Shofar Quotes

Love God and He will enable you to love others even when they disappoint you.

Anything less than your best dishonors God

There were times he thought of his siblings and felt love sing from him like a shofar, rich with joy and agony and eternal recognition: those three made from the same star stuff as he, those he'd known from the beginning of the beginning. But when he was with them, the smallest infraction made him irreversibly resentful.

Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed—in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet [shofar]. For the trumpet [shofar] will sound, and the dead will be raised. (1 CORINTHIANS 15:51–52)

On the Feast of Trumpets, the shofar, or trumpet, is blown one hundred times. Three sounds are made with the trumpet: Tekiah is one long, straight blast. Shevarim is three shorter blasts. Teruah is nine quick blasts in short succession. The one hundredth blast on the Feast of Trumpets is known as “the last trump.

verse shows the divine connection of the blowing of the shofar with Yom Teruah. In the New Testament, we see the blowing of the shofar being associated with the resurrection of the dead: “For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first” (1 Thess. 4:16). This is

The Son Will Return Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa explained that the horns of Abraham’s ram were made into two shofars.14 The shorter left horn was blown at Sinai on the third day, when God gave Israel the Torah. Its larger right horn will be sounded to announce the coming of the Messiah: “It will also come about in that day, a great shofar will be blown” (Isa. 27:13). This directly connects to the Second Coming of the Messiah. “For the Lord Himself shall come down from heaven with a commanding shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the blast of God’s shofar, and the dead in Messiah shall rise first” (1 Thess. 4:16). Like Isaac, who figuratively rose

Every year before the Days of Awe, the Ba-al Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidic Judaism, held a competition to see who would blow the shofar for him on Rosh Hashanah. Now if you wanted to blow the shofar for the Ba-al Shem Tov, not only did you have to blow the shofar like a virtuoso, but you also had to learn an elaborate system of kavanot — secret prayers that were said just before you blew the shofar to direct the shofar blasts and to see that they had the proper effect in the supernal realms. All the prospective shofar blowers practiced these kavanot for months. They were difficult and complex. There was one fellow who wanted to blow the shofar for the Ba-al Shem Tov so badly that he had been practicing these kavanot for years. But when his time came to audition before the Ba-al Shem, he realized that nothing he had done had prepared him adequately for the experience of standing before this great and holy man, and he choked. His mind froze completely. He couldn’t remember one of the kavanot he had practiced for all those years. He couldn’t even remember what he was supposed to be doing at all. He just stood before the Ba-al Shem in utter silence, and then, when he realized how egregiously — how utterly — he had failed this great test, his heart just broke in two and he began to weep, sobbing loudly, his shoulders heaving and his whole body wracking as he wept. All right, you’re hired, the Ba-al Shem said. But I don’t understand, the man said. I failed the test completely. I couldn’t even remember one kavanah. So the Ba-al Shem explained with the following parable: In the palace of the King, there are many secret chambers, and there are secret keys for each chamber, but one key unlocks them all, and that key is the ax. The King is the Lord of the Universe, the Ba-al Shem explained. The palace is the House of God. The secret chambers are the sefirot, the ascending spiritual realms that bring us closer and closer to God when we perform commandments such as blowing the shofar with the proper intention, and the secret keys are the kavanot. And the ax — the key that opens every chamber and brings us directly into the presence of the King, where he may be — the ax is the broken heart, for as it says in the Psalms, “God is close to the brokenhearted.

Sow a thought and you reap an action; Sow an act and you reap a habit; Sow a habit and you reap a character; Sow a character and you reap a destiny.

It took resurrection power to make love last through the long haul. And it took a man and woman willing to surrender themselves to one another and to the One who came up with marriage in the first place.

You follow your faith, as weak as it is, rather than your doubts, as strong as they seem to you right now. You do that and leave the rest up to God. He’ll make sure everything goes according to plan.

every single note of the shofar—all one hundred blasts—in

the idea of demonic transmigration. There were the expected Catholic texts from the Rituale Romanum, containing the rites and guidelines for major exorcisms, but also a host of more arcane materials whose origins ranged from India to Egypt. She found passages copied from the Zohar, the Jewish mystical text of Kabbalistic teachings, describing the ways in which a demon could secretly slip into a victim’s soul, and how it could only be dislodged by a minyan reciting Psalm 91 three times; if the rabbi then blew a certain melody on the shofar, or ram’s horn, the sound would in effect “shatter the body” and shake the evil spirit loose. Even the Muslims had their methods for disposing of wandering demons. The prophet Muhammad instructed his followers to read the last three suras from the Koran—the Surat al-Ikhlas (the Fidelity), the Surat al-Falaq (the Dawn), and the Surat an-Nas (Mankind)—and drink water from the holy well of Zamzam.

The Binding of Isaac and the Binding of You and Me With Rosh Hashanah coming in a few weeks, it is a good time to think about some of its important lessons. The High Holy Days are a time to evaluate our relationship with important people in our lives. We ask their forgiveness, they ask ours, and if there is regret for past faults and insensitive acts (Tradition calls them “sins”), we lend forgiveness to others, and they to us. Rosh Hashanah is also a time to think about our relation with our Tradition, with Judaism. It is the Jewish New Year, and a time to reexamine where we stand with regard to the faith/culture/civilization we call Judaism. Those hearing these words have already taken significant steps toward solidifying their Jewish connections by joining a synagogue, coming to religious worship, and doing many other Jewish things in our lives. Take a few moments—even a few hours—to think about and discuss your Jewish values and priorities with your loved ones and intellectual sparring partners. How can you deepen and strengthen your Jewish ties and commitments in the coming year? Perhaps that is why we are bidden to hear the sound of the Shofar each morning for thirty days during the month of Elul, before Rosh Hashanah, as well as on the New Year itself. The Talmud, in tractate “Rosh Hashanah” (16a), tells us: “Rabbi Abahu said: Why do we use the horn of a ram on Rosh Hashanah? Because the Blessed Holy One is saying to us: If you blow a horn from a ram before Me on Rosh Hashanah, I will be reminded of the act of ultimate faith performed by Avraham when he was ready to carry out my demand, even though a ram was eventually sacrificed in place of Yitzhak. The merit of Avraham will reflect merit on you, his descendants. In fact, when you blow the Shofar, and I remember the Binding (Hebrew: Akedah) of Yitzhak I will attribute to you the merit of having bound (Hebrew: akad-tem) yourselves to me. As we begin to blow the Shofar each morning, from the first day of the Hebrew month of Elul, let’s begin to think about how we bind ourselves to God. About our Jewish boundaries, the ties that bind us to our Jewish past. Let’s think of how our ritual lives can be enriched and enhanced with more song, custom, prayer and ceremony. Let’s think of how we can give ourselves to more Jewish causes (Israel, Jewish education, the synagogue), and how being Jewish can help bind and tie us to the needs of humanity (the environment, the needs of our community, the eradication of poverty and injustice). Rabbi Dov Peretz Elkins

Chanukah; It's a miracle anyone can spell it!

When you wake up the next morning and see a bag filled with stale pieces of bread, a candle, a wooden spoon, and a feather, you may be wondering what you did last night and weather anyone got hurt [Note: This is some strange Jewish custom].

darkness surrounded us as we fled to the hill, Gabriel turned back to instruct Lot and his family not to look to the left or to the right but straight on to the hills and never look back. Michael and Gabriel stopped to overlook the valley. Gabriel took his trumpet and blew the shofar with a dazzling single note. Lightning struck and thunder boomed, Iam walked through the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah; as fire, sulfur, and salt rained down from Ouranos. As He came toward us Michael and Gabriel bowed low, turned and took the lead, single file we walked with the tumultuous noise around us. Michael with his sword at the ready was in front, Gabriel, Lot, his two daughters, Judith, Iam, and with me following in the rear.

Quiet!” Gabriel shushed. “Behold!” at first there was a slight pinkish glow coming from Golgotha, I thought it was the reflection of the rising sun but the East was still very dark, and then it became brighter, the whole mountain grew brighter and brighter like a cupped hand over a candle, the light was coming from within the mountain itself. Rays of intense light poured out in every direction from behind the burial stone. Gabriel blew his golden shofar in a loud single blast so loud that Gar shook. Then all at once everything was quiet once more and my eyes had to focus in the darkness once more after nearly being blinded by the light and deafened by the blast.

This passed through the Even Shetiyah, which is the center of the world and the gate to Heaven. It was on it that Jacob rested his head and from it he saw angels ascending to and descending from Heaven. It was there that Isaac was brought as a sacrifice, that God spoke to King David, that the Holy of Holies of the First and Second Temples were built, and it was from that point that the Great Shofar (ram’s horn) will be sounded to herald the final redemption.

Day 16 See Voices  “And all the people were seeing the thunder voices and the torches and the voice of the shofar and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw it, they trembled and stood at a distance” (Exodus 20:18).  

Todos han pecado y necesitan gracia y misericordia para ser salvos. Y el Señor Dios, poderoso y misericordioso, ha establecido que el camino sea a través de Su Hijo Jesucristo, quien murió en la cruz llevando a cabo el sacrificio de sangre para expiar los pecados de la humanidad, desde el comienzo hasta el fin de los tiempos. Cuando Jesús resucitó, mostró que Él tenía poder sobre el pecado y sobre la muerte. Todos los que creen en Él no perecerán, sino tendrán vida eterna.

I am talking about the Month of Tishri (September through October on the Greco-Roman calendar). This season, known as the High Holy Days, includes Yom Teruah (Day of Trumpets), also known as Rosh HaShana (New Year), Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), and Sukkot (Tabernacles). As an adult, I really do see these days as the most wonderful time of the year. As a child though, Yom Teruah and Yom Kippur were the most dreaded days of the year. The services lasted all day and were as dry as sand. The only redeeming factors these two days held was that they were excused absences from school and on Yom Teruah one of the men would sound the shofar 100 times. The shofar always reminded me of the bugles sounding when the cavalry arrived to save the day.

Fish are good for eating. But we wouldn’t eat these fish.” “Because they’re pretty.” “No, because they’re bottom feeders. See how their mouths are formed? When they finish with these pellets, they’ll go down to the bottom of the pond and feed off whatever garbage they find there.” He hunkered next to Timmy, watching the swirling koi and thinking how people could swallow little bites of truth on Sunday morning and then dine on garbage all through the week. They could look beautiful, sleek, and healthy and be filled with all manner of evil.

I don’t know much about your principalities, but I know a lot about mine. Colossians 2:10 continues to tell us He is: The head of all principality and power (KJV). The fountain head from which all dominion and power proceed (KNOX). The authority over all authorities, and the supreme power over all powers (PHI). He is the highest ruler over every other power (TAY). This is the Godhead who lives right inside of you! You have an inexhaustible and eternal source of power, dominion and exhilarating joy living inside of you. All of God lives within you thanks to your union with Christ. The devil is not a bit scared of your shofars and worship banners, but the blood of Christ did a tremendous job of defeating him.

Oh, Lord, I don’t know what’s happened over there, but You know. You see into men’s hearts, and their plans are laid bare before You. Nothing is hidden. Jesus, please strengthen me. I’m an old man and tired of the battle. Renew me. Give me the strength to keep running the race.

to call it “serving the Lord.

Please change me. Make me whatever suits Your purposes here.

He was writing on men’s hearts through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. But few listened. Few leaned in and sought out God’s will for their lives.

I am the way, the truth, and the life,” Jesus said. “No one comes to the Father except through Me.