The Adams Street Shul

Of all the beautiful rituals and minhagim of Rosh HaShana, my favorite is Tashlich, which derives from the Hebrew word meaning “to cast.”   Although not mentioned in the Talmud, the ritual of Tashlich, or casting away our sins, is full of personal spiritual meaning and significance. 

For my family and me, Tashlich has come to be more than a time for reflection.  It is a time for the whole family to walk from my Mom’s home where we have the holiday meal to the Old Stonebridge that runs part way across the Sudbury River in Wayland.  I say “runs part way across” because the bridge abruptly ends midway across the river.  It is now a monument, having long been replaced by a modern bridge that sits a few hundred meters parallel to it.  The river has simply grown too wide for the old bridge. 

And so, each year the Cantor family and their friends assemble on this bridge with a machzor and, after reciting the appropriate verses, remark on the depth of the river or rapidity of the current that year.  I am always struck by the historical connection – not only to the ritual, but to the bridge itself.  The bridge, it turns out, played a minor but significant role in the American Revolution, having served as part of the route which brought General Henry Knox, on orders from General Washington, from Ft. Ticonderoga to Boston in January 1775.  History buffs will note that it was this trek, in which Knox shlepped fifty-nine cannons across three hundred miles in fifty-six days by sled (in the middle of the winter!), which proved to be a key factor that helped the Americans repel the British from Boston. 

So much for that note of American history.  The real significance of Tashlich for me is the connection of the old and the new: old, not just in terms of American history but the continuity this ritual has in Jewish history that has origins going back as far as the book of the Prophet Nehemiah (8:1); new, in terms of being able to share this in the company of my family and my children as we welcome in a new Jewish year. 

On behalf of my family, I wish you all a L’shana Tova and a Happy, Healthy, and Sweet New Year.

--- Steve Cantor , President