My Fifty-Year Soul Journey with the Shofar

Thomas Freeman

As a teenager, I was once suddenly and inextricably brought to tears by the sounding of the shofar during the Days of Awe. None of the words in the service explained to me why the sound caused this burst of emotions. As a young adult, I intuited that I needed to both sound the shofar myself and undertake intensive study to understand why this happened. Interrupted only by a short-lived career as a professional French horn player, I began what has become a fifty-year soul journey.

My first synagogue was quite small. As the only person who could even get a note out of a ram’s horn, I was left to create the shofar service. Even though the “notes” were correct, the sounds of French horn–inspired hunting calls were not. I needed knowledge as well as skill to understand the true, soulful meaning of the shofar.

I learned dozens of interpretations about the meaning of the shofar. It proclaims the sovereignty of G-d; connects Jewish history to the present; provides hope for a future messianic age; and reminds us to be present in this moment, faithful to the teachings of Torah, and to reflect upon judgment, repentance, and redemption—to name just a few.

Prophetic symbolic meanings have been inspired by the shofar’s physical properties. It is made from a natural material rather than metal to reflect the natural order of the universe. As an empty vessel, it produces sound and conveys meaning only when we breathe our own breath of life into it, just as we have received G-d’s breath of life that animates us. 

According to Jewish teaching, the Jewish calendar provides us only forty days to examine ourselves, seek forgiveness for misdeeds, and return to our better selves before the final startling blast of the shofar. Even with this urgency, the shofar’s message registered solely in my thoughts. I was still left without that heartfelt experience of awe that I felt as a teenager. 

I wanted to experience the shofar again with my heart rather than my brain. The shofar has the power to break through into deeper spiritual levels within our bodies in ways that images and words cannot. Its sound is pure energetic transmission. It is the battle-axe that opens our internal spiritual doors, including those inner protective gates that we often have locked shut. For me, an understanding of this energetic transmission that I had felt earlier in life was still missing. Only one midrash, the story of 101 tears, helped me reconnect with the source of my tears.

The Canaanite general, Sisera, was the reviled enemy of the Israelites. But his mother was considered the cruelest of all Canaanites. When her son did not return with his troops after a battle, she was comforted by the belief that her son must be killing soldiers, abducting women, and pillaging “cities” (Judges 5:28–30). This has been interpreted to mean that Sisera’s mother had an impenetrable heart. However, when the news confirming Sisera’s death finally reached her, even she cried 101 tears in grief. From this we learn that the love of a mother for her child is the most powerful love on earth and that even those with a heart of stone can have their hearts ripped open by the loss of their child.

One High Holiday tradition is to sound 100 notes representing these maternal tears of grief, leaving one blast unsounded for all the members of the congregation to experience for themselves. As we hear the last sound of the shofar on Yom Kippur, we recall the open-hearted loss of the most powerful love—between a parent and child. From this point of open-heartedness, we can then access our unconditional love for family, community, country, the world, the universe, and G-d. Only with such an open heart can we experience unconditional love for all, including even our enemies.

For all these years, I could only hold the thought of losing a child for a short while before the discomfort became too great. Reminded by the midrash of the 101 tears, I would open my heart every year during the High Holidays with the best of intentions, yet I could not bear its real message. How could a reminder of such suffering and grief be transformative? I would not allow myself to experience such deep grief, even if it were to unlock my heart. I imagined that the grief would cut so deep that it would permanently seal my heart shut. 

I still had far to travel on my soul journey.

On January 21, 2024, my wife and I were packing boxes to move from Tampa to Asheville, where two of our three adult children were living. The very last box of sentimental things that we packed that day was filled with all our photographs from our son Astral’s life. We knew that we would be living close to him soon. We spent the entire day reviewing the photos, laughing, and crying. We celebrated the journeys of his life, our lives together, and the blessing of being his parents. We then sealed the box, labeled it “Astral’s life treasures,” and ate dinner.

As we were finishing, there was a knock at the door. I opened it for two police officers. I knew without words why and for whom they were there. When Susan and I were informed about Astral’s fatal car accident, her scream was shockingly powerful, and we were both brought to our knees. We were overcome with grief, despair, denial, disorientation, and dissociation. Healing for my body, mind, heart, and spirit seemed impossible from that dark hole. 

When the death certificate arrived three days later, we learned that his time of passing was 4:30 p.m. We finished celebrating the soul journey of his life just as he transitioned.

The period after Astral’s passing was a blur. The logistical complexities of life—the funeral, retirement, packing, moving, renovating, unpacking, and relaunching life in a new community—all provided distractions that only numbed me to my grief. 

But grief cannot be outrun or ignored. It is not a problem to be solved. The greatest mind cannot heal a broken heart or comfort a broken soul. I tried to numb myself so that I could compartmentalize or move past my grief. But I found it impossible to numb myself to grief selectively without also deadening the rest of my emotional life. I had to trust in the ability of my body and spirit to process my raw and visceral feelings. Grief patiently waited for me to feel, digest, and integrate. I allowed myself to move forward with life, carrying the pain with me. Only then could I once again begin to feel not only the grief but also the abundance of heartfelt joys that were waiting for me. Those whom I loved allowed me to lean on them when my emotional world collapsed. The love of everyone in my family and community helped me know that there was a world to which I would return. They held up their own lights as beacons to guide me back from the darkness. 

It has been said that “there is a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in.” With time, love, self-compassion, compassion from others, allowing, and acceptance, the passage through my mountains of grief to the other side became possible. I was no longer drowning in grief’s well. Although grief did not leave me untouched, it has left me transformed. It is only through love that my deepest wounds are healing. 

After the funeral, one of Astral’s friends wisely told us: “Grief will break open your heart, and so much love will pour out that it will transform your life forever.” Little did I know at the funeral that from that moment on, I would begin a spiritual exodus—the pillars of which were the foundation of Astral’s beliefs and life all along. When I had children, I believed in the abundance of the future, and believed that parenthood would weave me into the infinite fabric of immortal life—woven at one end and unraveled at the other. 

That was not how Astral held things. He believed only in the present moment. He believed, as I do now, that when we truly live in the present moment, we are immediately connected with divinity. Love, in its most embodied form, only happens in this moment. Astral’s passing ripped away every vestige of belief that my children were my connection to immortality. It brought me into the presence of universal and unconditional love in this as well as every moment. This was how Astral lived.

Previously, my life was filled with moments of awe followed by the inevitable distractions that came from the incessant barrage of secular life. I repeatedly forgot what matters most and then—through sheer inertia but without bad intention—would turn away again. However, once my heart was so broken that nothing but love poured out, I could no longer return to my unconscious habits. I now feel both the oceans of grief and love as I fully return to living. Astral taught me that when I felt grief, love would guide me back home. I found that love lives at the bottom of the well of grief. Grief is simply love with no place to go.

The grief from Astral’s death was not the end of my soul’s journey, but the beginning. Even though grief will be with me for the rest of my life and at times resurge as if fresh, the grip of it slowly loosens. I no longer feel a need to force grief out as if it were cancer. I have learned that it is my most compelling teacher.

I now hold life with precious tenderness. Love and bliss coexist fully beside grief and despair. Neither eclipse the other. Healing, strength, peace, and wholeness live in the fragile space between them.

Listen now to each individual wailing call of the shofar. The 101st tear goes without sounding. It can only be completed in your own heart. My hope is that this year you experience the deepest meaning of the shofar for yourself. Hear the tekiah blast that reminds you to wake up spiritually from your slumber. It invites you to be present now, without numbing in any way. Forgive yourself for any mental or emotional blockages that prevent you from feeling all that is present in this moment. Hear the broken sounds of shevarim, the Hebrew word that literally and figuratively translates to “broken.” It is the wailing of a broken-hearted parent who has lost their child. Let this grief be your teacher to fully experience and accept both grief and joy. Hear the call to arms of the teruah. This is the call to spiritual action with compassion. And finally, the tekiah gedolah is held for as long as there is breath. Experience of the breath of life itself—unconditional love. 

This energetic transmission from the shofar is what made me cry fifty years ago. It is the sound that has called me for a lifetime to return to my soul’s birthright. I now live life with my heart wide open, in this moment and in the next.

I invite you to also let these sounds break your heart wide open so that nothing but love pours out. This is your birthright. Now, in the next now, and always. When the Gates of Repentance are closing and even after they have closed. When we all do this together as a community, our hearts become woven together into the infinite tapestry of whole-heartedness that is unconditional love.

My soul journey concludes with what my son, my life, and the shofar have taught me. The sound of the shofar is the battle-axe that breaks our hearts wide open, as does grief when we can allow it. When we trust this, we experience that there is nothing more whole than a broken heart.