When you look at a blank piece of paper, what do you see? If you're an origami artist, you might visualize a flying dove, a jumping frog, or even a trumpeting shofar. With origami, you can transform plain paper into miniature artwork-simply by folding it different ways. The magical feeling of transforming something ordinary into something extraordinary is what makes this ancient Japanese folk craft popular. Try your hand at making a shofar out of paper.

MATERIALS:

One square piece of paper (suggested size: 10-inch square)

DIRECTIONS:

1. Fold the paper on the diagonal. Unfold.
2. Fold the two outer edges to the diagonal crease.
3. Fold the narrow top corner down.
4. Bring the long edges to the middle.
5. Fold the bottom corner up.
6. Make three narrow pleats about 1 inch apart on the wide part of the paper. First crease the paper up; then crease the paper down about 1/4 inch away.
7. Carefully fold the paper in half.
8. Curve the shofar: Stretch each pleat at the double edge only, leaving the top of the paper pleated, to create your finished shofar.

Each fold symbolizes the many small changes we make through the teshuvah process in which we transform ourselves into better people.

*For pictures to go along with the directions, you can download the two PDFs on the sidebar (Directions for shofar parts 1 and 2)