Beginning of Elul - Time to Practice Shofar

 

A thousand-year tradition bespeaks that the shofar is blown very briefly in daily weekday morning services for the entire month prior to Rosh Hashanah. The sound of the shofar is to remind people that the High Holy Days are approaching and that one should start thinking about repentance, spiritual repair of our souls and all that this holy season is all about.

Obviously we do not blow the shofar on Shabbat — even when it is Rosh Hashanah.

There is an additional tradition that, even though we sound the shofar every weekday during this month, we do not do so on the eve of Rosh Hashanah. There are several reasons for this custom. One is that on Rosh Hashanah morning we recite the prayer thanking G-d for letting us reach this season, the Shecheyanu blessing, and if we had blown the shofar every single day, why is one thanking G-d for reaching this season to blow the shofar since we did it the day before? So, the rabbis decided that there should be at least a one-day gap to differentiate the preparation with the actual New Year.

There are different traditions between the Ashkenazic and Sephardic world as to how many notes and which notes of the shofar are blown during this month. The Ashkenazic version is the shortest, it is just four notes. The Chassidic and Sefardic world blow generally speaking 10 to 12 notes daily.

For many years when I taught the laws of shofar and the laws of the month of Elul in my synagogue or elsewhere in the community, I referenced the Code of Jewish Law discusses the tradition of blowing the shofar during this time of year

We never blow the shofar at night. The only time we even come close to that is at the end of Yom Kippur as the day is drawing to a close and the fast is ending, and it is the last second of twilight when we blow the one blast ending the fast.

Years ago one of my congregants who was saying Kaddish had asked me for synagogues to attend during business travels. He was going to be in New York where it is obviously easy to find a synagogue. Knowing where his meetings would be, I sent him to the Spanish and Portuguese synagogues. When he returned, he told me that he saw something strange. He then explained that at the end of Ma’ariv service, the shofar sounded. So apparently that tradition is being kept at least in the Spanish and Portuguese communities.

There are so many areas of Jewish law where local traditions and customs prevail. For example, unless one is vegan, observant Jews eat meat or fish at every Shabbat or festival meal. The blowing of the shofar during the month of Elul for the 29 days prior to Rosh Hashanah certainly falls into this area, and a variety of customs prevail as to how and where in the services the shofar sounds. However, every Traditional synagogue around the world does blow the shofar daily during this period.