The scene around the Capitol on Wednesday may look like a set piece from the Ten Commandments movie, as scores of Jericho March participants lift shofars to their lips.
Shofar blowing, an ancient Jewish ritual, is usually reserved for synagogue sanctuaries. On Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, Jews rise to hear a member of the congregation blow the ram’s horn to awaken their souls and prompt them to return to God.
But over the past few decades, the Jewish ritual has been overtaken by conservative evangelicals, charismatic and Pentecostal Christians.
While many of them are Christian Zionists who support the state of Israel and have worked to strengthen the bond between Christians and Jews, a newer generation of Christians has come to regard the shofar as a weapon of spiritual warfare, much as the bugle was once used in battlefields.
Shofar blowing has become commonplace in many evangelical gatherings and political demonstrations far removed from any Jewish or Israel-related themes. Most recently, they’ve been used at worship leader Sean Feucht’s open-air concerts defying COVID-19 restrictions, at counterprotests opposing Black Lives Matter and in various Stop the Steal events, such as the one that took place on the steps of the Supreme Court on 12th December, and, of course, at the Jericho March this week. In these protests, the shofar is typically plastered with images of the American flag or red, white and blue colours.
“For the people who are coming to these marches, I don’t even know if they know [that the shofar] is a distinctly Jewish symbol or a Judaic-Christian symbol,” said Dan Hummel, research fellow in the history department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has written on evangelical and Jewish relations. “It’s a much more militaristic sign.”
Read the article by Yonat Shimron in Sight Magazine.