shofar

In Judaism, a ram's horn blown in the synagogue as a call to repentance at the New Year festivals of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the Jewish high holy days or ‘days of awe’.

The shofar is sounded several times during the morning service at synagogue in the month leading up to Rosh Hashanah. Traditionally, a horn would signal the arrival of kings, and it is used both to call Jews to penitence and to depict God's sovereignty. The three specific types of call the shofar makes are designed to make the listener sit up and attend to God, to change their direction, and to call on the listener's heart and conscience with a sound of longing and remorse.