Reading o p f the shofar in the camps

My mind drifts to a roaring sea

Far from land

A ship founders

Its crew and passengers spill into raging waters

Panicked

Drowning

All would seem lost

All is lost

They are after all being swallowed by the sea.

 

But wait

Ropes and ladders descend from heaven

With a huff and a tug all are lifted

To safety

To rescue

Brought home they rejoice

Knowing all the while they’d be saved.

 

What is the sound of the shofar

If not a rope

It reaches down

It pierces the densest of despairs

It picks me up

Its simple sounds carry me to a long beloved mountain

The place of my birth and the place of my death

Caressed and soothed

I am restored

 

Those Jews in those camps

They knew what would save them

They bartered and smuggled for a small ram’s horn

Facing death and torture and the seeming end of all

Yet they knew the sound of the shofar

Would save them

And it did

Are we ourselves not proof enough?