The Media Line: Keeping the Echo Alive: The Last of Israel’s Traditional Shofar Makers (VIDEO)

Shimon Keinan is one of only a handful of people in Israel still making the traditional horns that are blown on the Jewish holidays, and his factory receives more than 14,000 visitors a year, including some Christians 

By Aaron Poris/The Media Line 

Every year on the holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur (the Jewish New Year and Day of Atonement), Jews around the world gather to hear the blowing of the shofar, the traditional horn, usually made from a ram’s horn.

Shimon Keinan and his sons are among the few remaining traditional shofar-makers in Israel. At Kol Shofar (Hebrew for “sound of a shofar”), the shofar factory and gallery Keinan founded in his home community of Moshav Givat Yoav, in the Golan Heights near the Sea of Galilee, they produce horns of all shapes, sizes, and ethnic designs.

PHOTO – Shimon Keinan in the Kol Shofar Gallery, Moshav Ramat Yoav, Israel. (Aaron Poris/The Media Line)