Tashlikh

It's now Yom Kippur, so let me post about what we did on Rosh Hashanah. Mima's cousin Alice invited us to join her for the day and to go to services at her congregation, Rodef Shalom. Nina and I went for the tot service while Alice and Lorien prepared for the dinner Alice was hosting afterwards. This was a nice service with lots of singing. All of the kids were asked to come and sit on the floor in the front and Nina actually did it. Afterwards was the Tashlich service for the whole congregation.

Tashlikh is a nice custom. In my understanding, you go to a body of moving water (in Chicago we used Lake Michigan though I think a stream or river is more traditional). You bring with you bread crumbs. You mentally transfer to the bread crumbs your sins or, perhaps, anything about yourself that you'd like to cast away. You then throw these into the water where they are carried away from you. I've always enjoyed this.

At Rodef Shalom, they started with lots of singing in front of the Temple. I really enjoyed this because they were doing kind of random Jewish songs and there were a lot that I knew and hadn't sung in quite some time. Then people moved down to the pond on the grounds for the tossing bread crumbs part. So it wasn't really moving water and there is a big fence around the pond so most people didn't actually get their bread crumbs into the water. Still, it was fine. And people were very generous in sharing their bread crumbs.

I brought Nina down to the fence and wanted to explain what was happening. I don't think she's capable of sinning yet. I told her, "Think about things that you are sad about and attach them to the bread crumbs. When you throw the bread crumbs away, you don't need to be sad about them anymore." I don't know if that was exactly the right thing to say, but it's what I came up with.

She was quite enthusiastic about throwing the bread crumbs. I asked her afterwards what she had thought about. She said, "All of the dead governments". I checked with her and she had meant Presidents. We had been to the Lincoln Memorial a couple of times and past the Washington, Roosevelt, and Jefferson Memorials. I'm not entirely sure what she took away from those visits, but it was obviously something.