Rosh Hashanah

YONA BURSTYN

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as a MUSICAL!

LEFT: Rabbi Yehuda Kaplan shows off two shofars from his collection. RIGHT: Kaplan has more
than 50 shofars, plus some antlers and animal hooves.

Horns And More

“ SOMETHING

Local rabbi shares his collection
of shofars to educate others.

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September 6 • 2018

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ROCHEL BURSTYN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

M

any folks are preparing for
Rosh Hashanah by dusting
their shofars and practic-
ing their blowing, but Rabbi Yehuda
Kaplan of Oak Park is not actually a
baal tokaya (shofar blower).
If he were going to practice blow-
ing all his shofars, it would take
quite a while: He has more than 50
… and counting!
His fascination with shofars
began more than 20 years ago,
when Yeshiva Beth Yehudah orga-
nized a shofar demonstration for
its students and Rabbi Kaplan,
who’s been teaching first grade
there for 25 years now, found him-
self as mesmerized as the students.
“I thought ‘What’s this fellow
doing that I can’t do?’ The only
answer was: He had lots of shofars
and I didn’t,” Kaplan said. “So, I
asked him where he got them and
called the same place to order
some. Over the years, I grew quite
a collection.”
He has horns from goats, deer,
impalas, antelopes, gazelles, cows
and African water buffalos, most of
which he buys from suppliers.
Sometimes the source is more
dramatic, such as the time his
brother in Monsey, N.Y., heard a
noise in his front yard and observed
a deer shedding its horns before
running off.
“My brave brother put on gloves
and went out to pick up those
freshly shed horns and put them in
a big bucket of Clorox just because
he knew I’d want them!” Kaplan
said.
During the weeks leading up to
Rosh Hashanah, Kaplan leads sho-

far demonstrations similar to the
one that first got him hooked. He
transports his shofars, each care-
fully encased in bubble wrap and
kept inside a suitcase year-round, to
nursing homes and schools.
While showing his collection, he
explains how an animal’s horn is
made into a shofar, explores what
makes a shofar kosher as well as
the different sounds and sizes of
the horns.
“A kosher shofar needs to be
large enough to stick out of both
ends when it’s held in your fist.
There should be no doubt you’re
holding a shofar,” Kaplan explained
as he showed off the smallest
kosher shofar of his collection. The
smaller ones make a high-pitched
crying sound, a fact he points out
as ironic because the smaller ones
were those smuggled into concen-
tration camps and labor camps
during the Holocaust.
The collection is more than just
shofars. Kaplan has oddities that
keep any curious onlooker gaping.
Among them is a horn still attached
to a deer’s skull, which a friend of
a friend who enjoys hunting man-
aged to procure for him. He also
has a cow’s hoof and a horse’s hoof.
He takes the opportunity to show
his audiences a split hoof and a
non-split hoof, one of the main dif-
ferences between a kosher and non-
kosher animal.
“I like to say I cover everything
from horn to hoof !” Kaplan said.
As he clearly demonstrates with
his unusual collection, there’s so
much more to the mitzvah of shofar
than what meets the ears. •