Our family celebrated Rosh Hashanah this month. This year, we had a smaller celebration than usual, but it was nice to gather with friends outside, light candles, and wish each other a sweet New Year with apples and honey. I didn't grow up celebrating Jewish New Year, but since Joel and I have been together, we've celebrated most Jewish holidays.
One aspect of the holiday that was new to me this year was Tashlikh. Joel mentioned that he wanted to bring bread to the river for Tashlikh when we went for a walk the other day with my mother and sister-in-law. Tashlikh, is a ritual where you throw bread crumbs into a moving body of water. As far as I understand it, each crumb represents casting off a sin from the previous year and a clean start. Although neither of us are very religious, tashlikh was more meaningful to me than I would have thought.
There's something about taking time to reflect on moments in the past year when you've missed the mark in some way, and then tossing the memory of the moment into the flow of the water that does feel like absolution in some way. Watching the river, lots of little ways I've missed the mark came to mind, ranging from mindless scrolling on my phone around Avi to words spoken too quickly or harshly to others. Bringing these to mind didn't make me feel guilty. As I tossed the pebbles (we forgot the bread in the car), I felt human. The water could hold my mistakes, and the river kept flowing.
Something about that moment, kneeling next to Avi and tossing pebbles into the water, made me feel so grateful for my family and having incredible access to nature here in Colorado. I find myself holding on to that feeling in the midst of lots of changes at work and motivated to try and do a little better.
Beautiful tradition. I had never heard of it before! It's lovely. My boys attend a Catholic school, although we are kind of a mix between Catholic (my husband, though pretty non-religious) and Lutheran (how I was raised, though I attended Catholic mass during college and the boys were baptized Catholic.) However, we now go to a Lutheran church when we go. Anyway! My boys both have Religion class at school, and the other day my 5th grader was studying for a test. He had a chart comparing Judaism, Christianity and Islam in many ways (i.e. the name of each's holy book, founding cities, what do you call the clergy man/woman, beliefs on x,y,z, etc. etc.) I love that they are teaching them about the different religions, and it made me realize that I really know very little about the history or teachings of other religions, even those that are common here in the U.S. (besides Christianity)! I didn't actually know everything that was on the 5th grade chart. Oops. It inspired me to maybe look into reading more about them, broadening my horizons a bit more. Sorry for the ramble! :)
ReplyDeleteI agree, we don't always learn about other faith traditions. I'm Unitarian now, but I love incorporating many of the Jewish traditions that are important to Joel. We're still figuring out exactly all the ways we want to incorporate religious traditions into our interfaith home, but I'd like to learn more about different religious traditions as well. Let me know if you find any good books or memoirs about different religions. I'd be curious to check them out too!
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