Why Blow a Ram's Horn in a Synagogue? The Instrument Has Not Changed in Millennia

The instrument is the horn of a kosher animal, most commonly a ram, hollowed out and shaped so that a narrow opening at the tip serves as a mouthpiece. It is a natural horn with no holes, no valves and no slide, so the player controls pitch only by lip tension, which gives a small number of available notes. Horns from different animals give different shapes and tones, with the curled horn of certain antelope producing the long spiral form used in some communities. The horn of a cow or calf is excluded by tradition, on the reasoning that it recalls the episode of the golden calf.

The calls are prescribed rather than improvised:

• •A long unbroken blast
• •A set of three shorter broken notes
• •A set of nine very short staccato notes
• •A final blast held as long as the player can sustain it
• •The sequence and the total number of blasts are fixed by tradition
• •A designated caller announces each sound before it is blown

The principal use is at the Jewish new year, where blowing it is a positive commandment and the congregation's obligation is to hear it rather than to blow it. It is blown through the preceding month as preparation, and a final long blast marks the conclusion of the Day of Atonement ten days later. The traditional explanations given for the practice are various and are treated as complementary rather than competing, including that it is a call to self-examination, a recollection of the ram substituted in the binding of Isaac, an announcement of divine kingship, and an alarm in the sense of a summons to attention.

The instrument appears throughout the biblical text in contexts that are mostly not musical, and listing them explains the range of meanings attached to it. It signals in war, both to assemble and to attack, and is blown at the walls of Jericho. It announces the appearance of a king and the anointing of one. It proclaims the jubilee year in which debts are released and land returns to its original holders, and the word for that year derives from the instrument. It accompanies the ark being brought into the city. Later practice added its use in pronouncing excommunication and in mourning, so the same sound has carried celebration, alarm and judgement.

The instrument could be made to sound smooth and is deliberately not. A horn is not tuned, its bore is irregular and its sound is raw and unstable compared with a manufactured brass instrument, and that quality is understood as part of the point rather than as a limitation, with the broken and sobbing character of the short blasts explicitly compared in rabbinic sources to weeping. Modification is restricted, since the instrument must remain recognisably the horn of the animal, so it may be cleaned, shaped and polished but not lengthened, plated inside, or fitted with a manufactured mouthpiece, and a horn that has been painted or coated internally is generally held unfit for use.

A hollowed ram's horn with no holes or valves produces a small set of notes controlled only by the lips, and it is the one instrument in continuous ritual use since the biblical period. Four prescribed calls are blown in a fixed sequence at the Jewish new year, where the obligation is to hear rather than to blow. The rough unstable sound is deliberate and is compared in the sources to weeping.