It is one of my sincerest regrets that on that day, seven years ago, no one took a picture of me. I was standing on the conductor’s podium in the recording studio of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. In my hand I held a Shofar! In front of me were the music stands and seats of the musicians. Some of the larger instruments like the Harp and Double Base stood there too. But perhaps though I’d better start at the beginning.

A few hours before, I’d received a phone call from a Producer I know at the BBC. It was this time of year and the BBC had several planned radio programmes, on Jewish themes. My producer friend wanted me to listen to a CD recording of the sound of a Shofar being blown. He wanted to check with me if it sounded all right. I listened as he played the recording to me over the phone. It was dreadful…or rather it wasn’t. The sound of the Shofar should of course be just that, a call which evokes feelings of dread and fear. This Shofar had obviously been played by a professional trumpet player. Each call, the Tekiah the Teruah and the Shevorim were perfectly produced. The notes were clear, sweet and precise and they had no Gifeel to them whatsoever. I told my friend that as nice as it sounded it was nothing at all like a Shofar should sound. He expressed his alarm. The BBC needed an authentic Shofar call for an imminent broadcast and he didn’t know what to do. I suggested that I could drive down to New Broadcasting House here in Manchester and bring along my Shofar.

That’s how I found myself standing in an enormous hall where the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra normally records Beethoven and Schubert facing empty Orchestra seats and watching enormous microphones automatically descending from the ceiling to capture my "solo performance."

And earlier today on Rosh HaShonah, just before Tekias Shofar in Shul, I heard a Drosho by Dayan Gavriel Kraus Shlita. He pointed out that the sound of the Shofar should resemble a person crying. Reb Yonassan Eibashitz zt’l said that the day of Rosh HaShonah, is like finding ourselves facing an enormous fire. Only a river of tears can extinguish the blaze. The true sound of the Shofar is designed to unleash the tears of Klal Yisroel and those and only those, can extinguish the flames of HaShem’s anger.

After Yom Tov there were of course the phone calls to make and receive from our sons in various Yeshivos. Gateshead was first and we heard how the Yom HaDin had gone for two of our sons. Then came Eretz Yisroel and the news that there had been big trouble at the Kossel and throughout Israel. I phoned a friend in Yerushalayim and he e-mailed me pictures of the violence. They showed terrified women running from the Kossel as Arabs hurled missiles down on top of them. A little girl’s face looked at the camera in total terror as she held her mothers hand as they ran. I was struck how familiar that little girl’s face looked. I had seen it, or one very like it in other pictures, older black and white pictures from over fifty years ago.

A Palestinian leader has declared, "The war for Jerusalem has begun."

Dayan Krausz had said earlier on how the dangers facing Klal Yisroel on this Rosh HaShonah are more intense than any other time in recent memory. There are enemies from without and from within, "Perhaps the greatest danger," he said "Was the enemies from within." The he went on to quote Chazal.

The course of events of the last year ran through my mind and I recalled the two weeks I spent teaching in Yerushalayim around Tisha B’Av. I have never felt quite such an atmosphere of despair and uncertainty before. The government was in tatters, the "peace" process was in tatters. The only thing Israelis expressed unity and certainty about was their disunity and uncertainty.

And immediately after Rosh HaShonah, I discovered that Dayan Krausz’s words were unknowingly already a commentary on the past rather than an expression of concern for the future.

There was something else in that Drosho which struck an eerie chord. The Dayan pointed simply to the second paragraph of the Shema where HaShem states unequivocally that there is a direct correlation between Klal Yisroel’s observance of the Mitzvos and rainfall. Anyone, who has ever looked into the Gemora Taanis, will read story after story of times when HaShem displayed his anger with Klal Yisroel by bringing a drought.

And just before Yomtov our niece and nephew phoned from Yerushalayim and she told my wife a fascinating and ominous thing. They live in Ramot Daled and from there she and her neighbours have observed a strange phenomenon. Banks of dark rain clouds have appeared in the sky, transforming a Jerusalem sky into a Manchester one. Slowly the clouds move towards them. The neighbourhood becomes very excited, thinking that at last it is going to rain. In fact the clouds are so heavy they have no choice except to rain. But these clouds, time after time, simply role on past and wherever the deposit their rain, it’s certainly not on Israel.

HaShem is making it transparently clear what his feelings are towards Klal Yisroel and not for a long time have our tears been so needed to extinguish the flames.

I once heard from Rebbetzin Heller, of Yerushalayim an intriguing Moshol. A mother in Har Nof is waiting for her teenage daughter to come in. The mother knows that the girl is standing in the street shmoozing with her friends. When at eleven thirty, the door finally opens, the mother looks at her watch and makes her distress very apparent. "What sort of time do you call this to come home?" The girl has no excuse and the mother continues, "I told you to be home by ten O’clock… an hour and a half ago!" The mother’s voice starts to grow very loud, "If you aren’t back here tomorrow night by ten o’clock, TEN O’CLOCK, You’ll find the door locked." By now she is really shouting. "Locked do you hear me?"

The louder and more angry the mother appears, underscores one obvious point; the last thing in the world the mother wants to do, is lock her daughter out! The display of anger and the loudness of her voice is really saying "Please, don’t make me lock you out."

HaShem is making His voice heard very clearly indeed. He is though, Avinu Malkeinu our Father our King. The last thing He wants is to have to carry out His threats. We are receiving a wake up call, louder than any He has delivered to us for many a year. Our Rosh HaShonah promises, not to repeat the mistakes of last year must be authentic and not the expression of only temporary regret. As Rabbi Dessler zt’l and his Talmid Reb Chaim Friedlander zt’l put it, that mean actively avoiding the places, circumstances or people which led us to slip up last time. Changing ourselves, means finding new ways to avoid falling back into our old ways.

This Yom Kippur, the sound of our Tefillos will have to emulate the true call of the Shofar and be full of our sincerest tears. It is those tears, which will tell HaKodosh Boruch Hu that we have "got the message." It is those tears that will extinguish the flames.