Sound Bites 1

“Portions have fallen to me in pleasant places, even the inheritance is beautiful to me.” (Psalms 16:6) The Hebrew for “beautiful to me” is – Shafra aliy. Shafra shares the same root as Shofar.  One of the ideas of the Shofar is to remind us to act with beauty. The Shofar also serves to make us more beautiful to God: People who strive to act, think and speak with beauty, are more beautiful to God.

The Shofar we begin to blow today, the first day of Elul, is serves many purposes. This was the day that Moshe went up Mt. Sinai for a third time. This time was to receive the Second Tablets of the Covenant that he would bring down on Yom Kippur. The people blew the shofar each day to remind themselves not to fall as they did with the Golden Calf.

They also understood that in order to receive the Second Tablets of Covenant they would have to make themselves more beautiful to God.