Cookery

15 SEPTEMBER 2022

Rebbe’s ‘Shofar campaign’ approaches seven decades

BY DAVID SAFFER

Rosh Hashanah is around the corner and for as long as I can remember hearing the Shofar blown was the highlight of High Holy Day services on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

Growing up in Leeds, my late father, Harold Saffer, always made sure I was in shul along with my siblings when the Rabbi, Chazan or whoever had the honour took centre stage. One year, I recall at least three senior members taking part such was the pressure before a one thousand packed shul!

On the whole though, it was an annual moment when you can hear a pin drop.

There is something uniquely special about hearing the Shofar notes “tekiah, shevarim and teruah”. When my children were young you could see the wonderment in their faces and I know it will be the same for my four grandsons in shul this month.

I’ll be at Shenley’s synagogue this time around when Rabbi Alan Garber carries on the age-old tradition. It’s the first year since my father passed away so it will be particularly emotional.

Sadly, for any number of reasons, not everyone can be in a shul come the holiest days of the Jewish calendar so there are good-hearted individuals who ensure this is addressed. But I’m well aware ChabadLubavitch have a comprehensive program to ensure the Shofar is accessible to all.

The Lubavitcher Rebbe’s ‘Shofar blowing’ campaign at Rosh Hashanah is almost 70 years old.

The background to blowing a Shofar in parks and a plethora of venues was influenced by the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M Schneerson, who launched his Rosh Hashanah program in 1953.

The idea of bringing Jews to the streets was not really considered. You either heard the Shofar in shul or you didn’t. I’m too young to offer proof, but reports testify to this notion. However, it appears the campaign was a Chabad pilot initiative, a forerunner of many mitzvah campaigns.

When Chabad students took to the streets of Brooklyn, New York with Shofarsin-hand a revolution quite literally started. No one had experienced anything like it before. The campaign was simple, blow the Shofar to anyone not able to hear it. The Rebbe’s campaign for all Jews to hear the Shofar was spiritually uplifting and has not changed over the ensuing decades.

The Rosh Hashanah Brooklyn initiative became a permanent fixture after the founding of the Lubavitch Youth Organisation of New York in 1955 alongside a street ‘lulav ‘n’ etrog’ program.

Chassidim travelled to more and more locations annually. Detailed reports would be delivered to the Rebbe. The campaign escalated to kibbutzim in Israel.

In response to a 1958 letter from a Jewish hospital chaplain in Brooklyn regarding blowing the Shofar at Rosh Hashanah, the Rebbe explained that an aspect of the Shofar was to coronate G-d Almighty as king of the universe. All Jews should have the opportunity to hear the call of the Shofar.

The new decade saw visitors around the world, many from Israel, travel to New York to take in the Jewish holidays and hope to meet the Rebbe. Blowing the Shofar before prayers or in the afternoon became part of Rosh Hashanah in Brooklyn. The media soon took note.

“The National Jewish Post & Opinion in October 1960 reported, “Farmers in the Lubavitcher cooperative ‘Kfar Chabad,’ are rich in … zeal. Starting on the Rosh Hashanah holidays, they, along with local Chassidim, trek to all hospitals within walking distance of their synagogue and blow the Shofar for bedridden patients.”

Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Hecht, of Chabad Chicago, recruited Shofar-blowing volunteers, including his brothers-in-law Roy Pinchot and David Goldberg.

Pinchot had prayed at Hecht’s Chicago synagogue in the ’60s, but in 1967, he moved to Skokie, one of the largest populations of Holocaust survivors in the world to help set up Congregation Or Torah.

Two years on, encouraged by Rabbi Hecht, Pinchot organised Shofar blowing in a hospital. He recalled, “It was quite an experience. People would break into tears.”

Goldberg was among volunteers who blew the Shofar for patients at a hospital and in people’s homes on Rosh Hashanah.

“I was amazed at how many would be eagerly hoping for us to come,” he said. “By the end of the day, my lips would be drooping, but for me, it was enjoyable and rewarding.”

Chabad proved a hit throughout California during the swinging 60s. A decade on and emissaries took the Shofar campaign to hospitals in Los Angeles, Santa Monica, Long Beach and Berkeley.

Rabbi Shlomo Cunin, founding director of Chabad California, told Bnai Brith Messenger in 1971, “We have received hundreds of letters from bedridden patients and their families thanking us for making available to them the Shofar blowing. The Shofar, which ushers in the New Year for the Jews, has historically brought hope and inspiration for brighter things to come in the future.” A message of positivity was growing.

Before Rosh Hashanah 1974, the Rebbe expanded his Shofar campaign to include the month of Elul, when by custom the Shofar is blown daily except for the eve of Rosh Hashanah.

The Rebbe stressed the healing it brought to patients in hospitals. And in 1978, he noted that blowing the Shofar for patients “literally revives souls”.

“Strolling along a street in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn, I saw a young man with a shy, fish-out-of-water look about him,” wrote Ellie Spielberg in The New York Times’s Metropolitan Diary in 1994. “He stopped and asked if I’d heard the Shofar being blown that day. I answered no. So, he opened his jacket, whisked out a small ram’s horn and gave me a private concert. With joyful abandon, he played and played, conjuring trills, stops and drones of a tune as old as the Bible. I closed my eyes. Then he stopped, tucked away the Shofar, said ‘Shona Tovah”, Happy New Year, and was gone. It was the best Rosh Hashanah I’ve had.”

The Rebbe highlighted the importance of taking the Shofar to isolated soldiers in the Israeli military.

And the coming years would see the Rebbe develop the campaign to include Jews in prison and even more hospitals as the Chabad movement grew.

In 1991, visitors to New York for the High Holy Days to meet the Rebbe had increased exponentially. Eyewitnesses recall the Rebbe observing huge crowds and stressing an expectation that those gathered participate.

Nothing reminds a Jew of who they are like the sound of a Shofar. In a few days, Jews will be transfixed in shuls, public parks, hospitals, homes and streets around the world including Brooklyn where it all began 69 years ago.