Tashlikh

A few feet from the newly rebuilt 35-W bridge, the air smells like autumn. Below where we stand on the all-but-abandoned people bridge, the Mississippi moves wordlessly resolute toward the sea. It is the day after Rosh Hashanah, and though I have never celebrated this Jewish New Year before, I have also never had a friend willing to let me tag along.

We are perched between the West & East Banks of the University of Minnesota to practice tashlikh. This tradition dates back to Abraham and Isaac, when a goat was sacrificed in place of Abraham’s only legitimate son. Tashlikh also is a variance on the Levitical custom of the entire community reciting their sins of the past year over a “scape goat” which was chased away into the desert bearing the guilt. In lieu of a goat, my friend and I have pieces of the bread which was broken for his Rosh Hashanah meal the evening before.

As Eddy reads a Hebrew poem and prayer, I concentrate on the regrettable things I have done in the past year. If this bread is to take away my sins, it should probably carry my pride and my lack of communication to those closest to me. I must be more generous in the coming year. I regret I haven’t used my talents to help more people. I regret that the War continues and I do so little, that nativism still poisons the lives of so many and I am quiet.

The bread spirals down to meet the muddy water. Eddy tells me that until Yom Kippur I am to engage in introspection and prayer, that I might not repeat those sins now bobbing below. A splash, a ripple, and the bread is gone.

I marvel that I have read the Old Testament in Christian circles many times over, and yet have never been so touched by this simple command to get rid of the old and purpose to do better. Maybe it was because it was in another language, maybe it was the power of a friend. Perhaps it was the changing leaves or the cold sunlight. Maybe it was that I felt like Abraham, a sojourner in a new land, seeing something for the first time.

Tags: 35-W, Abraham, autumn, Christian, East Bank, Hebrew, immigrant, Jewish, Mississippi, nativism, new year, Old Testament, Rosh Hashanah, scapegoat, sojourner, tashlikh, University of Minnesota, war, West Bank, Yom Kippur