As I was winding down for the final few groups to come through on The Holy Land Tour, I was surprised to see a large Black man wrapped in a prayer shawl, carrying a triple-twist Yemeni shofar approaching the Passover House venue. My first thought was to welcome him and his lady companion with "Shalom, mishpuchah" (hello family member, in Yiddish) to which his reply was a simple "shalom". After a rather long and informative conversation and a demonstration of his impressive shofar-blowing ability John Brown, his fiancé Doris and I decided that he and I needed to do a "call and response" shofar sounding before the evening's Passion Play.
We devised a simple blowing strategy, got them some tickets to the Play and agreed to get in our "positions" just after the singing of the National Anthem. I took my usual position on the roof of the Sanhedrin, while John was stationed at the top of the 40-row amphitheater behind most of the audience. The resulting duet was wonderful. The tekiah's, shevarim's, teriah's and a mIghty tekiah godol flew back and forth and it was exhilerating. . For the first time since I have been blowing the shofar before the start of the Passion Play, there was a spattering of applause, comments from the cast of "what was that?", and a feeling that God had really given a new spin to a more than 3000 year tradition. Once before in my time at the Passion Play was I blessed to share the shofar "stage" with a co-blower. This time tied for first place.
I've been in more than 150 performances of The Great Passion Play and each one is unique, even though the words and music are always the same. There is some line, facial expression, hand gesture, audience reaction or "blooper" which makes each night's presentation a special occurrence, and last night with the "duel" was special for me and a lot of others. Thank You, John for being part of TGPP. I hope we meet again, but if not, we will certainly get to call and respond when Jesus returns or calls us Home. God Bless you, John and Doris, my brother and sister in Christ.
Sent from my iPad
No comments:
Post a Comment