Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

This sea lion-shofar mashup is spot-on

(JTA) — Now that it’s Elul, the month that precedes Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish world is filling with the sounds of the shofar. But what about Sea World?

A viral video combining the call of sea lions with the blasts of the shofar suggests one answer.

“I’ve been thinking about this all day and I just have to do it, I have to, I have to,” the video’s creator, a teenaged TikTok user named Mallory Palmer, says in the clip.

Palmer then calls “tekiah,” one of the traditional shofar sounds — but instead of a shofar responding, a sea lion delivers a single call that could fit right in during Rosh Hashanah services.

Laughing, Palmer continues on to “shevarim,” and the sea lion responds with the staccato sounds of the nine-note blast. For “tekiah gedolah,” the extended tone that concludes the shofar service, multiple seals offer their call at once.

“i know that the sounds aren’t PERFECT but still. happy rosh hashanah!” Palmer wrote. The mashup has gone semi-viral, with nearly 72,000 views five days after Palmer posted it.

But Palmer — who has created some far more popular clips on TikTok — suggested in a post that people looking for more Jewish content ought not follow her, as she mostly posts about a fantasy series about teen wizards.

“This is my formal apology to my Jewish following,” she wrote on a post set to a song combining Nikki Minaj’s “Super Bass” and Hava Nagilah. “I know you followed me for Jewish memes but unfortunately this is a Percy Jackson account.”

The post This sea lion-shofar TikTok mashup is a spot-on way to kick off the High Holiday season appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.

In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.

At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.

Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we need 500 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.

Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly. 

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Our Goal: 500 gifts during our Passover Pledge Drive!

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.