The Shofar in Hollywood Film Scores: From Jewish Ritual to Cinematic Primitivism by Aaron Fruchtman

The Shofar in Hollywood Film Scores: From Jewish Ritual to Cinematic Primitivism by Aaron Fruchtman from Sonic Representations of Jewishness On Screen and Off, a Conference at UCLA, April 19-21, 2026. The shofar, a ram’s horn, has figured prominently in Jewish narratives since biblical times. The ritual instrument is most familiar to Jews for its liturgical use in the synagogue. A few Hollywood composers have used the shofar in their film scores. Stereotypical shofar blasts occur in the scores to the biblical epics of the post-war era, such as The Ten Commandments (1956), The Story of Ruth (1960) and Ben- Hur, composed by Elmer Bernstein, Franz Waxman, and Miklos Rozsa, respectively. These films share stories derived from the Bible that gain musical verisimilitude by including conspicuous evocations of the shofar as a biblical instrument. Less conventional appearances of the venerable instrument occur in the film scores of Jerry Goldsmith, notably found in Planet of the Apes (1968) and Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989). Goldsmith identifies the shofar with primitivism. The shofar also makes brief yet significant appearances in two more recent films: John Debney’s End of Days (1999) and Edward Shearmur’s The Skeleton Key (2005). The intermittent practice of sounding shofars in these film scores makes for an intriguing case study in how specific sonorities generate shifting associations for listeners. However, even with the instrument’s technical limitations, there is not a universal consistency of the use of the shofar in Hollywood film scores. In differing narrative contexts, the shofar is included in a score to symbolize biblical times, a general religioso feeling, paranormal activity, or primitive militarism. AARON FRUCHTMAN Aaron Fruchtman is a Lecturer in Music History at California State University, Long Beach. He earned his doctorate in musicology from the University of California, Riverside. His research examines film scores of Jewish-themed films and their composers’ social and cultural world in Hollywood’s Golden Age. Fruchtman has presented at national meetings of the American Musicological Society and the Society for American Music. His scholarship appears in The Journal of Film Music and in Qol Tamid: The Shofar in Ritual, History, and Culture.