ram’s horn.”
“Yes. So it was written in Leviticus, in the Jubilean ordinance: ‘Then you shall cause the trumpet of the Jubilee to sound . . . ’ 1 The trumpet of the Jubilee is the ram’s horn, the shofar. For the Jubilee to begin, the shofar had to be sounded. It was the sounding of the shofar that signaled the year of return and restoration, and release throughout the land.
“Is it possible that in 1967, the Jubilean year that witnessed the most dramatic of returns concerning Jerusalem, the sign of the Jubilee, the sounding of the shofar, could have manifested?”
“In my vision I saw an angel give a shofar to a boy to sound it at the set time.”
“The central moment of that Jubilee came as Israeli soldiers entered the ancient city and made their way to their most holy of places. The images of Israeli soldiers returning to the Temple Mount and to the ancient stones of the Western Wall reverberated across the world. It was the defining moment of the war and the embodiment of the Jubilean return. It was at that precise moment that an ancient mystery manifested. In the midst of the soldiers standing at the Western Wall was a man holding a ram’s horn. He set it to his mouth and blew. The sound of the Jubilee went forth in the Jubilean year, on the Jubilean day, in the Jubilean place, and at the Jubilean moment. The same sound ordained in ancient times to proclaim the return of the exiled heirs to their lost inheritance now proclaimed to the world the return of the Jewish people to their lost inheritance.”
“Did the man who sounded the shofar know the mystery? Did he intend to sound it on the Jubilee?”
“He didn’t intend it that way,” said the Oracle, “any more than did any of the others intend to fulfill the mystery when they fulfilled it.”
“All the more amazing,” I said. “And who was the man?”
“Rabbi Shlomo Goren, the same one who sent for the priests and for the Nazir. In your vision he was the child who came to the threshing floor.”
“How did it all happen?”
“Goren wasn’t born in the land but was one of the exiles who returned from the nations. He was born in Poland. While he was still a young boy, his family immigrated to Palestine, which was at that time under British rule. In the Orthodox Jewish world he was recognized as a prodigy. At the age of seventeen he was ordained as a rabbi. Beginning with Israel’s War of Independence he served in the army as a military chaplain. It was Goren’s conviction that the return of the Jewish people to the land was central in God’s purposes of world redemption.
“In the first days of the Six-Day War, Goren was at the front lines of battle. At his side was a shofar. He had intended to follow the ancient command to sound it in the midst of battle. But in the midst of battle his vehicle was struck by enemy fire, and the shofar was destroyed. Goren then asked his father-in-law if he could borrow his shofar for what could be the liberation of Jerusalem. His father-in-law complied.
“In the days leading up to the Six-Day War, long before Jerusalem was in play, Goren had prophetically spoken of the city’s liberation. And on the morning of June 7, 1967, he would be there with the first Israeli troops as they approached the city. As he entered with the soldiers through the Lion’s Gate, he set the shofar to his mouth and sounded it. It was the very moment of the Jubilean return. He continued sounding it as he and the troops made their way to the Temple Mount, another prophetic return, the return of the Jewish soldier to the sacred ground lost in the war against Rome in AD 70, and another Jubilean moment two thousand years in the making.”
“Each shall return to his own possession.”
“And then Goren made his way to the Western Wall for the sounding of the shofar that would reverberate around the world. In ancient times who was it that sounded the shofar of Jubilee? Though the ordinance doesn’t specify, it was the priests who were called to mark the holy days of Israel, to sound the trumpets, and to herald the appointed times of God. And the priests were the ministers of the Jubilee.
“Rabbi Goren wasn’t born of the priestly house but through marriage had become part of