It’s not that hard to play the shofar. Believe me, I’ve led enough High Holiday kids services in my life to know that even a five year old can play the shofar.
What I’ve learned though is that there are three levels of shofar blowing abilities:
1) The ability to make a sound. Even if it sounds like you’re spitting into it. Which you probably are.
2) The ability to make the appropriate High Holiday related sounds. You get extra points of you can do a really strong tikiah gedolah.
3) The ability to play actual songs on the shofar.
I’m on level two. Though my tikiah gedolah does leave something to be desired.
But if you do a search on YouTube, you can really find some legit shofar players. With real musical talent. While the sound of the shofar is not as pretty as a trumpet or a clarinet, it’s still mighty impressive to be able to play an entire song on a ram’s horn.
First, we have a guy who can play Hatikvah on the shofar:
Next we have a guy who can not only play Hatikvah, but follows it up with his shofar version of Amazing Grace.
Then there are these kids from a village in Africa throwing the house down with a homemade shofar of their own.
shofar
Pronounced: sho-FAR or SHO-far, Origin: Hebrew, a ram’s horn that is sounded during the month of Elul, on Rosh Hashanah, and on Yom Kippur. It is mentioned numerous times in the Bible, in reference to its ceremonial use in the Temple and to its function as a signal-horn of war.
