On Rosh Hashofar, the ba'al tokeiah blows 100 shofar blasts, comprised of three different types of sounds: Tekiah, Shevarim and Teruah.
Tekiah:
For me, the tekiah has been this entire year. The seventh of October started us on a journey which has been agony beyond anything we could imagine.
I remember the flag march for Gavriel Bloom HY'D. There were lots of us standing outside, a motley crew of moms, babies, men and teens who had all come to say goodbye to a fallen hero of Israel. There were somber songs and then silence as we waited for his family to come out of their apartment building. And then there was a shrill high-pitched wail, which shook you to the bottom of your soul. And that's the tekiah, it's long and loud and powerful. It's the keening of a shattered heart and a broken family.
Shevarim
It's waiting for a bus one summer afternoon, when I get a Whatsapp message that the IDF has located the hostages, but that they are facing a lot of heavy fighting in the area. For those of us who have lived here this past year, this was just one of these kind of messages which flooded Whatsapp and social media, but were unfortunately totally false. The Shevarim is crying your heart out at a public bus stop, where no one else has access to Whatsapp and the tears are falling in harmony with whispered tehilim.
Teruah:
Teruah is when you try to come up for air but you can't because another cry escapes– and again and again and again. It is the sound of our broken heart, when there really are just no words left, no words good enough to describe how we feel, the vast sense of desolation and the constant loss. You hear it in the voices of hostage's families, the hostages who returned but who are forever marked by their captivity, the moms who will never get to hold their babies again.
The Shofar is also traditionally blown at the end of Yom Kippur and along with its representing a heart-piercing cry, it is also the sound of hope, the sound of Jewish determination, the call "We are here and we aren't going anywhere else."
May this be the year when, instead of it sounding out our devastation, we hear the sounds of triumph, freedom and peace.
