On Tashlich - 10/6/2024

Hello everyone, and thank you for coming to our community Tashlich where we are mourning the dead and committing ourselves to fighting for the living. This genocide has gone on for 364 days. 364 days of murder, destruction and horrors that truly defy words. 364 of our tax dollars funding genocide. 364 of mourning the dead and fighting for the living. 

On many days and in many actions, we lead with our rage. Today we are here to grieve, to mourn the hundreds of thousands of people who have been murdered by the Zionist entity with our government’s full backing. We mourn the mosques, churches, universities, fields, forests, homes, and roads that have been destroyed in Gaza, the West Bank and now Lebanon. We will never understand what it is to hold all of this grief. Each of these people was more than a number. They were a friend, a partner, a parent, a sibling or a child.

The places destroyed buildings and landscapes are more than stones, metal, wood, dirt and grass. They hold and held stories, memories, cultural importance and life. In Psalm 96, we read that the trees and the oceans all have their own song and our world is quieter now that these songs have been forcibly ended.  Instead, the hills, the vineyards, the forests, the cities all weep and cry out while much of the world either stands by. Either in complacence or complicity. 

As Jews of conscience, with every fiber of our being, we need to stand in solidarity with our Palestinian, Lebanese and Arab siblings who are facing escalating violence by the hands of Zionists. Zionists who use our religion and our name as a justification for their violence. And this is what brings us to this bridge today. We are here to mourn the dead and commit ourselves to fighting for the living. This is not something we can finish in an hour.

For those who may not know, Jews are observing the Yamim Nora-im, or the Days of Awe. These are the 10 days between Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. It is a time that is supposed to be contemplative, but joyous. We are commanded to start the year with sweetness and that feels impossible to do right now. Instead, I start the year heartbroken and trying to find a way through these holidays that adequately captures the sorrow.

I find myself not quite knowing how to engage in the process of Tishuva, which gets translated as repentance, but actually means to return. As Jews, we are supposed to commit ourselves to returning to ourselves, to our communities, and to God, for those of us who believe in one. 

You do not have to believe in God or even be Jewish to understand that there is no returning from this past year. There is no world where we can bring back all that Zionism has destroyed.  There is no world where we can unsee the evil that Zionism is capable of. I do not know how we can live in a world and share space, resources, and our lives with people who are complacent or go as far as to support genocide, occupation and aparthied. 

I am not sure that I will ever be able to do enough Tishuva to repair all of the destruction that has ensued over the past year or since the Nakba. But, we cannot be complacent ourselves. So we stand here together, as Jews and non-Jews alike. We cannot individually hold all of the grief and loss that Israel has created or have the power to stop the Zionist entity and their violence. I don’t know if we can even do it as a group here. But there are thousands, maybe even millions of us, across the planet who are holding this grief and are committed to fighting for a world where Palestine is free. We can organize, we can fight for an arms embargo, we can push Providence to divest from Israel Bonds. And before all of that, we must mourn and take responsibility for the violence being done in our name and with our tax dollars.

As part of the Jewish practice of commemorating the high holidays, we will move into our Tashlich ritual. These words are a combination of mine, from fellow organizers here in JVP-RI and from Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb.  Tashlich means, ‘You shall cast away’, which some  from the Hebrew root שלך shalach, to throw or fling. Tashlich is also related to the word shalechet, shedding. Some mark this day by tearing their clothes. This year we take action to shed complicity with the harms of occupation and apartheid. 

For Tashlich we gathered here, by a body of water so that we can symbolically cast away our complicity by throwing rocks, acorns, leaves.  We have the privilege of doing this while Palestinians are denied access to the sea and fresh water to drink.

Today, we set our intention to transform the harms of apartheid and occupation by pledging our ongoing solidarity to end these forms of oppression. 

Today we are casting off two types of sins: personal sins and collective sins, including the ongoing Israeli genocide against Palestinians and theft of Palestaiian land, and injustice within our local communities. We recommit ourselves to ending the occupation of Palestine, to support self determination for Palestinians and to fight for racial and economic justice.

Jewish tradition teaches us to pursue justice, and we face this obligation openly, freely, and sincerely. While it is false to claim that all Jews are guilty of the sins committed by the Israeli government, as Jews we acknowledge that these acts are being done in our name, and as Americans we know that our tax dollars fund Israeli bombs, torture devices, and miltary.

We choose to be responsible for all of these transgressions. We choose to carry them as a burden. And today, in this hour, we choose to cast them into the water.

We take up a renewed commitment to pursue justice. If we are not prepared to embrace this commitment, then our act of casting off is but an empty gesture. Let us not unburden ourselves of these sins—and of our responsibility for these injustices—today, unless we are prepared to burden ourselves again tomorrow.

Individual Casting Away of Sins

Take time for an internal accounting of your soul, your self, to see what transgressions you would like to cast away in preparing for this new year. You may think about what you want to cast off, what you hope to keep, and what you need to reclaim. You can think about different realms of your life, your political work, your community, your work or career, your relationships, your body and health, your visions and hopes for the year to come. You may throw stones/acorns/leaves into the water. You can also spend moments writing out the ways in which you are committing to returning to fighting for the living on our canvass. We will come back in a few minutes for a collective release.

Collective casting way of sins, call and response 

After we say each statement, please join us in saying “we take responsibility” while throwing a pebble into the water. You may wish to remain quiet for those transgressions where you feel directly targeted by that oppression.

• For allowing the ongoing genocide against Palestinians, and for not stopping our government from funding, enabling, and perpetuating it. We take responsibility
• For allowing racialized capitalism to prioritize profits over people and the natural world. We take responsibility
• For allowing fear, overwhelm, or indifference to keep us numb, passive, and silent in the face of white supremacy and racism. We take responsibility
• For benefitting from the occupation of stolen land--here on Turtle Island and in Palestine. We take responsibility
• For benefitting from colonialism and the enslavement of African and indigenous people. We take responsibility
• For not honoring all bodies as unique, essential, whole, and sacred; for the ways in which we allow ableism to get in the way of working towards collective liberation. We take responsibility
• For allowing our money to fund increased policing and militarization, mass incarceration, and the exploitation of natural resources. We take responsibility
• For not heeding the call for reparations for past and continued harms, from colonialism and slavery, to mass incarceration and police violence. We take responsibility
• For allowing violence against Palestinians to be committed in our names, including the recent attacks on Jenin, the continuous theft of Palestinian land and the destruction of Palestinian homes, olive groves, schools, and places of worship.We take responsibility
• For ignoring Palestinian civil society’s call for boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israeli oppression.We take responsibility
• For ignoring the repression and targeting of Palestinian artists, poets, educators, cultural workers, and activists. We take responsibility
• For not speaking up against anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia.We take responsibility
• For not challenging white supremacy within white Jewish communities, thereby erasing or marginalizing Jews of color, Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews. We take responsibility
• For allowing Jews to use claims of anti-Semitism to justify racism and violence. We take responsibility
• For not imagining a Judaism free from nationalism and white supremacy.We take responsibility
• For allowing shame to drive us to participate in Christian dominance and disconnect us from our rich traditions and histories. We take responsibility
• For the denial of access to traditional wells and springs and deliberate destruction of tens of thousands of olive and fruit bearing trees being done in the name of Jewish safety. We take responsibility