W

hen we hear it, the cry 
of the shofar can feel 
electrifying, inspiring, 
plaintive, challenging — or all of those 
at the same time. The person who 
sounds the shofar, the Ba’al Tokeia, has 
learned to produce those evocative 
cries from a simple, unimproved animal 
horn. We asked a few how they came to 
learn this skill. 

LEARNING FROM DAD
Ben Jacobovitz, who has often 
sounded the shofar at the Fleischman 
Residence in West Bloomfield, said, 
“Unfortunately, my learning was 
boring. My Dad said many years 
ago the basic principles, and when I 
needed to learn, I practiced. Then I 
was not doing as well as I wanted and 
went and got pointers from him, which 
turned out to be very helpful.” 
Which did not seem boring at all. I 
replied to Ben, “Or, to put it differently, 
you learned from your father. I would 
like to recast that as the most inspiring 
possible answer to the question. 
“I also love his teaching technique: 
He gave you the basic principles, and 
then let you experiment with what 
you could do after you knew the basic 
principles. He did not micromanage 
or criticize your struggles. When you 
went back to him for further coaching, 
he offered it freely. What a profound 
model for teaching!
“He let you discover as much as you 
could on your own. When you asked 
for help, he provided effective coaching. 
He helped you teach yourself, the most 
powerful way to learn anything. 
“You got more than one beautiful 
lesson from your father when you 
learned how to blow the shofar.”
 
FORMER TRUMPET PLAYER
Rabbi Arnie Sleutelberg (who served 
as spiritual leader at Congregation Shir 
Tikvah in Troy for 28 years) recalled 
how he learned:
“I was a trumpet player as a kid and 
through high school. When I was in 
rabbinical school, and shofar was part 

of the curriculum, I took to it naturally. 
“When I was studying in Jerusalem, 
I tried out every shofar in every shop 
that offered them, looking for the ones 
with the most satisfying tones. I bought 
every kind of shofar that I could, 
Moroccan, Yemenite, Ashkenazic, Kudu, 
every type I could. Eventually I amassed 
a collection of some 20 shofarot. 
“I loved teaching shofar,” he added, 
“demonstrating the different horns, the 
different sounds, the different aspects of 
the sound of the shofar. 
“Once, when I was in Cochin, in 
India, I visited the shul there. That 
was not near Rosh Hashanah. It was in 
January or February. I went to shul for 
services. The Shamas, when he found 
out I was a rabbi, asked me to come 
back after services had ended, and gave 

me a long tour of every part of the shul, 
long after his workday was done. 
“He was also the Ba’al Tokeia so he 
showed me the shofar, a long kudu 
horn. He demonstrated how he blew 
it. As he made each sound, he would 
sweep the shofar from right to left. 
“I said, ‘I never saw that before. Why 
do you do that?’
“He said, ‘I don’t know.’
“Afterwards, I thought, ‘For a split 
second, every single person in the 
Kahal (congregation) gets a direct hit, 
right down the end of the horn.’
“And ever since then, that’s what I do 
when I blow shofar. Hearing the shofar 
blown right at you is different from 
hearing it as it reverberates to one side 
or the other.” 

ROSH HASHANAH

continued on page 48

The JN asked three people to share 
how they learned.

How I Came to 
 Sound the Shofar

LOUIS FINKELMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

46 | SEPTEMBER 22 • 2022 
 
 
 
 

Rabbi Arnie 
Sleutelberg 
blows the shofar.

