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SEPTEMBER 2, 2021 | The Jewish Home OCTOBER 29, 2015 | The Jewish Home
Life C ach
Just Get Rid of It By Rivki D. Rosenwald Esq., LMFT, CLC, SDS
C
an it really be that easy? Make a little pekeleh – or even easier, an imaginary one – toss it into the water, and this act has set you free! If it’s really that simple to get rid of our sins, then why not drop them in daily?! Why save the whole bundle and only throw them out once a year? My mom’s house sits on a pond. She used to have a cute sign on the door which read, “We live by the lake. Drop in!” Adorable double meaning! Of course, knowing my mom, she meant that she was looking forward to having visitors. But the truth is, she’d have had no problem generously letting people use her lake to unburden themselves. Why have people dragging around the weight of their unpleasant actions and decisions with them all year when they could just toss them overboard?! Then again, the water level was kind of high already in that pond. Our basement would struggle against the pond trying to break in pretty often, especially after a gezunta rain. So could you imagine what a flood we’d have created if every-
one was tossing their daily misdeeds into our little stream? We’d have wound up with a giant, indoor “sinning” pool! Sure, you could say you might call it a cheap way to get an indoor swimming area. But, who’d want to bathe in other people’s sorrows?! The truth is we can do it all year
something to get our attention. Confronting and wrapping up our misdeeds and letting them float down the river lets us feel newly, completely cleansed. We should really see how G-d wants us to feel we have a right to be unburdened by past mistakes and history.
We’d have wound up with a giant, indoor “sinning” pool!
at home easily. You know, access our own mini-cleansing; we could just go inside and flush our sins right down the toilet. I assume that this concept of doing it once a year it outside is to completely get them out of our houses all together. Or more accurately, it’s some important symbolic message. This idea of once a year, on a designated holiday, must be communicating
Though we do it in a big way on Rosh Hashana, the message is clear from all the vast waters the Creator has provided: oceans, and seas, and endless bodies of water, in which we can drown, again and again, our misdeeds. We do not need to leave them fishing around, irritatingly, inside of us. We seem to get trapped in the past, or bad habits form. Sometimes, we are burdened by guilt, or
feel we have let too much time pass, or complacency just sets in. In other words, somehow, we feel we are in over our heads. Rosh Hashana says no! You and your actions can be separated. You can leave them to drown in deep waters while you emerge refreshed on the banks of the river…. Free to run carefree on the shore. Free to embrace new experiences with no weighty past pulling you down. Free to make new choices and follow new paths. That’s the gift of Tashlich. We can emerge with a smile and march on. Get ready for a big throwaway of that package of burdensome behaviors. And keep remembering all year through that unburdening and starting anew is always available to you. A gut, gebenched yur to you all. “A good blessed year,” as my mom would echo from her mom.
Rivki Rosenwald is a certified relationship counselor, and career and life coach. She can be contacted at 917-7052004 or rivki@rosenwalds.com.
