization of our awareness of the absolute irrefutable truth of god's oneness and sovereignty and orchestration of the world well that's what it means to coronate god and it trickles down to just very simple gauges of happiness if we really internalize that truth then we'll be happy the shofar it it foreshadows the day of judgment at the end of the prophet isaiah he declares in chapter 18 is about the end of days it says all the inhabitants of the world and dwellers of the earth when a standard of the mountains is raised you shall see and when a shofar is sounded you shall hear that's about the end of days it uh the prophet safania i think is zephaniah i'm pretty sure that caleb has a nephew named safanya um he talks about the day of judgment and it reminds us also of the in gathering of the exiles right takaba farga dolla caruteno in which a great shofar will be sounded to declare our liberty and bring the exiles from the four corners of the earth and that's why as many of you know i try to go to every arrival of nephesh benefish these jews that are making aliyah and i go there to blow the shofar here's a picture of me at one of their arrivals i go to the plane i have to wake up at four in the morning but it's so worth it i lost the other pictures of me actually blowing the shofar as they're coming off the plane because i'm just telling you i've seen it hundreds of times it's something that that just it it marks the moment uh the biblical and prophetic value of that moment and when when a jew hears the shofar especially when he's descending from the plane he just bursts into tears the shofar has that ability to do that to you which is why now at this great moment right now i want to blow the shofar i want to start our journey of chuva together for i myself have not heard the shofar yet it's a long story but i didn't get to hear it yet today and so we'll be all hearing it together at this fair very moment but before i do i want to ask us ask hashem to bless us for this endeavor not only for the blowing of the shofar but for our journey of chuva together this highlight was taken from the land of israel fellowship every week hundreds of families from literally around the world come together on our live zoom sessions to strengthen each other to inspire each other and to learn torah from the land of israel in which we connect the dots between the bible the hebrew language and the confusing events of our times go to www.thelandofisral.com backslash fellowship or click on the link below to join thank you