Tashlich
I’ve been thinking about Tashlich, the practice of standing at a river on Rosh Hashanah and casting away our sins. What exactly are we casting out?
Many of us already spend a lot of time wanting to cast out parts of ourselves, to get rid of what we dislike or don’t want to feel. And I think that Tashlich has something to say about that, both about what we should cast out and also maybe about what we should not cast out.
So the root of the word Tashlich is שלך (shalakh), to throw or cast out, with a kof, as distinct from the more common root שלח (also shalakh) with a khet meaning to send. And if we look at the first time this “cast out” root is used in the Torah, we find a pretty clear example of what not to cast out.
Hagar and What Not To Cast Out
That first instance of this shalakh verb is, by good fortune or perhaps synchronicity, also a Rosh Hashanah story, the story of Hagar in the desert with Yishmael. Hagar and her young son run out of water. What does she do? Vatashleikh et hayeled (Genesis 21:15) She casts aside the crying boy under one of the bushes and then she goes and sits some distance away in order not to see his suffering. Wow. If that is not a great description of what we do with our unwanted feelings and parts, I don’t know what is. Most of us have just such a crying little child inside us, desperately thirsty for love and attention. What do we do with this child? Like Hagar, we do Tashlich. We cast the child aside, tucked away under some bush, and then we leave, we turn away, we abandon the child in their pain because, like Hagar, we can’t bear to feel it.
Now you might not be aware of this child inside you, but perhaps you are aware of the times when you feel the poking through of some of her emotions, perhaps a sudden onslaught of intense vulnerability, feeling needy, empty, lonely, abandoned, hurt, small, helpless, hopeless, disconnected, worthless or sad. What is our first reaction to these feelings? Like Hagar, we do Tashlikh, we cast them under a bush and run as fast as we can in the other direction, perhaps towards work or our phones or some other distraction or escape. Maybe you can sense into your version of this pattern, the rising of the ache, the neediness, the hurt inside, and then, very quickly, the turning away, the minimizing, the denial, the fix, the distraction, whatever it is, all fundamentally an abandonment of that crying child.
Instead – Hold Onto Him
This is not the Tashlikh that God wants from us. An angel calls to Hagar and says – arise and lift up the child, vehahaziki et yadekh bo, and hold onto him with your hand (Genesis 21:18). Hahaziki, from hazak, strong. Hold onto him tight, strong, steadfastly. This is the opposite motion of Tashlikh, of casting aside. In the one, there is a pushing away, and in the other, a drawing close, a holding fast, an embrace, your arms wrapped around yourself and your precious inner child, not letting go. Tashlikh – casting away – is not what God wants from us here, but a holding on, a loving commitment to that hurt crying child inside us.
Divine Embrace of Outcasts
Indeed, in Parashat Nitzavim, which is always read just before Rosh Hashanah, the teshuvah process is described as one not of letting go, but on the contrary, as one of divine embrace. “Even if your outcasts are at the ends of the world,” the Torah says, “from there God will gather you in, from there God will fetch you (Deuteronomy 30:4).” From there, sham, from the place behind the bushes where Hagar cast Yishmael, ba’asher hu sham (Genesis 21:18), from there, far away, in that exile, God will bring you home, gather you in and embrace you. We do the work of God when we gather in our own outcast parts, bringing them from sham, out there, at a distance, where we have cast them, to right here, home, inside us. No matter how far or for how long we have banished them, we welcome them home now. Maybe you can feel that motion of gathering in, opening your two arms like a doorway to welcome your own outcast parts home inside you, seeing them come, a line of sad little beggars, beckoning them in, no longer doing Tashlikh with them, casting them aside, but instead drawing them in, embracing them.
Returning to God and Our Own Inner Well
This teshuvah, this return, when we welcome home our exiles, is always also a return to God inside us. The two are linked, the return of our young outcasts and the return of our connection to God. It’s like the young children inside us hold the key to our divinity, the key to our soul. That’s how it worked for Hagar, too. After the angel tells her to go and hold on to that child, God opens her eyes and she sees the well, she sees, perhaps, her own well of never ending fresh water and love and energy, she sees that she does have a connection to a source that can provide all that she and her child need. We learn about this resource inside us – this deep wellspring – when we begin to turn towards the pain of our inner children. We discover, as we turn towards them, unknown and untapped resources to hold them and love them. Because they need that from us – a well of deep love – we begin to see it in ourselves, to find that we do have such a well. It is precisely through our exiled parts’ great neediness that we discover our connection to a vast source that can provide what they need, what they need now and what they have always needed.
Letting Your Inner Child Take You There
I invite you to spend a moment sensing into that well inside you, allowing the needs of your inner children to take you there, imagining a child, like Yishmael, sitting under a bush, thirsty for attention and crying, feeling lonely and abandoned in his pain, imagining your own inner child that way, and feeling how that draws out in you a deep well of love and care and compassion that perhaps you were not entirely aware of inside you. Maybe you can sense the otherworldly nature of this well inside you and offer some of its waters to that child, letting her drink from it till she is satiated, letting her feel your love and companionship and embrace. She is not alone.
Now We Can Do Tashlich
From this place of holding, maybe now we can do some Tashlich. We can stand by the river together with our young child, steadfastly holding her hand, and ask her if there is anything she would like to release into the waters. We are not casting her out as Hagar did and as we are habituated to do. Tashlikh is not for the casting out of people, even the little people parts inside us. It is for the casting out of hatot, normally translated as sins but which literally means places where we missed the mark, false beliefs perhaps, ways of thinking and being that have led us astray, burdens that we carry that confuse and mislead us and weigh us down, preventing us from growing as we are meant to.
And so maybe you can turn now to your inner child standing there by your side, her little hand in your bigger one, the well in your belly continually offering her a sense of connection and care, turning to her from this place of holding, and gently asking if there is anything she would like to release into the river. Perhaps during all that time that she was cast out inside you, hiding under the bush, perhaps she developed a belief that she was unlovable or worthless, or perhaps she was terribly afraid or despairing or deeply lonely. Maybe she wants to release some of that sense of worthlessness or loneliness or insecurity, or maybe some of the fear or the pain. Just being with her and letting what wants to release, release, even a tiny bit. Vetashlikh bemetzulot yam – you will cast it into the depths of the sea (Micah 7:19, part of Tashlich). Maybe what she needs to release is quite heavy and so it does sink, deep, deep into the waters. She can stand with you and watch it sink until it can no longer be seen in the river or felt inside her.
Not Us, But God
This may be hard to do right away. We don’t really control this process. It is a process of unfolding grace. When we stand at Tashlich, we actually don’t speak of our own act of casting away, but of God’s. Vetashlikh refers to God, not to us. We say with confidence that God will cast away our sins into the depths of the waters. And so, we stand with our little child and ask for that process to happen, making room for a release to spontaneously and effortlessly take place. Perhaps you can turn towards God and request a release of something that you and your inner child have been holding onto for a very long time, just surrendering to whatever wants to happen, being like the water, letting it flow out of you and her as it will, in its own time.
Releasing Our Casting Away Tendency
And as we stand there at Tashlikh, perhaps there is something else we need to release in order to learn to be steadfast with ourselves and with the young ones inside. Because we have been so habituated to abandon ourselves. Perhaps what needs casting out is this very habit of turning away from ourselves, this very habit of casting parts of us out. Maybe somewhere along the line, we have taken on a belief that there is something wrong with self love, that turning towards ourselves is self centered and narcissistic, the biggest sin of all, and it is this belief itself that needs releasing in order for us to heal. Here we stand at the river with the angel’s message to Hagar ringing in our ears – hahaziki et yadekh bo, hold steadfastly onto your child, embrace that child, commit to your own mattering and care. Maybe with the power of that divine message of self steadfastness, you can have the clarity and courage to release what stops you from turning towards yourself, letting that internalized negative messaging roll off you into the river, watching it sink and float off.
Hahaziki et yadekh bo. Stay steadfast with yourself. Turn again now towards that little child standing next to you and embrace her, giving thanks for this return, her return to you, your return to your own fullness and solidness, and your return, too, to the well that even at this moment you can feel overflowing with love not just inside you, but also flowing out of you far and wide. It is a be’er mayim hayim, a well of living water that, once tapped, can sustain us all. We send its loving water out into the world to do its healing, redemptive work this year, all the while still holding our little child’s hand, never letting go, doing it together. Hahaziki et yadekh bo. Not casting her out, staying with her.
Image by skalekar1992 from Pixabay
