Shofar: The Sounds of Repentanceનમૂનો

An Invitation to Change

You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea. — MICAH 7:19

As the psalmist wrote in Psalm 96:13, “Let all creation rejoice before the Lord, for he comes, he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in his faithfulness.” This is the secret of Judgment Day. When God judges us, He looks upon us with love. His goal is to prompt us to change into our best possible selves.

Tradition teaches that when the shofar is sounded at the start of Rosh Hashanah, God gets up from His Seat of Judgment and sits instead in the Seat of Mercy. Why? Because He loves us and does not desire to punish us.

The sounding of the shofar is comparable to the sounding of a gavel that signals the start of a trial. When the shofar is sounded on Rosh Hashanah, it is as though our own trial has been initiated. We come before God, demonstrating our intention to cast away our sins and return to Him.

The Jewish sages teach that God says, “Where there is judgment from below, there is no need for judgment from above.” God takes no pleasure in punishing us. When He sees that we are actively working on ourselves, He looks upon us with mercy without the need for stern judgment. Sounding the shofar demonstrates our willingness to participate in the process of introspection and change.

On the first afternoon of Rosh Hashanah, Jews participate in an unusual custom known as Tashlich, which means “casting off.” We go to a body of water, recite prayers, and throw crumbs of bread into the water. To an outsider it might seem strange, but what is taking place is a symbolic casting off of sins. We read from the Book of Micah, “you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea” (7:19).

We take bread, which symbolizes our sins, and cast it into the depths of the sea. The water symbolizes how God will wash our sins away and cleanse us. The Bible reassures us our sins have been taken away: “as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us” (Psalm 103:12). This custom helps us grasp that God will forgive our sins and that we are free to change into whoever God wants us to be.

Rosh Hashanah is an opportunity to change, to confess, and to come clean. We can’t do it alone—we need God’s help—but we can be forgiven and we can start fresh and new.

The shofar is narrow at the end where it is blown, but wide where the sound comes out. This recalls the verse from Psalm 118 that says, “When hard pressed, I cried to the Lord; he brought me into a spacious place” (v.5). In the original Hebrew, the verse literally translates as, “From a narrow place I cried... He brought me into a spacious place.”

During this season of repentance, we cry out to God, through the shofar, from a “narrow place” where we have ended up because of our sins. In doing so, God forgives us, washes away our sins, and sets us free to grow, to begin anew, and start the New Year with a clean slate.