Sound The Shofar

This short manual will help those who want to learn the significance and the art of the shofar. This is a great pre-High Holiday unit for children and adults.

The book focusses on the origin and transformation of the priestly festival calendar. Since the epoch-making work of Julius Wellhausen at the end of the 19th century the differences between the various ancient Israelite festival calendars have often been explained in terms of a gradual evolution, which shows an increasing historicisation, denaturalisation and ritualisation. The festivals were in Wellhausen's view gradually detached from agricultural conditions and celebrated more and more at fixed points in the year. This study tries to show that the changes in the priestly festival calendar reflect a conscious effort to adapt the ancient Israelite festival calendar to the semi-annual layout of the Babylonian festival year. The ramifications of the change only come to the fore after a careful study of the agricultural conditions of ancient Israel - and Mesopotamia - makes clear that passover and the festival of unleavened bread were originally celebrated in the second month of the year. The first month of the year envisaged by the priestly festival calendar for the celebration of passover and the festival of unleavened bread in turn mirrors the date of one of the two semi-annual Babylonian New Year festivals. The two Babylonian New Year festivals were celebrated exactly six months apart at the vernal and autumnal equinoxes. In order to adapt the ancient Israelite festival calendar to the Babylonian scheme with two New Year festivals a year, the date of passover and the festival of unleavened bread had to be moved up by one month. The consequences for the origin of passover, the festival of unleavened bread, the festival of weeks and the festival of huts are charted and the relations between the various ancient Israelite festival calendars are determined anew.

Uncle Jake gets to blow the shofar twice within ten days, as the family celebrates first Rosh Hashanah and then Yom Kippur.

A relevant and timely novel by the New York Times bestselling author of Redeeming Love and The Masterpiece. He seemed like the perfect pastor to lead Centerville Christian Church. She was the perfect pastor’s wife. When Paul Hudson accepted the call to pastor the struggling church, he had no idea what to expect. But it didn’t take long for Paul to turn Centerville Christian Church around. Attendance was up-way up. Everything was going so well. If only his wife could see it that way. Still, he tried not to let her quiet presence disturb him. She knew something wasn’t right, and it hadn’t been for a long time. . . . Eunice closed the bedroom door quietly and knelt beside her bed. “I’m drowning, God. I’ve never felt so alone. Who can I turn to but you, Lord? Where else does a pastor’s wife go for help when her marriage is failing and her life is out of control? Who can I trust with my anguish, Lord? Who but you?” Grasping her pillow, she pressed it tightly to her mouth so that her sobs would not be heard. “This book is a powerful and almost-prophetic statement of the church in America. . . . And the Shofar Blew is a must-read.” —Anne Graham Lotz, bestselling author and speaker “[Rivers] as usual turns in a strong narrative, posing issues that ring loud and clear.” —Booklist “Meticulously plotted, Francine Rivers’s new masterpiece, And the Shofar Blew, brims with unforgettable characters.” —Romantic Times Also available in The Francine Rivers Contemporary Collection (e-book only).

Walk from creation to eternity in a way guaranteed to change your view of the world. You'll finally understand the war Satan is waging against God and how that conflict has affected history, including the persecution of Jewish people and Christians.

The SHOFAR is a voice in the wilderness of todays dry and barren land. People have so much knowledge of God, but do not seem to know how to get in touch with God. Ive noticed this piercing sound helps usher people into His presence. HE will be sounding the SHOFAR to call His bride, His beloved to her new home. Will you recognize the cry COME? For no man knows the day or the hour of His call for you as an individual *** ARE YOU READY?

In The Shofar, Jeremy Montagu offers a detailed study of the ram’s horn of the Bible, describing its history and use—both ritual and secular—from biblical times to the present. Because the same person normally blows the shofar each year during the Jewish High Holy Days, few are aware of the wide differences among communities around the world: the varying points in the Jewish liturgical service when the shofar is blown, what sound combinations exist, and the many varieties of the instrument. This is the first work of its kind to detail the full range of historical, musical, antiquarian, and religious issues surrounding the ancient instrument with all relevant citations from the Bible, the Talmud, and key post-Talmudic sources. Jeremy Montagu carefully examines horn types, sound characteristics, liturgical uses, and community functions to illustrate how the shofar has reflected local custom, regional needs, and religious practice. Chapters provide difficult-to-find information on how shofars are made; advice on how to choose, prepare, and maintain shofars; and instructions for aspiring blowers on a variety of traditions. With more than sixty photographs from the author’s personal collection, this is an ideal work for Jews and Christians, religious scholars and musicologists, and even practicing musicians seeking to understand the crucial role of this instrument in the life of a people.

From biblical times until today the shofar has served an array of practical purposes and communicated a range of symbolic meanings. The roughly seventy references to the shofar in the Hebrew Bible show four stereotypical functions: announcing the divine presence, accompanying sacred ceremonies, proclaiming kingship, and signaling on the battlefield. In addition to the above purposes, the shofar served as a symbol for messages of joy, fear, group identity, and redemption. This volume, written by prominent Jewish scholars and faith leaders, examines the role of the shofar in the Hebrew Bible and subsequent Jewish life, including even appearances in popular literature of the present day.

Izzy’s favorite part of Rosh Hashanah is Tashlich, a joyous ceremony in which people apologize for the mistakes they made in the previous year and thus clean the slate as the new year begins. But there is one mistake on Izzy’s “I’m sorry” list that he’s finding especially hard to say out loud. Humor, touching moments between family and friends, and lots of information about the Jewish New Year are all combined in this lovely picture book for holiday sharing. Winner of the Sydney Taylor Gold Medal for best Jewish picture book of the year!

This deeply imaginative and wide-ranging book shows how, since the first centuries of the Christian era, gentiles have associated Jews with noise. Ruth HaCohen focuses her study on a "musical libel"--a variation on the Passion story that recurs in various forms and cultures in which an innocent Christian boy is killed by a Jew in order to silence his "harmonious musicality." In paying close attention to how and where this libel surfaces, HaCohen covers a wide swath of western cultural history, showing how entrenched aesthetic-theological assumptions have persistently defined European culture and its internal moral and political orientations.Ruth HaCohen combines in her comprehensive analysis the perspectives of musicology, literary criticism, philosophy, psychology, and anthropology, tracing the tensions between Jewish "noise" and idealized Christian "harmony" and their artistic manifestations from the high Middle Ages through Nazi Germany and beyond. She concludes her book with a passionate and moving argument for humanizing contemporary soundspaces.