Rabbi Daniel Siegel – Head of Jewish Life

Tasklikh castaways

The Rosh HaShanah custom of tashlikh, first introduced in the Medieval period, has gained renewed popularity in our time.

The practice of casting bread into the water to rid ourselves of sin, is often taken to mean acts of commission. What I did wrong.

So, I’d like to briefly share with you a thought on our acts of omission, not the wrong that we did but the right that we did not do.

On Yom Kippur we say the following words of the prophet Isaiah:

פרוס לרעב לחמך אז יבקע כשחר אורך

Share your bread with the hungry, then you light will break through as the dawn.

Your bread is more than the literal bread and the hungry are more than needing food.

You bread is that which sustains you and hunger is yearning for what keeps one alive.

We speak of kavvanot, our intentions for the New Year.

Someone we know is hungry, it could be for friendship, it could be for love, and it could be for happiness.

We have the bread, we can help sustain this person, we can be caring, we can be supportive and we can be giving.

The Hebrew words רעבות/re’eivut – hunger and ערבות/areivut – fellowship, being of the same root letters, intimate that the presence/absence of one is predicated on the absence/ presence of the other.

Let us, then, make a kavvanah for a shared New Year.

Let us commit to not omit those of us who are hungry and in need of our bread.