1920s photo of shofar being blown (N.F. Scholten)A Rosh Hashanah Poem on the Blowing of the Shofar, by Margaret Coats The Society October 2, 2024 Culture, Music, Poetry 24 Comments . The Ram’s Horn “A great horn shall be blown, and they that were lost shall come from the land of Assyria, and they that were outcasts from the land of Egypt, and they shall adore the Lord at the holy mount in Jerusalem.” —Isaiah 27:13 Loudly and long let the shofar resound with an outcry laborious, Raising to God a renewal of loyalty cheerfully, Posting alarms to awake, and amend lax ways fearfully, Calling to mind the lost Temple and last year’s frays tearfully. Trumpet of courage unwavering, Bugle true bravery favoring, Clarion blasts gladly quavering, Prophetlike peals praising unity, Training a faithful community, Welcome the year’s opportunity. Tones reaching Sinai’s high pinnacle, Regal as study rabbinical, Herald the Kingdom perennial. Loudly and long let the shofar resound with an outcry laborious Honeysweet grace newly found by ingathered Jerusalem glorious. . . Margaret Coats lives in California. She holds a Ph.D. in English and American Literature and Language from Harvard University. She has retired from a career of teaching literature, languages, and writing that included considerable wrk in homeschooling for her own family and others. NOTE TO READERS: If you enjoyed this poem or other content, please consider making a donation to the Society of Classical Poets. The Society of Classical Poets does not endorse any views expressed in individual poems or commentary. Trending now: 24 Responses Maria October 2, 2024 Dear Margaret, Shanah Tovah to you , your family and to everyone here at the SCP. Reply Margaret Coats October 3, 2024 Leshanah tovah, Maria, to you and yours. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to wish the same to all here. Reply Brian A. Yapko October 2, 2024 This is a very special poem for the Jewish New Year, Margaret! Thank you for the beauty of it, both the words and the thought behind it. As Jews throughout the world celebrate the coming of the year 5785, it is hard not to feel sadness since the horrific events of October 7, 2023, the betrayal of Jews throughout the West, and the horrors that are yet to come. Although this has been the most deadly and dangerous year for Jews since 1945, those of us who are believers will put our faith in God. We will observe our traditions as we have for 3000 unbroken years. The shofar will sound and we will eat apples dipped in honey to wish each other a sweet and happy new year. We will not despair. Israel is strong, it is in the right, and peace and justice shall prevail. L’shana tova! Reply Margaret Coats October 3, 2024 Thank you, Brian, for finding this a beautiful poem. And thanks for your help in refining some word choices. My thought behind the writing included the horrific events of the year just ended, as I think of “last year’s frays tearfully.” It is customary, as you know, to recall destruction of the Temple at the new year, and to hope for restoration of worship as God desires. My poem dates itself to this year just beginning, noting that the shofar calls for, and helps effect, “renewal,” “courage,” and “bravery,” among other things. Of course hopes include victory for peace and justice and right. While Israel is strong in itself, our support is needed going forward. A good to be thankful for, though obscured by overwhelming hostility, is that during the first few months of the war beginning last October, private contributors in France, the United States, and Canada gave one billion dollars’ worth of gear to Israeli troops. Not weapons, but things like combat boots and flak vests to replace out-of-date items for reservists suddenly called up for duty years after performing required military service in their youth. I understand that much of this money was raised by the soldiers themselves, or by commanders of small units, appealing to friends on social media. May such good will and practical sympathy continue! For yourself, gemar chatimah tovah. Reply Joseph S. Salemi October 2, 2024 These are excellently crafted dactylic verses. Repeating the first hexameter line as the penultimate in the closing couplet winds up the poem neatly. Concerning Brian’s comment — Israel is teaching a gutless and cowardly West the right way to deal with our terrorist enemies. While the West is whining about ceasefires and diplomacy and humanitarian aid, Israel is acting the way a real nation acts when its survival is at stake. Reply Margaret Coats October 3, 2024 Thanks, Joe, for the compliment on dactylic verses and poem form. One reason for writing this is our discovery during the past year, thanks to Israel, of the cruel determination in terrorist enemies. And of how entrenched they are. All the more reason to help. In my reply to Brian, I did not name organizations that are doing good work with little fanfare, but there are some. The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews has provided bullet-proof ambulances. Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces do rehab for the wounded. Boots for Israel (you guessed it) makes combat boots and sends them where they are needed. It’s hard for me to imagine a military supply center that doesn’t stock everything new in a full range of sizes, but a nation fighting for survival must use resources for weaponry. Things like night vision equipment and knee pads may not be on requisition. Yet news reports show tough conditions under which fighting takes place. Reply Paul A. Freeman October 2, 2024 Your poem has a mystical feel to it, Margaret, as does the imagery you have conjured up. Thanks for the read. Reply Margaret Coats October 3, 2024 Thank you, Paul, I’m glad it has that effect. New year celebrations in cultures both primitive and modern can be wild parties. It’s easy to think the old has lost its energy and savor, and thus try to renew it with unbridled sensuality. But the turn of the year at Rosh Hashanah, like the Christian turn into Advent, looks more toward a corrective re-supply of spiritual dynamism. If you’re thinking of the “tones reaching Sinai’s high pinnacle” as mystic elevation, it’s there in the mystic mountain where this celebration was prescribed, and (according to tradition) the shofar first sounded. Reply Paul A. Freeman October 4, 2024 The highest peak on the Sinai Peninsula is Mount Catherine (although the ‘pinnacle of Sinai’ in your poem is clearly Mount Sinai). It’s traditional to climb up it at night to watch the sunrise. The climb is truly mystical. The track leading up the mountain is lighter than the surrounding topography and you have to trust yourself not to stray from the path (occasionally there are sheer drops). At the peak, when I climbed up, there was a wide cross section of people, everyone from nuns to hippies, but all with a feeling of unity and common purpose. It was fabulous. Margaret Coats October 7, 2024 Thanks again, Paul. I have heard of this mountain, but never known anyone who’s made the ascent. Have yearned in a way to go there, but done so rather in dreams. It is fabulous to have your account. Cynthia Erlandson October 2, 2024 I love this form you have made, with the dactylic hexameters as bookends, surrounding a group of trimeters. As I was reading, I wondered if you had in mind a particular significance for the 6’s and 3’s. In any case, the emphatic meter seemed very fitting for the joyful subject matter and the poem’s festive emotional tone. Reply Margaret Coats October 3, 2024 Cynthia, thanks for your comment on the poem’s form. It is a little poetic way to resonate with the blowing of the shofar. Hearing the ram’s horn is a central observance for the holiday. First comes a long sob, followed by somewhat shorter wails, then blasts of staccato sounds (at least nine in this style). The entire performance (which may include one hundred or more blowings of the horn) ends with a single very, very long sound. My imaginative form thus comprises: one dactylic hexameter line, three rhyming dactylic pentameter lines, nine dactylic trimeter lines (in three rhymed groups), the first line repeated and rhymed with a new line of equal length and no punctuation in either. I’ve included several interpretations of the music (such as a wake-up alarm) and the themes of the day in my words. I chose dactylic meter as most appropriate because it seems to draw out sound and sense in a lengthy way. So glad you like it! Reply Yael October 2, 2024 Very nice! Shanah tovah umtukah to you Margaret, and may God bless you abundantly. Reply Margaret Coats October 3, 2024 How very sweet of you, Yael! Glad you liked the poem. Abundant blessings to you, too, and gemar chatimah tovah. Reply Russel Winick October 3, 2024 A marvelous poem and another poetry lesson. Margaret, you keep gifting us. Thank you once again. I hope you enjoyed your holiday. Reply Margaret Coats October 4, 2024 Thank you, Russel! Your comment and the others give me joy in this celebration I observe in honor of its godly origin recorded in the Bible. The holiday is an extended one that goes on until the evening of Friday the 4th this year. That could be compared to Catholic Ember Days, a Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday consecrating each season of the year to God. But Ember Days correspond better to the four seasonal fasts of the Old Testament, while the new year begins with the four-week long season of Advent preceding Christmas. I can make use of Hebrew greetings here because I studied Hebrew for three years in graduate school–mainly as a way to fully understand the prototypical poetry of our culture, the Hebrew psalms. The greetings wish others a good year, or a good and sweet one, and a good final sealing in the Book of Life. All the same to you! Reply Daniel Kemper October 3, 2024 Hi Margaret, You know I love music in poetry and poetry about music, though of course this is about much more than music. The ambition is incredible, not only for the structures already mentioned, and making the ancient into the modern, but also for onomatopoeia to comprise an entire poem. Even in the smallest measure (literally) the choice of dactyls, which can be heard as a loud blurt and softer notes or echoes following, is a keen choice. Nitpicker that I can be sometimes, I might have rendered this: “Prophetlike peals praising unity,” as “Prophetlike praises of unity,” and let the onomatopoeia carry the peals, but perhaps showing a nit is merely the best way of offering a contrast so you know this isn’t just fanboy praise. I just love the sounds here, “Loudly and long let the shofar resound.” Also, although there are towns further north inland from the sea, Rosh HaNikra came to mind by the Rosh part and the geographical spread. (Rosh = head, if I recall, like the Amharic cognate, “Ras.”) Thus, the poem captured all of Israel, from there down to the Sanai region. That certainly spreads the call!! Keep ’em coming! Reply Margaret Coats October 4, 2024 Daniel, thank you very much for your perceptive commentary, and still more for your work in dactyls that prepared the way for a poem such as this. As you know, I’ve written a 14-liner in dactyls that met your M5 standard for no substitutions, but it was unrhymed. This is a rhymed 15-liner, and if I take your hint to count each dactyl as a blowing of the horn, we hear 60 blasts in this poem. Reading it on both days of the two-day holiday makes up the auspicious number of 120! That spreads the call temporally as well as geographically, as you suggest. You might be interested to know that a woman in Hacienda Heights blows the shofar toward Los Angeles 20 miles away, with the idea that sound waves from her elevated performance site may at least stir the air over the city to good effect. Your nitpicking suggestion sounds good, and reduces the number of -ing words I rely on, but it takes away “peals,” which is the only “horn” image in that group of three lines. With “shofar” and “alarms” and “trumpet” and “bugle” and “clarion blasts” and “tones,” I have one in each group of lines, and three in that central group where the staccato bursts are supposed to start. Therefore I need to keep “peals,” and wish you a sweet and appealing good year to come! Reply Warren Bonham October 5, 2024 Another masterpiece! It’s really hard to get triple-end rhymes to seem unforced. Beautiful form and content. Reply Margaret Coats October 7, 2024 Thanks, Warren, especially for that high overall praise. The beauty and meaning is most important. As to triple rhymes, you too have worked with them, and know how important variation in sound can be. Here I chose words such that each group of three rhymes has a different vowel in the stressed syllable (ORious, EERfully, Avering, Unity, INical) plus unlike final sounds. Glad that gave the rhyming a close-to-natural effect. Reply C.B. Anderson October 9, 2024 Sadly, many of my Jewish friends from college have elected to join the American cult that blames everything on Israel — maybe they simply don’t like the sound coming out of the horn section. For these lost friends, “Never again” has become Immer wieder. Reply Joseph S. Salemi October 9, 2024 I’d guess that those friends are Jewish only by the mere accident of birth, and not connected to Judaism by any love or loyalty. Their real religion is left-liberalism — an energetic and fanatical sect that brooks no opposition. Reply Margaret Coats October 18, 2024 Years ago, I went to a Jewish funeral at a temple where the place and the rite seemed left-liberal. Still, the deceased was praised for speaking about his stirrings of loyalty toward Israel, which he had done upon seeing an Israeli ship in port. But at this point in time, one must wonder whether some Jews support Israel, just as we wonder if the pope is Catholic! Margaret Coats October 9, 2024 I understand it is difficult to get much sound out of a naturally grown, unique, and unvalved shofar. That hardly explains the unnatural attitude of so many Jewish-Americans toward Israel. But their longtime overwhelming devotion to the party of the left prepared the way for it. Sorry to hear they are “lost friends” to you as well. Thanks for taking time to comment! Reply Leave a Reply Cancel ReplyYour email address will not be published.CommentName* Email* Website Δ This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Maria October 2, 2024 Dear Margaret, Shanah Tovah to you , your family and to everyone here at the SCP. Reply
Margaret Coats October 3, 2024 Leshanah tovah, Maria, to you and yours. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to wish the same to all here. Reply
Brian A. Yapko October 2, 2024 This is a very special poem for the Jewish New Year, Margaret! Thank you for the beauty of it, both the words and the thought behind it. As Jews throughout the world celebrate the coming of the year 5785, it is hard not to feel sadness since the horrific events of October 7, 2023, the betrayal of Jews throughout the West, and the horrors that are yet to come. Although this has been the most deadly and dangerous year for Jews since 1945, those of us who are believers will put our faith in God. We will observe our traditions as we have for 3000 unbroken years. The shofar will sound and we will eat apples dipped in honey to wish each other a sweet and happy new year. We will not despair. Israel is strong, it is in the right, and peace and justice shall prevail. L’shana tova! Reply
Margaret Coats October 3, 2024 Thank you, Brian, for finding this a beautiful poem. And thanks for your help in refining some word choices. My thought behind the writing included the horrific events of the year just ended, as I think of “last year’s frays tearfully.” It is customary, as you know, to recall destruction of the Temple at the new year, and to hope for restoration of worship as God desires. My poem dates itself to this year just beginning, noting that the shofar calls for, and helps effect, “renewal,” “courage,” and “bravery,” among other things. Of course hopes include victory for peace and justice and right. While Israel is strong in itself, our support is needed going forward. A good to be thankful for, though obscured by overwhelming hostility, is that during the first few months of the war beginning last October, private contributors in France, the United States, and Canada gave one billion dollars’ worth of gear to Israeli troops. Not weapons, but things like combat boots and flak vests to replace out-of-date items for reservists suddenly called up for duty years after performing required military service in their youth. I understand that much of this money was raised by the soldiers themselves, or by commanders of small units, appealing to friends on social media. May such good will and practical sympathy continue! For yourself, gemar chatimah tovah. Reply
Joseph S. Salemi October 2, 2024 These are excellently crafted dactylic verses. Repeating the first hexameter line as the penultimate in the closing couplet winds up the poem neatly. Concerning Brian’s comment — Israel is teaching a gutless and cowardly West the right way to deal with our terrorist enemies. While the West is whining about ceasefires and diplomacy and humanitarian aid, Israel is acting the way a real nation acts when its survival is at stake. Reply
Margaret Coats October 3, 2024 Thanks, Joe, for the compliment on dactylic verses and poem form. One reason for writing this is our discovery during the past year, thanks to Israel, of the cruel determination in terrorist enemies. And of how entrenched they are. All the more reason to help. In my reply to Brian, I did not name organizations that are doing good work with little fanfare, but there are some. The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews has provided bullet-proof ambulances. Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces do rehab for the wounded. Boots for Israel (you guessed it) makes combat boots and sends them where they are needed. It’s hard for me to imagine a military supply center that doesn’t stock everything new in a full range of sizes, but a nation fighting for survival must use resources for weaponry. Things like night vision equipment and knee pads may not be on requisition. Yet news reports show tough conditions under which fighting takes place. Reply
Paul A. Freeman October 2, 2024 Your poem has a mystical feel to it, Margaret, as does the imagery you have conjured up. Thanks for the read. Reply
Margaret Coats October 3, 2024 Thank you, Paul, I’m glad it has that effect. New year celebrations in cultures both primitive and modern can be wild parties. It’s easy to think the old has lost its energy and savor, and thus try to renew it with unbridled sensuality. But the turn of the year at Rosh Hashanah, like the Christian turn into Advent, looks more toward a corrective re-supply of spiritual dynamism. If you’re thinking of the “tones reaching Sinai’s high pinnacle” as mystic elevation, it’s there in the mystic mountain where this celebration was prescribed, and (according to tradition) the shofar first sounded. Reply
Paul A. Freeman October 4, 2024 The highest peak on the Sinai Peninsula is Mount Catherine (although the ‘pinnacle of Sinai’ in your poem is clearly Mount Sinai). It’s traditional to climb up it at night to watch the sunrise. The climb is truly mystical. The track leading up the mountain is lighter than the surrounding topography and you have to trust yourself not to stray from the path (occasionally there are sheer drops). At the peak, when I climbed up, there was a wide cross section of people, everyone from nuns to hippies, but all with a feeling of unity and common purpose. It was fabulous.
Margaret Coats October 7, 2024 Thanks again, Paul. I have heard of this mountain, but never known anyone who’s made the ascent. Have yearned in a way to go there, but done so rather in dreams. It is fabulous to have your account.
Cynthia Erlandson October 2, 2024 I love this form you have made, with the dactylic hexameters as bookends, surrounding a group of trimeters. As I was reading, I wondered if you had in mind a particular significance for the 6’s and 3’s. In any case, the emphatic meter seemed very fitting for the joyful subject matter and the poem’s festive emotional tone. Reply
Margaret Coats October 3, 2024 Cynthia, thanks for your comment on the poem’s form. It is a little poetic way to resonate with the blowing of the shofar. Hearing the ram’s horn is a central observance for the holiday. First comes a long sob, followed by somewhat shorter wails, then blasts of staccato sounds (at least nine in this style). The entire performance (which may include one hundred or more blowings of the horn) ends with a single very, very long sound. My imaginative form thus comprises: one dactylic hexameter line, three rhyming dactylic pentameter lines, nine dactylic trimeter lines (in three rhymed groups), the first line repeated and rhymed with a new line of equal length and no punctuation in either. I’ve included several interpretations of the music (such as a wake-up alarm) and the themes of the day in my words. I chose dactylic meter as most appropriate because it seems to draw out sound and sense in a lengthy way. So glad you like it! Reply
Yael October 2, 2024 Very nice! Shanah tovah umtukah to you Margaret, and may God bless you abundantly. Reply
Margaret Coats October 3, 2024 How very sweet of you, Yael! Glad you liked the poem. Abundant blessings to you, too, and gemar chatimah tovah. Reply
Russel Winick October 3, 2024 A marvelous poem and another poetry lesson. Margaret, you keep gifting us. Thank you once again. I hope you enjoyed your holiday. Reply
Margaret Coats October 4, 2024 Thank you, Russel! Your comment and the others give me joy in this celebration I observe in honor of its godly origin recorded in the Bible. The holiday is an extended one that goes on until the evening of Friday the 4th this year. That could be compared to Catholic Ember Days, a Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday consecrating each season of the year to God. But Ember Days correspond better to the four seasonal fasts of the Old Testament, while the new year begins with the four-week long season of Advent preceding Christmas. I can make use of Hebrew greetings here because I studied Hebrew for three years in graduate school–mainly as a way to fully understand the prototypical poetry of our culture, the Hebrew psalms. The greetings wish others a good year, or a good and sweet one, and a good final sealing in the Book of Life. All the same to you! Reply
Daniel Kemper October 3, 2024 Hi Margaret, You know I love music in poetry and poetry about music, though of course this is about much more than music. The ambition is incredible, not only for the structures already mentioned, and making the ancient into the modern, but also for onomatopoeia to comprise an entire poem. Even in the smallest measure (literally) the choice of dactyls, which can be heard as a loud blurt and softer notes or echoes following, is a keen choice. Nitpicker that I can be sometimes, I might have rendered this: “Prophetlike peals praising unity,” as “Prophetlike praises of unity,” and let the onomatopoeia carry the peals, but perhaps showing a nit is merely the best way of offering a contrast so you know this isn’t just fanboy praise. I just love the sounds here, “Loudly and long let the shofar resound.” Also, although there are towns further north inland from the sea, Rosh HaNikra came to mind by the Rosh part and the geographical spread. (Rosh = head, if I recall, like the Amharic cognate, “Ras.”) Thus, the poem captured all of Israel, from there down to the Sanai region. That certainly spreads the call!! Keep ’em coming! Reply
Margaret Coats October 4, 2024 Daniel, thank you very much for your perceptive commentary, and still more for your work in dactyls that prepared the way for a poem such as this. As you know, I’ve written a 14-liner in dactyls that met your M5 standard for no substitutions, but it was unrhymed. This is a rhymed 15-liner, and if I take your hint to count each dactyl as a blowing of the horn, we hear 60 blasts in this poem. Reading it on both days of the two-day holiday makes up the auspicious number of 120! That spreads the call temporally as well as geographically, as you suggest. You might be interested to know that a woman in Hacienda Heights blows the shofar toward Los Angeles 20 miles away, with the idea that sound waves from her elevated performance site may at least stir the air over the city to good effect. Your nitpicking suggestion sounds good, and reduces the number of -ing words I rely on, but it takes away “peals,” which is the only “horn” image in that group of three lines. With “shofar” and “alarms” and “trumpet” and “bugle” and “clarion blasts” and “tones,” I have one in each group of lines, and three in that central group where the staccato bursts are supposed to start. Therefore I need to keep “peals,” and wish you a sweet and appealing good year to come! Reply
Warren Bonham October 5, 2024 Another masterpiece! It’s really hard to get triple-end rhymes to seem unforced. Beautiful form and content. Reply
Margaret Coats October 7, 2024 Thanks, Warren, especially for that high overall praise. The beauty and meaning is most important. As to triple rhymes, you too have worked with them, and know how important variation in sound can be. Here I chose words such that each group of three rhymes has a different vowel in the stressed syllable (ORious, EERfully, Avering, Unity, INical) plus unlike final sounds. Glad that gave the rhyming a close-to-natural effect. Reply
C.B. Anderson October 9, 2024 Sadly, many of my Jewish friends from college have elected to join the American cult that blames everything on Israel — maybe they simply don’t like the sound coming out of the horn section. For these lost friends, “Never again” has become Immer wieder. Reply
Joseph S. Salemi October 9, 2024 I’d guess that those friends are Jewish only by the mere accident of birth, and not connected to Judaism by any love or loyalty. Their real religion is left-liberalism — an energetic and fanatical sect that brooks no opposition. Reply
Margaret Coats October 18, 2024 Years ago, I went to a Jewish funeral at a temple where the place and the rite seemed left-liberal. Still, the deceased was praised for speaking about his stirrings of loyalty toward Israel, which he had done upon seeing an Israeli ship in port. But at this point in time, one must wonder whether some Jews support Israel, just as we wonder if the pope is Catholic!
Margaret Coats October 9, 2024 I understand it is difficult to get much sound out of a naturally grown, unique, and unvalved shofar. That hardly explains the unnatural attitude of so many Jewish-Americans toward Israel. But their longtime overwhelming devotion to the party of the left prepared the way for it. Sorry to hear they are “lost friends” to you as well. Thanks for taking time to comment! Reply
