Man Bragging A Little Too Much About Size Of His Shofar

“The trick is learning to handle the weight and girth of it. It’s about cultivating stamina.”

Credit: Olve Utne via Wikipedia

Crown Heights, September 1 – A man who blows a ram horn each weekday in the synagogue for most of the month leading up to the Jewish New Year keeps mentioning how big his instrument is, observers report, eliciting discomfort and suspicion from those around him.

Witnesses at Kehillas Anshei Shalom in this Brooklyn neighborhood noted that since this past Sunday, Boruch Ber Leibowitz has boasted of both the prowess he demonstrates with the shofar and the size of the unit in his possession, leading his audience to wonder why the man appears to feel so insecure about it that he attempts to compensate by trying to make others believe he has excess size and ability in the relevant department.

“You should see the size of the shofar I blow,” he bragged to a coworker. “I use a larger-than-average size during Elul, but then for Rosh HaShanah itself I break out the really big one. And it’s easy for me. Most guys don’t last through the whole service. They dry out. But me, I keep going strong through all hundred blasts.” The basic Biblical requirement to hear shofar blasts on Rosh HaShanah involves three such blasts, but doubts as to the precise quality, number, and duration of those blasts led ancient sources to introduce repetitions, variations, and other blasts to bracket the “main” sounds; the Rosh Hashanah daytime service in most synagogues now involves a hundred shofar blasts distributed in groups throughout the lengthy liturgy for the day.

“That guy gets a good sound out if his shofar,” remarked Leibowitz to a fellow pedestrian outside another synagogue, from which emerged the tones of the ritual horn. “It’s pretty high-pitched, which tells me it’s probably a short shofar. Those can be tricky, which is why I use a really big one. The trick is learning to handle the weight and girth of it. It’s about cultivating stamina.” The traditional shofar in the vast majority of congregations comes from the head of a male sheep, but Yemeni Jewish tradition specifies the large, curling horn of the kudu, an African ruminant. Some congregations who maintain strict adherence to the ram’s horn shofar for purposes of fulfilling the Rosh HaShanah commandment nevertheless adopt the kudu horn for the blasts that originate in custom, rather than law, such as the daily Elul series of blasts, blasts that accompany certain portions of confessional and penitential prayer, and the one that signals the end of the Yom Kippur fast day next month.

Leibowitz has also tried to obtain the biggest goblet for the four cups of wine at the Passover Seder.

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