The sound of the shofar makes me emotional, but I’m not entirely sure why. Maybe it’s the hearing the sound of something our people have done for thousands of years. Maybe it’s the vibration that moves through the air and through the body. Or maybe it’s the way it announces renewal, a new month, a new year, a turning of the page…
And then there’s this other vibration that doesn’t make me emotional, the sound of the stereotypical Jewish voice. Think the parents on Seinfeld, or Fran Drescher’s voice in The Nanny. I’ve absolutely stood in line somewhere, heard that familiar “NY tone” complaining about a dress, or how something was cut the wrong way, and hung my head down with embarrassment, even though I have no reason to be embarrassed at all. It’s just a kind of inheritance we carry, a cultural frequency you can identify across a room, Jew-dar.
Lately, though, I’ve been wondering if that instinct, our tendency to nudge, to question, to check again, to speak up even when someone wishes we wouldn’t, is actually another kind of shofar. Maybe being attuned to all these vibrations, from the ancient blast of a Shofar to the familiar “tone” of our own people, has been quiet training. Training in listening. Training in noticing. Training in advocating: for ourselves, for our loved ones, for the things we believe in.
A few weeks ago, I joined my mom for her final chemo session. When she finished, she got to ring this little bell that was nailed to the wall, surrounded by me, my sister, her husband, and a small circle of nurses. The sound of that bell made me emotional in the same way the shofar does. I called it the “Chemo Shofar;” a signal marking the end of one chapter and the beginning of another.
Her journey to that moment was its own act of courage. She found a small bump, the doctor thought it was an ingrown hair. She went back, was told it was benign. She still felt off about it so she went back again, had an ultrasound and they still said it was benign. Finally, she insisted on a biopsy. The results came back: Stage 1 Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Nothing in her blood work showed a single sign of cancer. It had even spread to another lymph node in the same area. But because she trusted her intuition, because she pushed, she caught it early.
Today (at least in my neighborhood), shofars aren’t used to sound warnings. But my mom’s intuition did. She listened to that quiet inner knowing, and her steady persistence became the alarm she needed. Her willingness to speak up, again and again, to be “pushy” in the most necessary way, is what saved her.
And because of that, she got to stand and ring her own Chemo Shofar, announcing not just survival, but renewal and the ability to move on to the next part of her journey. Sometimes the most important thing we can do is listen for the sound within us, and follow it.
