news-record.com

Guilford College junior Muhanji Afanda got a “pa-thuu” out of the shofar by pressing his lips together and blowing through the opening of an instrument first used by Hebrews more than 6,000 years ago.

Then there was Dana Teate, who in the beginning got nary a wail from the animal horn Wednesday during a shofar-making workshop.

“I tried to learn when I was little and I couldn’t do it any better than now,” said Teate, a junior.

She recalled as a child watching her grandfather blow the shofar, one of the oldest symbols of Judaism. It is mentioned throughout the Bible.

“Now, I have my own for practice,” she said.

The hollowed-out horn, with the smaller end flattened to form a mouthpiece, makes a sound similar to a trumpet’s call, only its notes are more like a mix of treble and bass.

Students crafted their own shofars for the Rosh Hashanah holiday in a campus hands-on shofar workshop by Rabbi Yosef Plotkin, director of Chabad of Greensboro, an organization focused on the spiritual needs of Jews unaffiliated with a local house of worship.

The event was co-sponsored by the Jewish student Hillel organization.

The shofar is an important symbol during Rosh Hashanah, which on sundown Monday will start the Jewish High Holy Days, ending 10 days later with Yom Kippur, one of the holiest days of the Jewish year. It’s a time of repentance, mending relationships and putting things right with God and neighbor.

“When I was little I could not see over the boots” when everyone stood at the temple, said Max Spitalnick, a sophomore and a co-president of the campus Hillel group, “but I could always hear the shofar.”

Its loud, piercing tone is believed to penetrate any barriers between man and God, act as a wake-up call to man and usher in a new year in the Jewish faith.

“It 'awakens your soul,’ is how we say it,” Joseph Fox, a sophomore and the other Hillel co-president, said as students practiced around him.

About 30 Jewish and non-Jewish students were drawn to the free workshop on the patio of Founder’s Hall on the campus.

Plotkin, also a teacher at the American Hebrew Academy, had boiled the horns for 24 hours to remove most of the bone marrow and placed marks on one end of the horns for students to use as a guide for sawing. Afterward, they would drill holes for the mouthpiece. The size of a horn, which usually range from 6 inches to several feet, is not as important as the mouthpiece, he said.

“Some people think the bigger the shofar, the louder it is,” Plotkin said after drilling a hole in the horn for a student, who would later sand, shellac and polish it. “It is the hole, wider on the outside and narrow on the inside, that makes the sound.”

The shofar is not an easy instrument to play during services. Certain notes and patterns must be sounded, and it’s difficult to do.

Plotkin didn’t have high expectations for the would-be musicians — but that wasn’t the point.

“Did you ever see students so involved in their studies?” Plotkin asked. “They were able to learn about the traditions while they were having a good time.”

Contact Nancy H. McLaughlin at 373-7049 or nancy.mclaughlin@news-record.com