MOURN THE DEAD, FIGHT FOR THE LIVING
A public ritual for 5785 High Holy Days season to channel grief into action to stop a genocide.
Join us for a Tashlich ritual at Freedom Park, to cast off the horrors of the past year, and to take action together to end the genocide.
All are welcome. Please wear white.
How to Have Hard Conversations during the High Holidays
Following the ritual, we will be leading a workshop on having hard conversations during the High Holidays. As Jews for Palestinian freedom, we take seriously our modest but important role. Part of this responsibility includes organizing our community to take on the Jewish Zionist institutions (from Federations to local synagogues) that provide not just the material support for Israeli apartheid and the oppression of the Palestinian people–but also provide moral cover for colonialism and genocide. This work is relational and happens one conversation at a time. You will learn about how to incorporate the framework of Teshuvah to forgive those in our communities who have done nothing to stop the genocide on Gaza, in order to organize them towards justice in the future.
WHAT IS TASHLICH?
Tashlich (you shall cast away), from שלך (shalach, to throw or fling) is also related to shalechet, shedding. This casting off comes at the New Year, during the period of Teshuvah, when we turn to look within ourselves, individually and collectively, as a way to re-commit to being our better selves.
It is important that the ritual “casting off” of Tashlich is action done both as individuals and as a collective so that we can help each to recognize, repent, reject, and then begin to repair the harm done in our name. This “casting off” lays the foundation for a commitment to collective action now and in the new year. The “casting off” is only complete when it leads to active repair. This year casting away our transgressions requires casting away our complicity in the genocide the Israeli government is perpetrating against the Palestinian people.
Tashlich is a minhag, a tradition that offers a way to come together across the spectrum of Jewishness - People who are secular or cultural Jews, as well as people who find connection with prayer and/or religious observance all resonate with this practice. It is practiced by people gathered by a body of water (the seashore, a stream, or a river) to symbolize atonement and purification. In places where there is no nearby body of water, Jewish communities prepare a special cistern ahead of time to carry out the custom.
“Many of our organizations and much of our work organizing for a transformed world can at times become permeated with guilt and shame. There is so much work to be done and no one person or group can ever do it all. But through the ritual of collective tashlich we can transform our individual burdens into collective responsibility. When we come together to name the harms of the Israeli occupation, settler colonialism on Turtle Island, racism and white supremacy, mass incarceration and policing, climate degradation and wealth hoarding, it becomes clear that none of us can possibly hold all of this on our own. We do collective tashlich to take collective responsibility for the overwhelming hurt and harm in our world. We commit together to working to avoid the practices, patterns and worldviews that constrict and harm. We publicly commit to, in the new year, striving lovingly to practice something different.”
For Times Such As These, by Rabbis Ariana Katz and Jessica Rosenberg