Tiny Tashlich, Shallow Water, Deep Cleanse

Sometimes we just do the best we can and everything turns out beautiful! This year's Rosh Hashana's new moon was just too busy to gather, so Juliet took her bread and phone to a streamside in Central Park. Debra climbed down the hill to the stream behind her house with bread and phone. Even tho there was barely any water in the stream, she could make tiny crumbs to float away. Taking turns, we cast off our regrets and bad habits of the past year with Juliet reciting the proper Tashlich prayer in Hebrew.

Brother Energy in the Red Tent!

We welcomed in the New Moon and the New Year by setting up our red tent in the woods at Isabella Freedman....

 

where we sang songs, shared stories...

rolled with our brothers like a pile of puppies...

patted out the mother rhythm on each others backs...

walked around Lake Miriam...

and joined the greater community for tashlich/casting our regrets and shortcomings into the water...

so that we can start the New Year refreshed, inspired, burden-free,

and enLIGHTened!

Heads up!

Of this new moon, Rachel wrote: It is Rosh Hashana, literally head of the year, in the Jewish Lunar calendar. One of the Rosh Hashana traditions is Tashlich, a casting away of crumbs into moving water, along with sins or feelings that we'd need washed away to start the new year.

Here is a Tashlich story to get in the spirit of the gathering, and perhaps encourage you have your own impromptu tashlich gatherings as the weather turns. Besides being a story of the digital age, this little essay also has some mom ideas to ponder - like Magda's clarity that behavior that wouldn't qualify for "sin" in most relationships was sinful in her relationship with her mom, and like the author's remark that he turns to his mom for religious guidance because it is easier than looking in the Torah and she speaks his language! I wish for the forgiveness to flow between mothers and daughters, even if I don't always FEEL it. I envision us tossing our collective crumbs in the Hollenbeck at the Sadeh and whatever feelings arise, so be it! ...

Some of the "crumbs" we tossed were the need to have things our own way, and the need to follow tradition in the same way every time.