Blow by Blow

From the markets in Marrakesh to a workshop in the Golan, Shimon Keinan is constantly on the lookout for the perfect ram’s horn. The sound of the shofar has been in his bones since he was a kid in Casablanca, and now he’s finally fulfilling his dream — fashioning those horns for people around the world, yet saving his best one for the Great Shofar

The Marrakesh market in Morocco is bustling, as usual, with pungent scents of exotic spices penetrating the sultry air and eye-catching checkered fabrics hanging over the stalls and alleyways. But 77-year-old Shimon Keinan, a shofar maker from Moshav Givat Yoav on the southern slopes of the Golan Heights, isn’t letting himself get distracted by the attack on his senses. He’s here on the lookout for only one thing: the perfect Moroccan ram’s horns for his shofar factory. (A kosher shofar need not be from an animal that was slaughtered properly by shechitah, as long as it originates from a kosher species.)

He walks carefully between the stalls, gently running his fingers along every ram’s horn he sees, skillfully inspecting the curvature and natural luster. For him, each one of these raw, unprocessed horns, sold for a variety of uses to the general public, is a treasure — for he can sense the potential of each one to become a shofar. Even amid the noisy din of the Marrakesh market, Keinan hears the holy sounds of Rosh Hashanah.

Trade Secrets

Today, Shimon Keinan’s family-run shofar workshop and visitor center, called Kol Shofar, is a popular tourist attraction for visitors to Israel’s north, and one of the most reliable places in the country to purchase a kosher shofar. What started as a literal backyard hobby shop in the 1990s actually has its roots in Keinan’s childhood in Casablanca, Morocco.

“I discovered the shofar walking with my father to the beit knesset when I was a child,” he says. “I was captivated right away, and it wasn’t long before I learned how to blow the shofar myself. By age ten, I was already a proficient shofar blower, but we were poor and I didn’t have the means to buy a real shofar, so I improvised and made my own. I took rubber tubing, wound it in a coil, and attached a tin funnel to the end for the sound to come out — it looked a bit like a French horn — and that’s how I practiced as a kid.