The Cry of the Shofar

The greatest obstacle in the path of exponential growth is past success.

You are a successful parent, or a loving spouse, or a leader in your industry, or a productive artist. If I ask you to write down what you want to achieve next year, chances are, the achievement you strive for is not exponentially greater than the success you already achieved.

You are not alone. While children and young people, who did not yet enjoy a degree of success, dream about reaching the stars, adults, who are burdened by their success, usually hope to do better in the future. But not exponentially better.

That’s a problem. It’s a problem because intuitively we feel our infinite soul, and our boundless potential. Tell someone that she is so great that you feel she maximized her potential, and you are sure to offend her. Because, at the core of our being, we reject that our essence is confined.

So once a year we have to shatter our carefully constructed comfort zone. Once a year, as we hear the blasts of the Shofar, we have to look ourselves in the eye and ask the dreaded questions: “am I the person I hoped to be? Is this all I can be?”

The way to sense infinity, is by feeling the oppressive constraints of the finite. When we hear the Shofar, we are hearing the purity of the soul within us, and the purity of the person we want to become. And when we hear the Shofar we feel how distant we are from our core, from what we want to become, from what we know we can become.

By facing our faults yet refusing to make peace with them, by refusing to allow our shortcomings to define us, by feeling trapped by the confines of our personality we can escape the limitations and reach our core. And when we reach our core we discover that at the core we are one with the essence of the infinite light of G-d.   

Immediately before we sound the Shofar we recite seven verses of King David’s psalms. The first of them, the one that sets the tone for the blowing of the Shofar, is a deep cry to G-d:

“Out of the straits, I called to You, O G-d; G-d answered me with abounding relief.”

This verse captures the purpose of blowing the Shofar. The Hebrew word for “abounding relief” (Ba’mer’chav) also has the meaning of “wide expanse of space”. The verse is telling us that only when we feel trapped in the “straits” of our limitations, will we be able to break free, and be answered and placed in the expanse of the infinity of G-d.