During those years when I stayed for most of the (very long) High Holy Day liturgy, I’ve noticed the ebb and flow of people follow distinct trends. To be economical about it, certain parts of the liturgy are products demanded by the market more highly. I suppose people feel that these services are better investments, with higher payoffs. One is the Yizkor service, a short memorial service sentimentally connected for many with their loved ones who have passed. This part of the services brings out so many people that a tradition, in no way binding, has developed that children whose parents are alive should not be in the room; otherwise not everyone could fit.

The part of the service that everyone seems to love, though, is the blowing of the shofar, both on Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur. The liturgy suggests several reasons why we blow the shofar, a ram's horn in multiple sense of the word. “Wake up, God!” seems to be one reason. And yet why would blowing through a ram’s horn make God any more likely to listen to us sinful mortals?

On Rosh HaShanah, I stood on the men's side of a small congregation. We had reached the Shofar service (about an hour later than promised; people who had shown up just to hear the shofar found us in the middle of reading the Torah). Traditionally, the shofar is blown one hundred times. After every blast, a small child clinging to his mother imitated the blast. A long blast, a long shriek of delight from the toddler. A series of short toots, a series of short exclamations from this little boy. And if the sound of an innocent little boy happily shouting, held by his mother, isn’t reason enough for God to save us all for another year, I can’t imagine what is.