Description
The shofar is a horn sounded on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, and at the close of Yom Kippur, whose calls summon to repentance and spiritual awakening. The Yemeni tradition favors a long, spiraling horn, taken from the greater kudu (an African antelope), whose elongated and twisted shape clearly distinguishes this shofar from the curved ram's horn in use among Ashkenazim. This regional preference reflects the diversity of Jewish customs regarding the acceptable form of the instrument, within the framework of halakhic prescriptions on the shofar. As an essential ritual object of the Days of Awe, it bears witness to the particularities of the Yemeni minhag.
