For centuries on Rosh Hashanah, even though many rabbis have opposed the ritual as too magical, Jews have walked from their synagogues to nearby streams to cast bread crumbs into the water. Perhaps the real magic has come from moving from the confined, wordy environment of the synagogue to the fresh air and swirling water of the outdoor stream—eco-Judaism in its most embodied form.

Ellen Bernstein, former river guide, founder of eco-Judaism, author of the first widely-used environmental Tu B'Shvat Haggadah, recent author of The Splendor of Creation, and founder of Shomrei Adamah, teaches that adding nutrients such as bread crumbs to the water
is actually environmentally harmful, and that even if the additions from Tashlich are few, they condition us not to care. A substitute would remind us to care.

In recognition of this teaching, we have encouraged our Rosh Hashanah congregants to throw nearby pebbles into the stream so that they do not disturb its nutrient balance.

In a spiritual translation of this same eco-wisdom, we also encourage people to think of transforming their misdeeds, not throwing them away. This fits the way the word Tashlich is used in the Tanakh. For example, aside from the Micah phrase that gives Tashlich its
name, we encounter Tashlich twice in the High Holy Days readings: When Hagar and Ishmael are on the verge of death, she “tashlich” Ishmael under a bush in the wilderness, not to rid herself of him but to transform him. God hears and they are saved. In the Yom Kippur
reading of Jonah, the reluctant prophet cries out that God has “tashlich” Jonah into the sea—not to get rid of him but to transform him as well. He too is saved.

If we were to get rid of our misdeeds by casting them into the water, we would be sending them downstream to pollute the consciousness of others. There is no “away” for our misdeeds, just as there is no “away” for our bread crumbs.

Instead, we need a kind of spiritual ecology for our misdeeds. So we define Tashlich as more about rebirth than getting rid of something. We invite people to focus first on the sparks of life energy imprisoned in these pebbles or misdeeds—sparks surrounded by husks or shells of alienation. Then we ask them to discern the particular spark of life or energy that has been distorted into a misdeed, to visualize the best use of that energy, and to connect it to nurturing new life, new peace, new justice, and new richness of spiritual experience.

We ask participants to focus on rebirthing the energy within the misdeed through immersion in the water, plunging it into a mikvah where it can be reborn, and bringing it back into themselves where it can be reawakened.

Rabbi Phyllis Berman is founder and director of the Riverside Language Program. Rabbi Arthur Waskow is director of the Shalom Center and author of Down-to-Earth Judaism. Rabbi Berman and Rabbi Waskow co-authored A Time for Every Purpose Under Heaven: The Jewish Life-Spiral as a Spiritual Path.