Beachgoers wore puzzled looks while watching more than 25 children and parents throwing bread into the ocean, without a seagull in sight.
Just before noon on Sunday, the group made the trip from Temple Emanu-El to the Atlantic to cast the bread during a special children’s service for Tashlikh, which means “casting off.” Most sang along the way while remembering sins from the past year.
The service is held on the second day of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and is part of a fresh start for the year.
Cantor Mitchell Martin read scripture before children divided the bread that symbolizes sins to be absorbed by the ocean, never to come back.
I had never heard of this until now.
It brings to mind a couple of Biblical passages (the latter more applicable to Yom Kippur, coming up shortly):
“Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days.” Ecclesiastes 11:1, KJV.
“And it is in the fulfilment of the will of God that we have been purified by the sacrifice, once and for all, of the body of Jesus Christ. Every other priest stands day after day at his ministrations, and offers the same sacrifices over and over again–sacrifices that can never take sins away. But, this priest, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins, which should serve for all time, ‘took his seat at the right hand of God,’ and has since then been waiting ‘for his enemies to be put as a stool for his feet.’” Hebrews 10:10-13, TCNT.
Chet Aero Marine 