SHOFAR, SHOW GOOD
Jeff Nussbaum doesn’t like to toot his own horn, but he can hold a shofar note for a good 45 seconds.
With Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, set to commence at sundown Sunday, many of the faithful are looking forward to something even more than divine forgiveness: the plaintive sound of the shofar, or ram’s horn, a cornerstone of the High Holidays.
“Shofar is [meant] to awaken us to repentance,” Chabad Rabbi Uriel Vigler tells The Post. “The shofar is the most important part of the Rosh Hashanah service — a mystical way of coronating God as our king.”
Chelsea-based Nussbaum, 66, coaches young students in the art at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue and says that hauling his eye-catching instrument always elicits looks on the subway. “I get stopped all the time,” he says.
Nussbaum and other shofar blowers who spoke with The Post say they prepare for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur (the solemn day of atonement that begins the evening of Sept. 18) with intense training regimens that include stretches, breath-control exercises and practice drills in which they blow thou- sands of notes.
It’s a busy season for qualified blowers, as shofar is an obscure art with few true masters.
“I get daily calls from people who want a lastminute brush up on their blowing,” says Upper West Side-based Reb Reuven, a sought-after shofar blower with 25 years of experience who’s been invited to fly as far as Mexico City to play.
Great playing often involves a bit of showmanship, says cantor Daniel Pincus, 64, of Inwood. “Those of a stadium approach want to hear a fabulous tekiah gedolah” — the extended wailing blow that ends Yom Kippur, he says. “[It’s an] Olympics-style show,” where people wonder, “‘How long will it last?’ ”
Prior to changing synagogues this year, Joe Fischer’s shofar skills were so renowned that worshipers timed him. “They used stopwatches to count how long I’d go,” says the 57-year-old from Wayne, NJ, who’s been at it for 40-plus years.
On the rare occasion he falls short or lets out a squeaky note, he takes it in stride. “I stop, laugh and start up again,” he says. “It will always happen, but you move on.”