Last year I officiated as chazzan for the Yamim Nora’im at a kosher nursing and rehabilitation facility in northern New Jersey. My wife and I lodged and ate our meals on the premises. I was asked if I could blow the shofar on Rosh Hashana for the Jewish patients on the floor where I was staying, and gladly agreed. In one of the rooms I entered was a young man. As soon as he saw the shofar, he asked me to leave, telling me he doesn’t believe in G-d or anything associated with Rosh Hashana. An idea suddenly popped in my head and I asked him if I could blow just one note, one tekiah on the shofar. Seeing I was a nudnik, and wanting to get rid of me, he grudgingly obliged. I wasn’t going to press my luck with a tekiah gedola, so I blew a simple tekiah and wished him a speedy recovery.
Blowing 30 times (the minimum amount to fulfill the mitzvah) for every Jewish patient, literally took the wind out of me. Seeing my haggard look upon returning to our room, my wife suggested, to make my task easier, that I speak to a nurse and ask her if she could help gather all the Jewish patients on the floor to a central location for the second day of Rosh Hashana. When I exclaimed, “Why didn’t I think of that?” my wife commented, “That’s what you need a wife for!”
The nurse I spoke to was very accommodating and said there was a lounge on the floor which would be perfect. At the agreed upon time, the patients began arriving. All of a sudden, I took a double take when I saw the young man from the previous day enter the room! I was shocked. I couldn’t believe my eyes. The sound of that one tekiah the previous day had obviously stirred up the pintele yid, the Jewish spark inside him, and he had a change of heart. He listened to all 30 sounds!
The power of just one tekiah is demonstrated in the beautiful story of Rabbi Levy Yitzchok of Berditchev, zt”l, who one year, right before shofar blowing, raised his eyes to heaven and said: “Ribbono Shel Olam, Master of the Universe, You have declared in your holy Torah: ‘A day of shofar blowing shall it be for you.’ For that one verse, thousands of your people Israel have blown millions of blasts for thousands of years. And we, your people Israel, beseech You, ‘Teka b’shofar gadol l’cherutaynu,’ blow just one tekiah, just one blast on Your big shofar that will proclaim our redemption.”
Sometimes, all it takes is just one tekiah!
Shana Tovah!