What Is a Shofar?

IFCJ September 12, 2012

A shofar is a trumpet made from the horn of a kosher animal, traditionally a ram, which is blown at certain Jewish festivals, but particularly on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. (This year Rosh Hashanah, which ushers in the High Holy Days, begins at sundown this Sunday.)

One hundred blasts are sounded on each of the two days of Rosh Hashanah (except when it falls on the Sabbath) as a reaffirmation of God’s sovereignty and kingship. The shofar is also blown at the end of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, which concludes the High Holy Days.

Rivers Of Living Water

Several countries in Southeast Asia celebrate the regional new year with a water festival. Traditionally, people sprinkle each other with water as a sign of respect and blessing, but many people intensify it with wild, joyful, boisterous dousing of anybody and everybody with water. Walk or drive down the streets during those days and you might be accosted with garden hoses, water cannons, water pistols, or even bowls and cups filled with water. It is raucous. It is fun. It is vivid. Everyone knows it is out with the old, in with the new.

Water was a key feature of the ancient Jewish festival called the Feast of Tabernacles. For the first seven days of the festival, with trumpets blowing, a priest would take water from the Pool of Siloam and carry it through the streets in a golden vessel, eventually delivering it to the altar in the temple.

Jesus was in Jerusalem during the Feast of Tabernacles, when, on the climactic day of the festival, he stood up and shouted out, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them” (John 7:37–38). The Gospel of John then has this explanation: “By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive” (John 7:39).