<p><strong>One of the most ancient musical instruments, the shofar is mentioned several times in the bible.</strong></p><p>In the Book of Joshua (Chapter 6), it was part of a battle plan to capture the city of Jericho: As Joshua and his army were about to conquer the city of Jericho,<br>they blew the shofar to miraculously topple the city walls. A more conventional use is described in the Book of Judges (Chapter 7),<br>when Gideon and his 300 warriors sounded the shofar in order to frighten the army of Midian who outnumbered them.<br><br>Today, the most common use of the shofar is in synagogue services, mainly on Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) and to mark the end of Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement).<br><br><strong>The makings of a shofar</strong></p><p>The most common shofar is made from a ram’s horn (in fact, the shofar is sometimes referred to as a “ram’s horn”).The horn’s wide base surrounds a core bone,<br>which connects it to the ram’s head. Once the animal is dead, the horn is separated from the bone, resulting in a horn that is hollow in its wide part, but sealed at its narrow edge.<br><br>Heat is applied to enable straightening part of the horn, then it is polished on the outside and an air-passage hole is drilled in the narrow part<br>making it possible to produce a sound from the shofar, similarly to a trumpet, a trombone, or a didgeridoo.</p><p>Another type of popular horn is the long spiral shofar used by Yemenite Jews, which comes from the greater kudu antelope.</p><p><strong>The shofar bender</strong></p><p>In addition to a shofar’s length, its angle of bending also affects its sound. Shofar manufacturers usually straighten the naturally bending narrow end of the horn.<br>The precise degree of bending changes from one shofar to another, resulting in a unique sound in each shofar.<br><br><strong>"Blow the shofar in Zion! Sound an alarm on my holy mountain! Let all living in the land tremble, for the day of Adonai is coming!"</strong></p>