There once was a young boy in Eastern Europe who received a shofar at the age of 10. The approaching High Holy Days meant that it was time to practice blowing the shofar. Every day he went out into the field and blew – but no matter how hard he blew or red in the face he got, no sounds came out. He tried buzzing and blowing, he held it to the right, to the left, straight forward, up, down – nothing helped. This went on for the entire month of Elul, hours at a time, and still not sounds.

The day before Rosh HaShanah, a Russian farmer wandered by and asked the child about the strange horn, and the lack of noise. “What are you doing?” The farmer asked.
Innocently enough, the boy said, “blowing a shofar.” To which the farmer asked “what’s a shofar?”
After a long explanation of Rosh Hashanah and the purpose of the shofar as only a 10 year old can deliver, the farmer asked if he could try to play it.

He put it to his lips and out came a tekiah gedolah that would be the envy of any shofar blower. He handed the shofar back and did not notice tears welling up in the child’s eyes. The boy ran to the rabbi, who had been offering him instruction on blowing the shofar.

“It’s not fair!” the child shouted. “I’ve spent all this time practicing and the farmer who had never even heard of a shofar played it perfectly the first time!”

The rabbi could see, and hear, how upset the child was. He got down on his knees so they could look in each other’s eyes and in the rabbi’s most reassuring voice he said, “The mitzvah, the commandment, isn’t in the blowing. The mitzvah is in the listening.”

The shofar is supposed to sound like crying. The three wavering blasts of shevarim, which means broken, are like a melancholy sigh. T’ruah’s short, staccato notes resemble a piercing cry. T’kiah, is an alarm. At times, T’kiah is a shout of joy. Contained within all of those notes are the mood of the High Holy Days: from crying to celebration. When the shofar cries, it is not only a stand-in for our own wailing, but a call to all of us regarding the cries of others. The loud blasts and wailing notes are designed to get our attention so that we can turn to those who are crying out for us. The trick is how to listen.

Listen to what, exactly? For one, we listen to others. Some people come out and tell us just what they need. They share, they complain, they ask. Truly though, how often does someone just come up to us and tell us exactly what they need? Who among us has not asked for something, a book, food, or some product and when failing to recall the name, asked a frustrated employee “I think it’s red, do you know the one?” It is rare for people to know what they really need AND be able to ask for it. People do not usually come right out and tell us what they need. Maybe they are reluctant to share. Maybe they do not trust that someone will listen with kindness or do anything about it. Maybe they themselves do not know what they want or need. Even those who are direct about it are not always sure themselves.

At the very least, people want to be heard. There is a difference between listening and hearing. Inspirational speaker and bestselling author, Simon Sinek explains that “Listening is not the act of hearing the words spoken; it is the art of understanding the meaning behind those words.” The sound waves will hit us one way or another. It is the act of listening that turns those waves into ideas and has an effect on us. Social scientists talk about “high quality listening.” This is the sort of attentive and careful listening that benefits both the speaker and the listener. Experts tell us that it is not only good for us to truly listen to someone, but they get an oxytocin boost.

There are some problems that we would rather not hear (or see). As Dylan said, “a man can turn his head/And pretend that he just doesn’t see” But just as happens when we pretend not to see, if we pretend that we do not hear, we also pretend we do not see the problems. Unless we listen, we cannot help. In Maureen Masud’s Memoir “A Flat Place,” she explores her own complex trauma, post traumatic stress, grief, and loss. She writes that some people say trauma is ‘untellable’ but she believes that ‘traumatised people do know how to tell their stories. What’s difficult is that often people don’t know how to hear them.” It is hard to hear others’ pain. But if they ask for our ears, we must and do more than hear. It is time to listen.

The mitzvah is to listen. We are commanded to listen. And if we listen, we just might help people tell their stories and pain and learn something ourselves. Our Rabbis ask, “”Who is wise?” The answer: “Whoever listens and learns from everyone.” According to one midrash, the sound of the shofar that we hear today is linked to Sarah’s cries when she heard of Issac’s near sacrifice. (Vayikra Rabbah 20:2). There are still people crying out today and hearing the cry of the shofar can connect us to them. Reflecting on this teaching, Rabbi Daniel Klein, Dean of the Rabbinical School at Hebrew College, suggests that “hearing the sound of the shofar means listening to the cries of the mother, maybe all mothers or maybe our mother, the mother of the Jewish people, because of the unspeakable horror, pain, and trauma her children experience in this too cruel world. Hearing shofar through this midrash invites us to feel heartbroken by and more responsive to the suffering of our children and people.” Turning our heads may spare us hearing the heartache, but it does not take away anyone else’s pain. We cannot learn or help if we do not listen to other people.

We also listen to God. The central prayer of our tradition is the Shema: HEAR O Israel, Adonai is our God, Adonai is one. Hearing or rather, listening to God is our fundamental obligation. According to Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks the word shema “is fundamentally untranslatable into English since it means so many things: to hear, to listen, to pay attention, to understand, to internalise, to respond, to obey.” He said that Judaism is a religion of listening, something unheard of in the ancient world. Judaism focused on listening for understanding and compassion, rather than looking at beauty and hedonism. Since we cannot see God, all we can do is listen.

As for what God wants, most of us will probably not hear directly from the source. Fortunately for us, we have the Torah. The Torah offers us wisdom, not always straightforward itself, but a moral voice nonetheless. It has been said that any reading of Torah that does not lead us to being better people is a misreading. In exploring its verses and chapters, we can see where we have fallen short ethically and morally. Not all of the characters contained within are saints, which is exactly the point. We are all graded on a curve. We are also only responsible for our own capabilities. The story is told of Reb Zusya, who at this season centuries ago, burst into tears in front of his students. “Why are you crying?” they asked. “You are a great man, Rabbi, You are almost as wise as Moses, you are almost as hospitable as Abraham, and surely heaven will judge you favourably.”

​Zusya answered them: “It is true. When I get to heaven, I won’t worry so much if God asks me, ‘Zusya, why were you not more like Abraham?’ or ‘Zusya, why were you not more like Moses?’ I know I would be able to answer these questions. After all, I was not given the righteousness of Abraham or the faith of Moses, but I tried to be both hospitable and thoughtful. But what will I say when God asks me, ‘Zusya, why were you not more like Zusya?’”

Indeed, we are all responsible for being our best selves. To do that, we have to listen. We listen for that small, still voice, which takes a great deal of energy and focus. When we do hear it though, if we truly listen, then God is more likely to hear our voice when we plead: “Shma koleinu, hear our voice.” Not only do we need to listen to God, but we need God to listen to us.

Judaism is a faith of listening. Not just Between Shema Yisrael and Shema Koleinu, there is a call and response that goes in both directions. We call on each other, and while our asks of God cover any range of needs, God asks of us on behalf of our fellow humans, looking for us to hold up our responsibilities in the world.
We listen to others, we listen to God and we listen to ourselves. At this time of year, as our High Holy Day season begins and we start our teshuvah, it is fair to ask ourselves: how have we fallen short. How have we failed? Why are we crying?

To do that, we need to listen to ourselves. To our bodies. Listening is more than just an exercise for our ears. The runner/philosopher George Sheehan used to say, “Listen to your body, do not be a blind and deaf tenant.” In a d’var Torah on Parashat Eikev, Rabbi Angela Buchdahl noted that it begins “Eikev – and so, if you hearken to these rules.” She informs us that the word eikev also means heel and that “True listening is not whether words enter your ears, but whether or not they reached your heels.” Rabbi Buchdahl understands this to mean that true listening literally alters the way or the direction in which we walk through life. How important it is then, that we listen within ourselves for direction.

Listening to ourselves means also listening to our minds – It is true as Ted Williams said, “If you don’t think too good, don’t think too much” but our brains do know things and have much to tell us. We need to listen to them the way we would a passenger in a car: they might have something important or helpful to tell us, but that does not mean we let them drive. Too often we are clouded by the impact of our fears, our anxieties, our vanity, and our self-deception. It makes us mistrustful of our own minds, it makes us want to quiet the feedback. The attentiveness to one’s mind is so ingrained in Judaism that it influenced thinkers like Sigmund Freud. Freud noticed that we have an invisible mind or consciousness, just as we have an invisible God. Both have something to say.

Lastly, we listening to our hearts – the desires we have not met, the bad impulses we gave in to, the pain that our souls have weathered throughout the year. Sometimes the good things whisper, while the most damaging, shout. Shortly after becoming king, Solomon had a dream where God came to him and offered to give him anything he wanted. Rather than ask for riches or the destruction of his enemies, Solomon asked for a לֵ֤ב שֹׁמֵ֙עַ֙ lev shomea, “a listening heart, to judge, to discern between good and bad.”

My father was not a fan of doctor jokes, psychiatrist jokes in particular, but there was one he did share with me:
One day a psychiatrist was talking with a friend who questioned him on his profession.
“How can you stand it?” the friend asked. “How do you spend all day listening to people whining and complaining and telling you all of their problems.”
The psychiatrist looked at him and said, “who listens?”

Indeed, who listens? The shofar sounds. We hear it, but are we listening? Baruch atah, Adonai, Eloheinu, melech haolam, asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav, v’tzivanu lishmoa kol shofar.
Blessed are you, Adonai our God, Sovereign of the universe, who hallows us with mitzvot, commanding us to hear the sound of the Shofar. The mitzvah goes further than that. Our mitzvah is not only to listen to the cry of the shofar but to listen to kol shofar, the voice of the shofar, and the other voices crying out to us. The mitzvah is to listen to the sound of the shofar. Today we hear the voice of the shofar. What is it saying? Are we listening?