From Pasture to Puplit:

Torah, Text, and Personal Journey of Shofar Creation

Aravah Berman-Mirkin

Over the chag (holiday) weekend I had the opportunity to share with 15 people my intimate journey of uncovering the process of learning how to make shofarot in the diaspora as one of the offerings for Rosh Hashana 5784 at the Isabella Freedman Retreat Center in Falls Village, CT.

 In the first portion of my class, I shared how my experience as a child of Soviet-Jewish immigrants has deeply impacted my relationship to Judaism and Jewishness – which cannot be separated out from the work I do as a craftsperson concentrated on sacred Jewish art and Judaica. The more I share my story in predominantly American Jewish spaces, the more essential I find it is to not gloss over my origins and how I arrived to this very moment, but instead delve further into it.

The other half of my class was focused on the implications of working with materials that are derived from animals, the struggle to learn an ancient craft without a mentor and rebuilding the practice anew in and for the diaspora. After making my first rudimentary pair of shofarot in 2019, I began to deepen this journey of learning in 2022. What has become crystal clear to me is that Judaica, and especially Judaica created from animal products – shofarot, and klaf (parchment) used for torah scrolls, mezuzot, and tefillin – has deeper ethical implications than the materials I have previously used (clay, wood, cloth). The further into this work I go, the more I learn about how multifaced the damage is from the mass production of these ritual objects. Beyond being produced in Israel / Palestine, most of the horns used for shofarot are imported without transparency from North Africa. Some of the animal skins used for making klaf come from unborn calves via factory farms in the US. Not only is it essential that sacred Jewish arts be made in the diaspora, but there is great opportunity to source these animal products from small farms who care about the welfare of the animals they tend to. I’ve sourced horns direct from farms all over the country, from Washington to Wisconsin, New Hampshire, and Vermont. It is my belief that if the ritual object is to be used as a sacred tool / technology, then the provenance and creation of that object must also be treated as sacred – the lives of the animals who we rely on must be revered and well cared for if they are going to assist us in our relationship to HaShem, each other, and the world.

 I am energized and motivated to locate the production and manufacture of our most sacred objects to the regions we call home and first we must start with the transmission of that knowledge, much of which exists in I/P. There are layers of complexity to hold and knowledge to uncover and demystify. I am carrying forth my own personal vision of what’s possible and excited to dedicate my time and energy towards that unearthing.