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[Home](/) 2. [Blog](/blog) 3. Why We Blow the Shofar [The Feasts](/blog?category=The%20Feasts) # Why We Blow the Shofar Rosh Hashanah falls on September 11 and 12 this year. Before it arrives, it is worth asking what the sound is actually for. Read in 3 minutes ![A painted illustration of a lone figure raising a shofar at the foot of a smoking mountain](https://wmcvjqdkevfjtmqppndf.supabase.co/storage/v1/object/public/blog-images/why-we-blow-the-shofar-v2-1787152910.webp) AI-assisted illustration, generated for this article by Upper Room NYC. Upper Room NYC August 18, 2026 Listen to this article Your browser can't play audio. You can still read the article below. The first thing most visitors notice about Rosh Hashanah is the noise. It is not a pleasant noise. A shofar is a ram's horn, hollowed out and bored through at the narrow end, and it is played by a person rather than a machine — which means it cracks, it wavers, and it sometimes fails outright on the first attempt. Nobody is embarrassed when it does. That turns out to be part of the point. Scripture does not call the day Rosh Hashanah. It calls it Yom Teruah, the day of blowing. Leviticus gives it in a single line: a day of rest, a memorial announced with the blast of horns, a holy gathering. No reason is attached. The command arrives with no explanation at all, which has left about three thousand years of people asking the obvious question. ## The sound before the sound Israel had heard a shofar once already. At Sinai the mountain is wrapped in smoke and there is a horn sounding, and Exodus says something strange about it: the sound grew _louder and louder_. Not fainter, the way sound behaves. Louder. The people standing at the foot of the mountain trembled. So when the horn is blown on Yom Teruah, it is not introducing anything new. It is recalling something. The congregation is being put back at the foot of a mountain, in front of a God who speaks. > A shofar is not an instrument you play well. It is one that exposes whether you have any breath left. ## Four sounds, and their shape There are traditionally four: - **Tekiah** — one long, unbroken note. - **Shevarim** — three broken notes, like a sigh. - **Teruah** — nine short blasts, quick and urgent. - **Tekiah gedolah** — the long one at the end, held as long as the lungs allow. Heard in order they are a shape rather than a fanfare: something whole, something broken, something frantic, and then something whole again and held. People have been finding their own year inside that sequence for a very long time. ## The oldest good answer The best short answer to _why_ is nearly nine hundred years old. Writing on the laws of repentance, Maimonides said the horn is a wake-up call, and put words in its mouth: _Awake, you sleepers, from your sleep._ That is not a remark about mornings. His point is that a person can go a long way asleep — keep a schedule, hold a job, attend a synagogue every week — and still not have looked honestly at their own life in years. The horn interrupts. It is deliberately not beautiful, because beautiful things are easy to sit through. ## And the ten days after Yom Teruah does not stand on its own. It opens ten days that close at Yom Kippur — this year on the evening of September 20 and the morning of September 21. Those days are given to the unglamorous work: the apology you have been putting off, the debt you have not mentioned, the relationship you allowed to go quiet. The horn is the starting gun for that. It is not the event. ## Why we still blow it We are a Messianic congregation, so the sound carries one thing more. The New Testament does not treat the shofar as a piece of the past. Paul writes to Corinth about the last trumpet, and to Thessalonica that the Lord Himself will come down with the trumpet of God. Whatever else that means, it means the sound is not only backward-looking. The horn that recalls Sinai is also listening for a morning nobody has heard yet. So we blow it. Badly, some years. In a room on East 61st Street, with the traffic outside carrying on exactly as before. ## Come and see for yourself Shabbat Night is Friday at 7:00 PM and Shabbat Morning is Saturday at 11:00 AM, in person at 250 E 61st St, New York, NY 10065. No registration, and nothing you need to know beforehand — everything is explained as we go. [Plan Your Visit](/plan-your-visit)[Service Times](/shabbat-services) Keep Reading - [Questions ### Why Modern Worship in a Synagogue? ](/blog/why-modern-worship-in-a-synagogue) - [Torah Portion ### Ki Teitzei and the Sheaf You Forgot ](/blog/ki-teitzei-and-the-sheaf-you-forgot) Read by subject [The Feasts](/blog?category=The%20Feasts)[Torah Portion](/blog?category=Torah%20Portion)[Congregation Life](/blog?category=Congregation%20Life)[Questions](/blog?category=Questions) Recently published - [Why Modern Worship in a Synagogue? 3 weeks ago ](/blog/why-modern-worship-in-a-synagogue) - [Ki Teitzei and the Sheaf You Forgot 3 weeks ago ](/blog/ki-teitzei-and-the-sheaf-you-forgot) - [What Actually Happens on a Friday Night 4 weeks ago ](/blog/what-actually-happens-on-a-friday-night) - [One Year in Manhattan 5 weeks ago ](/blog/one-year-in-manhattan) [All writing →](/blog) ![Upper Room NYC Messianic Synagogue logo](/assets/urnyc-logo-opt-DHkJIriH.webp) A Messianic Jewish Synagogue rooted in resurrection, revelation, and revival. 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