Ten-year-old Shimon Kenanfound it difficult to take his eyes off the shofar blower in the synagogue. The sounds emanating from the ram's horn touched his heart and he craved his own shofar. His parents had no money. In his distress, he found a piece of rubber pipe and attached a tin funnel to it, and so he practiced the technique of blowing. Sixty years passed. Shimon is already seventy years old, he is a veteran shofar, and thousands of shofars have passed under his hands. Today he lives in Moshav Givat Yoav in the Golan Heights and runs a family factory that produces shofars.
Shimon was born in Casablanca, Morocco, immigrated to Israel as a young man and grew up in Tiberias. By the time he was eighteen years old, he was already a regular blower in two synagogues – first blowing in a Sephardic synagogue and then blowing in an Ashkenazi synagogue. He made his living in the art of iron and established a workshop for blacksmithing.
Internal Push
About 20 years ago, his life took a turn when a friend told him about the owner of a shofar factory in Tel Aviv who was retiring. Shimon decided to turn his old love into a permanent occupation. "I felt an inner urge to switch to making shofars," he says with sparkling eyes. "I learned all the secrets of the profession from him, and at the same time I developed machines and tools and improved production methods. Being a regular blower and my expertise in manual labor helped me, of course."
Over the years, he established a visitors' center. "People come here from all over the world, including non-Jews, and we explain to them about the shofar, its meaning and the way it is made," he says. He also notes that he has developed a special production method that manages to neutralize unpleasant odors emanating from the ram's horn."
Doesn't change the shofar
Work on the shofars begins already in the month of Marchashvan. "Once every few years I go to Morocco, the country of my birth, and there I buy ram antlers," Shimon
