Tashlich

It’s the afternoon of the first day of Rosh Hashanah. I spent the morning in synagogue, I’ll spend most of tomorrow in synagogue, and I’m going to go back later this evening for the closing prayers. It sounds like a lot. Maybe it is a lot, but I’m there because I want to be.

I’m fortunate to be a member of a small-ish congregation. Over the years we’ve become like family with one another. Our Rabbi is both brilliant and deeply spiritual—it’s no easy thing to connect with the heart and the mind concurrently—and an all-around nice guy. He and his family aren’t separate from the rest of us, unapproachable as some religious leaders are. They’re part of us.

The high holy days are a journey, and although the journey through this season—from the month of Elul, to Rosh Hashanah, to Yom Kippur, to Sukkot, and finally to Simchat Torah—is a very personal and individual one, it’s a journey that we take together, and it’s highly charged with emotion.

But I digress. It’s the afternoon of the first day of Rosh Hashanah. There’s a ceremony that many of my fellow congregants are sharing together, but I live further away than most members and adding another there-and-back is a bit too much. So, I’m home.

I could just crash for a few hours. After a long morning, a nap might make me feel renewed. But instead, I gather up some crumbs from the sweet apple challah we had for breakfast, stick them in my pocket, and head to the boardwalk that runs along the shoreline of Lake Dora.

It’s a nice place to walk; the Florida flora and fauna induce contemplation.

I reach the gazebo that juts out over the water and I stop. I’m feeling the weight of my failings—the times and situations where I’ve failed others, where I’ve failed myself, where I’ve failed my God…my sins, if you will, my shortcomings, ways of behaving and relating that are either outlived or should never have been a part of me at all. My hand slides into my pocket and I pull out a sheet of paper, upon which special prayers are written.

I say them out loud, formally and reverently addressing my Creator, and then I find myself going deeper within myself and I’m talking to my Creator like a friend, my best friend Who knows me better than anyone, Who knows my whole heart, from Whom I can have no secrets, and I’m imploring this Mighty and Awesome Master of the Universe to work with me and help me rid myself of these shortcomings because I’m not sure that I have the strength to do it myself. And so I cry out; Turn to me and turn me, and I will be turned! Renew us and we will be renewed, as in the days of old.

And I reach into my other pocket with my other hand and pull out a handful of crumbs. With perfect faith that, with the help of the Master of the World, I can be repaired, I transfer all my negativity into that handful of crumbs, reach out my arm over the water, open my fingers, and cast them away. Just like the prophet Micah wrote, “And you will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.”

And somehow I walk away feeling lighter, with a jaunt in my step.

I have been renewed.