Shofar
A ram’s horn blown like a trumpet in Jewish worship, above all on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.
Meaning
The shofar is an animal’s horn made into a musical instrument, one of the earliest instruments still in use. Hearing it blown on Rosh Hashanah is a commandment, and it sounds most prominently in the morning service. It has to stay in its natural, hollow form, and the preferred horn is a ram’s, which is curved; the Jewish Virtual Library reads the curve as the bending of a person who repents. A cow’s horn is not allowed, because of the golden calf. Its calls are the tekiah, a steady blast; the shevarim, broken notes; and the teruah, a quavering one. In the month before Rosh Hashanah it is blown on most mornings, and once more at the close of Yom Kippur.
Origin and history
The shofar is mentioned 69 times in the Bible, first at Sinai (Exodus 19:16). It proclaimed the Jubilee year with “freedom throughout the land” (Leviticus 25:9–10), the verse engraved on the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, and in ancient Israel it announced the new moon and called people together.
The ram’s horn recalls the binding of Isaac (Genesis 22), when Abraham saw a ram caught in a thicket by its horns and sacrificed it in place of his son; the story is read on the second day of Rosh Hashanah. Saadiah Gaon gave ten reasons for sounding it, the first being to proclaim God as king, since the shofar was sounded at coronations. Maimonides heard it as a call: “Awake O sleepers from your sleep, O slumberers arouse ye from your slumbers, and examine your deeds, return in repentance and remember your Creator.” In Israel it is sounded at the inauguration of a new president.
Read next
- Next in Jewish symbolsStar of DavidA six-pointed star made of two triangles, the Magen David (“shield of David”), and today the most common symbol of Judaism.
- The same shape in Chinese radicalsShuǐ 水The character for ‘water’, and radical 85 of the 214 Kangxi radicals: the one under which dictionaries file characters for rivers, seas and liquids.
See also
Menorah, Chai, Hamsa, Hanukkiah, Tablets of the Covenant.
Sources
- Shofar, Encyclopaedia Judaica (Albert L. Lewis), Gale, via Encyclopedia.com, entry
- Rosh HaShanah: The Shofar, Jewish Virtual Library (American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise), article
- The Shofar as Prayer, My Jewish Learning, article
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from curves and waves.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed September 26, 2026. How we research
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