The 'Best Shofar Blower' of the Modern World
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Editor’s note: Today’s dispatch is focused on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year. To those celebrating, we wish you a happy, healthy, and peaceful new year! 🙏
Also in today’s dispatch:
A mystical view of Rosh Hashanah (video)
How Rosh Hashanah can change your life, even if you’re not Jewish (article)
Dessert recipes for Rosh Hashanah (video)
How Rosh Hashanah became two days (podcast)
Ways Ethiopian Jews use honey on Rosh Hashanah (article)
Tel Aviv’s favorite Rosh Hashanah traditions (video)
The shofar musician up for a world record (article)
🔝 Today’s Featured Story
In 2008, Robert Weinger was divorced and unemployed after a 23-year career as an executive in the beverage industry. So he took a trip to Israel with his synagogue and, naturally, it changed his life.
His tour group was standing atop Mount Bental, a dormant volcano in the Golan Heights, when a fellow tourist asked Weinger to hold the shofar the other tourist had recently purchased while he used the restroom. Weinger casually placed the horn to his lips, and to his great surprise, Israel’s ceremonial flag-raising tune came out.
Today, at 65, he is a shofar aficionado, both a peddler and a player of the horn Jews sound during Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. He is “marketing” the shofar as a divine tool, using his unlikely narrative to “call the children of Israel home.”