“Before the Shofar Sounds: A Rabbi's Invitation to the Jewish New Year”
By Rabbi Steven Wernick, The Anne and Max Tanenbaum Sr. Rabbi
Sunday, August 16, 2026
Reading: Genesis 22:1-14
Let me begin with a confession.
Every year, sometime in late July or early August, I feel it. A kind of quickening. A low hum underneath the ordinary rhythm of my days. My congregants haven't heard it yet. My staff is still in summer mode. But something in me has already begun to turn.
The Jewish calendar is doing what it always does at this time of year. It is clearing its throat.
In a few weeks, on the evening of September 11th, the sun will set over Toronto, and Jewish communities around the world will gather to hear a sound that is at least three thousand years old — the blast of the shofar, the ram's horn. That sound will announce the arrival of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and the beginning of what we call the Yamim Noraim — the Days of Awe.
I am standing in your pulpit today because your minister and I share something beyond our friendship and our advocacy in this city. We share the conviction that there are questions too important to answer alone, in the echo chamber of our own tradition. And so, he has invited me here to offer you an intimate window into the most sacred season of the Jewish year.
But first, I need to tell you about a father, a son, a mountain, and a ram caught in a thicket.
Vayehi achar hadvarim ha'eleh. "And it happened, after these things." The Torah begins this shattering story with an almost casual transition — as if what follows is simply the next item on the agenda. As if God asking Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac is just another Tuesday.
וַיְהִי אַחַר הַדְּבָרִים הָאֵלֶּה וְהָאֱלֹהִים נִסָּה אֶת־אַבְרָהָם
"After these things, God tested Abraham and said to him: Take your son, your only son, whom you love — Isaac — and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering."
Abraham rises early. He saddles his donkey. He takes two servants and his son Isaac. He splits the wood for the burnt offering — that detail has always stopped me. He splits the wood himself. He knows what it is for. And he and Isaac set out together for the mountain God has shown him.
Three days they walk.
I want you to sit with those three days for a moment. Three days of silence between a father and his son. What do you say? What do you not say? Abraham must have rehearsed a thousand times what he would tell Isaac. Isaac, who has begun to notice.
וַיֹּאמֶר יִצְחָק אֶל־אַבְרָהָם אָבִיו וַיֹּאמֶר אָבִי... אַיֵּה הַשֶּׂה לְעֹלָה
"And Isaac said to his father Abraham: 'Father.' And he said: 'Here I am, my son.' He said: 'Here is the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?'"
Avi. Father. B'ni. My son. The two most intimate words in any language, hanging in the mountain air.
Abraham answers: "God will provide, my son. God will provide."
And they walk on. Together. The text says it twice: "and the two of them walked on together." It is one of the most heartbreaking lines in the entire Hebrew Bible.
Now I need to pause here, because this is the moment our two traditions part ways — and understanding how is, I think, part of why your minister invited me.
Many of you read this text through the lens of what comes after it in Christian Scripture. The ram caught in the thicket foreshadows the sacrifice of God's own Son. Abraham's willingness points toward Golgotha. The story is read as a prefigurement — heartbreaking in its own right but ultimately pointing forward toward a different mountain and a different kind of provision.
Jews read it differently. For us, the story ends here, on this mountain, with this ram. The ram is not a symbol of something else — it is the answer. And Abraham's willingness is not a rehearsal for something greater. It is itself the greatest thing.
But there is something else in our tradition that your Bibles don't show you. There is a Midrash — a rabbinic legend that reads between the lines of the text — that says Abraham did not stop. That the knife fell. That Isaac died on that mountain. And in that moment, the angels of heaven, watching, began to weep. Their tears fell from the sky and landed on Isaac's closed eyes. And it was those tears — the grief of heaven itself — that brought him back.
"When the sword touched Isaac's throat, his soul flew away. But when the Holy Voice was heard... his soul returned to him. And the angels wept before the Holy One."
פִּרְקֵי דְרַבִּי אֱלִיעֶזֶר, פֶּרֶק לא]
I offer this not as doctrine but as the Jewish instinct that this story cannot be resolved too quickly. That God does not spare us from the altar — God meets us on it. And sometimes, when we cannot find our way back ourselves, it is the tears of others — friends, community, strangers, even angels — that open our eyes again.
And that ram — וַיַּרְא וְהִנֵּה אַיִל — "and he saw, and behold, a ram" — caught in a thicket by its horns. Abraham offers the ram, and names the place Adonai Yireh — "The Lord will provide" — or in its deeper reading: "The Lord will be seen." The Lord will be seen when you have nothing left to offer but your willingness to show up.
וַיַּרְא וְהִנֵּה אַיִל... וַיִּקְרָא אַבְרָהָם שֵׁם הַמָּקוֹם הַהוּא יְהוָה יִרְאֶה
"And he saw and behold — a ram. And Abraham called the name of that place 'Adonai Yireh' — The Lord will be seen."]
The shofar is made from a ram's horn. Every time we hear it, we are re-entering this story. Every blast carries the memory of Abraham on that mountain, of the angel's voice breaking through, of tears falling like rain from a watching heaven.
The shofar says: Look up. Something is being provided. Are you paying attention?
In a few weeks, my congregation will gather for Rosh Hashanah. Nearly five thousand people. We will fill our synagogue, and we will hear the shofar, and something very old and very necessary will begin.
The Days of Awe are not primarily about guilt. The English word "repentance" doesn't quite capture what we are doing. The Hebrew word is teshuvah — and it means, simply, return. Return to who you actually are. Return to the relationships you have allowed to calcify, the promises you have quietly abandoned, the truest version of yourself that got buried under the weight of a very busy year.
The Jewish mystics describe this season as a time when the gates are open wide. Not ajar. Not cracked. Wide open. And the invitation is not complicated: Come back. You have not traveled so far that you cannot find your way home.
Rosh Hashanah is not the beginning of the spiritual work. It is the culmination of thirty days of preparation called Elul — the month we are in right now. In Elul, we blow the shofar every morning. We send letters of apology to people we have hurt. We ask the harder questions before the hardest ones arrive.
The shofar cannot produce a melody. It has no keys, no valves, no mouthpiece shaped for nuance. It produces only a cry. A raw, unmediated cry. Because on these days we come before God without our performances, without our carefully constructed self-presentations. We come with our raw, unmediated selves.
Hineni. Here I am. The same word Abraham says at the very beginning of our Torah reading — God calls, and Abraham answers: Hineni. Not: I am ready. Not: I have figured it out. Simply: I am present. I have shown up. Whatever comes next, I am here.
At the beginning of the most solemn service of the High Holy Days, the Cantor steps forward alone and chants a prayer called Hineni — Here I am.
הִנְנִי הֶעָנִי מִמַּעַשׂ נִרְעַשׁ וְנִפְחַד
"Here I am, poor in deeds, trembling and afraid, standing before You..."
A leader standing before a community and saying: I don't have all the answers. I am as human as you are. But I am here. I will not pretend otherwise.
Before I do something a little unusual in a church, I want to ask you one question. Just one. Hold it quietly:
Is there someone whose tears you have not yet let fall for you? Someone whose love you have kept at arm's length because receiving it felt harder than suffering alone?
Hold that.
I brought my shofar.
That sound is three thousand years old. It has been heard in desert tents and burned temples, in hiding places and open sanctuaries, in moments of terror and moments of homecoming.
You just heard it.
Turn to the person next to you. You have sixty seconds. Tell them: What did you feel just now?
Take those feelings with you to lunch today. And take these questions with you — not as homework, but as the questions the shofar just asked on your behalf:
Who have I been this year?
What am I being called to return to?
Who do I need to say hineni to — here I am — before the gates begin to close?
You don't need to be Jewish to hear those questions. You need only to believe — as I believe, as I think you believe — that we are not finished becoming who we are meant to be.
In a few weeks, at sundown on September 11th, I will stand before my congregation and say in Hebrew what I say to you now in English:
לְשָׁנָה טוֹבָה תִּכָּתֵבוּ
May you be inscribed for a good year.
May you look up from whatever mountain you are climbing and find what has been provided.
May the gates, while they are open, be wide enough for you to walk through.
Amen.
And may the sound of the shofar — that ancient, unmediated cry of the human soul — find its echo somewhere in your own heart.
Amen.