(Jewish Group) Just in time for Rosh Hashanah, a new reason to feel guilty

[Behind the Aegis]

My favorite Jewish food is borscht, my favorite Jewish holiday is Sukkot, and my favorite Jewish ritual is tashlich.

Maybe I need to rethink that last one.

Tashlich, which in Hebrew means “cast off,” is a New Year’s ritual during which Jews symbolically throw away their sins. Many communities, including mine, typically do so by tossing bread into a stream, river, ocean or pond — any body of flowing water.

But now, citing concerns over animal welfare and food waste, more and more people are calling for a change. Some congregations are replacing the bread with pebbles, wood chips or, following an Israeli custom, simply standing at the water and turning their pockets inside out.

Really? Et tu, tashlich?

more...

I have never participated in this custom or even remember it.

[hedda_foil]

1. Well, at least it's progress from heaping all your sins on a poor harmless goat and ...

...driving it out into the wilderness where the poor thing will probably get eaten by a wolf. Then, when the wolf next comes to terrorize the village, they wouldn't realize it was their own sins coming back to bite them.

[question everything]

2. An Israeli poem says:

And please, god, do not cast off all my sins to the dept of sea

Because the sea that you created on the second day of your work has its way:

It regurgitates back into the shore everything thrown into it.

Shana Tova