The Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah begins at sunset on Friday, September 11, 2026, marking the start of a two-day period of prayer and reflection. A primary feature of the holiday services is the blowing of the shofar, an instrument made from the hollowed-out horn of a ram or an African antelope.
The use of the shofar is rooted in the Hebrew Bible, where it served as a signal to call people to attention. According to Daniel Picus, an associate professor at Western Washington University, biblical accounts describe shofar blasts at the revelation of the Torah at Mt. Sinai, the start of the Jubilee year, and during the siege of Jericho. Picus noted that the Bible identifies Rosh Hashanah as a day of trumpeting and remembrance.
Rabbinic law, codified in the Mishnah centuries after the biblical period, established regulations for the shofar. These include instructions on how to hollow out the horn and a series of blasts required during the service. While traditional law generally prohibits blowing the shofar when Rosh Hashanah falls on Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath, some modern synagogues have altered this practice.
The blowing of the shofar affects Jewish practitioners worldwide who participate in Rosh Hashanah rituals. The two-day holiday serves as the Jewish New Year, a period when observers focus on self-reflection and community prayer. For the individual practitioner, the shofar acts as a sensory signal intended to shift focus from daily concerns to broader spiritual or communal matters. Rabbi Micha'el Rosenberg of the Hadar Institute noted that the sound is often interpreted as a wordless expression of emotion, transcending rational thought.
On a practical level, the ritual maintains a market for religious items, such as those produced by the Barsheshet-Ribak Shofarot company in Tel Aviv. The instrument itself requires specific technique; Rabbi Alicia Jo Rabins explained that a blower must purse their lips similar to a brass instrument player to produce the sound. The "teruah," a series of staccato blasts, is one of the specific sounds practitioners would hear during the service, which some sources compare to the sound of human crying or labor.
The continued use of the shofar links current practitioners to ancestral history. The holiday concludes after two days of observance. Following Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish liturgical calendar moves toward further days of reflection. The specific timing for when the shofar is blown during the service depends on varied linguistic interpretations of religious texts as debated in the Talmud.