When I was fourteen or fifteen [...] the Yom Kippur service ended in an unforgettable way, for Schechter, who always put great effort into the blowing of the shofar-he would go red in the face with exertion-produced a long, seemingly endless note of unearthly beauty, and then dropped dead before us on the bema, the raised platform where he would sing. I had the feeling that God had killed Schechter, sent a thunderbolt, stricken him. The shock of this for everyone was tempered by the reflection that if there was ever a moment in which a soul was pure, forgiven, relieved of all sin, it was at this moment, when the shofar was blown in conclusion of the fast [...]. (Oliver Sacks)

When I was fourteen or fifteen [...] the Yom Kippur service ended in an unforgettable way, for Schechter, who always put great effort into the blowing of the shofar-he would go red in the face with exertion-produced a long, seemingly endless note of unearthly beauty, and then dropped dead before us on the bema, the raised platform where he would sing. I had the feeling that God had killed Schechter, sent a thunderbolt, stricken him. The shock of this for everyone was tempered by the reflection that if there was ever a moment in which a soul was pure, forgiven, relieved of all sin, it was at this moment, when the shofar was blown in conclusion of the fast [...].

Oliver Sacks

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