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Tashlich Guide 5787
The ritual of Tashlich—casting bread into water while reflecting on the wrongdoings of the previous year—is a potent, tangible way to reset and recommit for the year ahead.
This Tashlich guide uses the four worlds of Kabbalah, the layers of reality our ancient mystics saw as integral to human existence, to engage with different forms of wrongdoing. Each page of this guide invites you to reflect on one world of wrongdoing, providing a Kavanah (intention), an excerpt from the high holiday liturgy, a responsive reading (to be split between individuals or groups), and an invitation to cast off our wrongdoings in the past year.
This ritual can be done alone, with family, in a havurah, or with a large group any time during the 10 days of Teshuvah between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
For nearly one thousand years, Jews have gathered on the banks of lakes, rivers, and oceans during the afternoon of Rosh Hashannah to perform Tashlich, the ritual of casting off. On this day, we meet the new year with pleas of forgiveness for our wrongdoings: intentional and unintentional, as individuals and as a collective, by deed and by complicity.
The ritual of Tashlich helps us cast off our mistakes from the past year so we may act more justly in the year to come. We do not perform Tashlich to forget and ignore the hurt we have caused.
Instead, we transform our wrongdoings from burning regret to illuminating guidance so we may better navigate our life path.
This Tashlich guide uses the four worlds of Kabbalah, the layers of reality our ancient mystics saw as integral to human existence.
Each world gives us a different opportunity for reflection. The first world, Assiyah (Action), is the harm we have caused through our direct actions. Yetzirah (Formation) is our wider complicity, and collective responsibility for human systems of harm and violence.
The third world B'riah (Creation) is the harm we have caused to our planet and the imbalances we have caused in the totality of life and creation. The fourth world Atzilut (Emanation) is healing our relationship with HaShem, divinity, and our own spirituality.
Each page of this guide invites you to reflect on one world of wrongdoing, providing a Kavanah (intention), an excerpt from the high holiday liturgy, a responsive reading (to be split between individuals or groups), and an invitation to cast off our wrongdoings in the past year. This ritual can be done alone, with family, in a havurah, or with a large group any time during the 10 days of Teshuvah between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
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