The start of the school year means I get to do something that really gets me in the mood for the Yamim Noraim, high holy days. During these first weeks of school, I walk into each classroom every morning and blow shofar for the students.
In our youngest classrooms, we listen with wide eyes and wonder. We ask questions about the sounds and the shape of the shofar. In our older classrooms, we learn the reasons for standing solemnly, and someone in each class suggests an intention, a kavanah, for tekiyat shofar. Right at the beginning of the new school year I have the perfect reason to go into every classroom, talk with students, and have individual interactions centered around this communal ritual.
The sense of community at our school is palpable as students reunite and warmly integrate new friends, greeting them with smiles and introductions. When we start a new school year we encourage our students to come together as a community, to rejoin after the summer break and build deep connections to each other. This sense of tzibbur, congregation, is fostered in tandem with each child's positive sense of self-worth. Every child grew this summer, was challenged this summer, and has hopes and worries and excitement about the new school year ahead. All these individual feelings are honored as important parts of our communal experience, components of forming our school tzibbur.
Inherent in the ritual of the shofar, and in the very nature of the rules surrounding it, is this dialectic of our place in the community and our importance as individuals. In On Repentance, the Rav zt"l wrote, "Judaism has always viewed man from this dual perspective. It sees every person as an independent individual and also as a part of a community, a limb of the body of Israel."
As the Rav explains, our sages debate the differences between the set of shofar blasts that precede the musaf service of Rosh HaShanah and those that follow the musaf amidah. Drawing from the Rambam (Hilchot Teshuva 3:7), the Rav shares the insight that the first set of blasts are required to be heard solely by an individual, and when we gather in shul we listen to them as individuals. This is why someone who cannot be present in shul still has an obligation to hear that group of blasts. However, the blasts that flow from, and follow, the musaf are a communal obligation. These need not be heard by someone praying on their own.
This duality is experientially taught to our students daily. When a particular student offers a specific intention – a chosen tefillah, hope, or excitement that they would like their classroom community to think about as we listen carefully to the sounds of the shofar – they are experiencing this very idea, the convergence of a singular soul that is uplifted and celebrated as a part of the communal whole.
When one classmate learns differently and our students accept and value that each student's learning styles and needs are different, they are living this same idea. When a group of four-year-olds pauses to discuss what makes them sad, or to console a classmate who is upset at that moment, they are living the lessons of the individual merging with and supporting their community.
I love the start of the school year for so many reasons, not only because I enjoy seeing so many new faces. My shofar blowing is one vehicle through which I ignite not only my anticipation for the new year and the Yamim Noraim, but also my excitement for a new year filled with smiles for our individual students and our entire community. | 
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