The Fates of Dead Leaves that Fall Into Streams
by Miriam Saperstein
Each fall, deciduous trees growing beside rivers and streams cast off their leaves into adjacent bodies of water. As they are decomposed, digested, and torn these leaves become the basis of complex webs of relationships between insects, microorganisms, birds, fish, water, and ultimately all life on Earth.
Also each fall, Jewish people cast off their sins into a living body of water as part of the repentance process. This process is enacted within its own web of relationships—between people and between people and g!d.
This is a syllabus designed to help you learn about each process in an effort to understand what the ecological and the ritual systems can reveal about each other. I encourage you to honor and pay attention to your own frames of reference in this journey. How do the cultural, spiritual, relational, material, social, and other frameworks that you move through the world with influence how you understand these ecological and religious systems? Take notes, record the questions that emerge, and be playful with the exercises, trying on new ways of learning and leaving out what doesn’t work for you right now.
What happens when a leaf falls into a stream?
Ahead of winter, deciduous trees cast off their leaves in an active process that helps conserve moisture while the ground is frozen. Some of these trees are near rivers and streams, an area known as the riparian zone. For leaves that fall into the water, what happens next?
A simplified version1:
- Leaf falls into water.
- Some sugars seep out and float downstream.
- Fungi and bacteria start to break the leaf into smaller pieces, feeding on those nutrients.
- Small gnats start eating the smaller pieces.
- Shredder insects come and tear apart the bigger pieces, leaving a mess of small crumbs.
- Collector/Gatherer insects eat the crumbs that fall to the streambed/use them for shelter.
- The collectors leave behind particles which are filtered from the water by filter feeders.
- Scrapers/grazers eat algae that forms as a by-product of this process.
- Predators eat the insects/invertebrates that each the leaf litter.
Try it out: Write a poem in which each stanza contains something left behind in the previous stanza.2
Why study this process?
This syllabus takes its name from a 1971 scientific study by Narinder Kaushik and Noel Hynes, tracking how quickly leaves decay in water in various temperatures and circumstances. This process takes a long time, and has many variables.
In 2019, ecologist Jane C. Marks revisited the earlier study, this time, asking different questions. Ecologists study leaves in streams to replicate or influence ecological processes for applications in fisheries management, water quality management, restoration projects, and climate science.3 Their goals influence how they conduct their research and what questions they ask. Instead of trying to figure out how fast this process could go, Marks wanted to know what conditions allowed carbon to be assimilated and what conditions led to carbon dioxide getting released into the atmosphere.
In her research, Marks learned the importance of variety within tree communities in riparian zones for biodiversity and reducing CO2 output. Forest monocultures containing a single tree species have less variation in when trees drop their leaves, and how those leaves decay. When a riparian community is made up solely of a single invasive species, those leaves can decay quickly at the same time. The microbes who conduct the first round of carbon breakdown for leaves are not kept in check by other organisms, and their microbial respiration leads to the majority of carbon releasing into the atmosphere as CO2.
However, when a tree community consists of different species, those different species’ leaves decay at different paces. Different trees drop their leaves at different times and each species’ leaves break down at a different rate, leading to a “staggered food supply,” meaning a wide variety of insects, fish, birds, and other organisms have food available at their specific lifecycle moments. Because more of the leaves are used by a broader community of organisms, most of the carbon from the fallen leaves ends up “assimilating” instead of entering the atmosphere as CO2. When eaten by aquatic invertebrates who then get eaten by other creatures, the carbon stays in the stream longer and is passed on to higher trophic levels (Marks 2019).
Transforming Sin
What is “sin” in a Jewish context?
In a Jewish context, a sin or wrongdoing is called a chet, which literally means “to go astray” or “to miss the mark,” like when an arrow misses a target. Missing the mark is an inevitable part of life, and thus we have a process for repentance, called t’shuvah, which means “return.” Through t’shuvah, we acknowledge how we’ve gone astray, and put in the work to make the mark next time. We make the mark when we honor our obligations to each other and to g!d. Thus, there are two types of “sin”: sins between a person and other people, and sins between a person and g!d. T’shuvah requires us to go before g!d and ask for forgiveness. However, in the case of a chet between people, one must make amends with their fellow humans before going to g!d for forgiveness.
I believe that t’shuvah also applies between a person and the forests, waterways, insects, stones, and other life-forces of the beyond-human world.
Try it out: Make a list—what are our obligations to our fellow beyond-human beings? Now freewrite, draw a picture, or move your body to try and answer: what would t’shuvah entail to address the ways we “miss the mark” in those relationships?
How to Make Amends
T’shuvah is a spiraling and multi-part process that can be done at any time of year and that can start with any stage in the process. However, the new year is a special time for doing t’shuvah, as it coincides with rich communal ritual that can accompany one’s interpersonal process.
Jewish new year ritual begins in Av, the last month of the Jewish calendar, which comes around in late summer. During this time, we ramp up our penitential prayers, reflecting on the vows we did not keep in the previous year, and the ways we caused harm. This process intensifies during the Days of Awe, which begin with the new year’s celebration, Rosh Hashanah, and culminates on the tenth day, Yom Kippur, when we go before g!d and pray that our repentance has been enough.
What is Tashlich?
Tashlich literally meaning “cast-off,” is one of the rituals that helps us mark where we are with our t’shuvah. To perform tashlich, we find our way to a river and release the sins of the past year, tossing them as crumbs into the water. This ritual can clarify what we need to do next, and provides an opportunity to ask for support from g!d and each other.
How to do Tashlich
The bare bones of the ritual are as follows:
- Find your way to a flowing body of water like a river or stream (or as Greenberg says, go where “a living body of water is within sight (328)”). It’s great if the flowing body has fish.
- Recite the last three verses of the book of Micah. (People say various other psalms or contemporary texts as well, depending on their custom.)
Micah 7:18-204 (Transliteration)
מִי־אֵ֣ל כָּמ֗וֹךָ נֹשֵׂ֤א עָוֹן֙ וְעֹבֵ֣ר עַל־פֶּ֔שַׁע לִשְׁאֵרִ֖ית נַחֲלָת֑וֹ לֹֽא־הֶחֱזִ֤יק לָעַד֙ אַפּ֔וֹ כִּֽי־חָפֵ֥ץ חֶ֖סֶד הֽוּא׃
Who is a God like You,
Forgiving iniquity
And remitting transgression—
Not staying angry forever
Toward the remnant of Your own people,
Because You love graciousness!
יָשׁוּב יְרַחֲמֵנוּ יִכְבֹּשׁ עֲוֹנֹתֵינוּ וְתַשְׁלִיךְ בִּמְצֻלוֹת יָם כָּל־חַטֹּאותָם׃
[God] will take us back in love,
Quashing our iniquities.
You will cast5 all our sins
Into the depths of the sea.
תִּתֵּ֤ן אֱמֶת֙ לְיַֽעֲקֹ֔ב חֶ֖סֶד לְאַבְרָהָ֑ם אֲשֶׁר־נִשְׁבַּ֥עְתָּ לַאֲבֹתֵ֖ינוּ מִ֥ימֵי קֶֽדֶם׃
You will keep faith with Jacob,
Loyalty to Abraham,
As You promised on oath to our fathers
In days gone by.
- Bind your sins to physical matter which you will toss into the river. People often use bread to represent sins, but this is very dangerous to birds’ digestive systems. Another custom is to shake out your pockets, but as a lot of clothing is made with plastic, your pocket lint might not be welcome in the water. Instead, I recommend you gather some dirt, stones, or leaves that are already part of the stream-specific ecosystem with the intention of them being a representation of your sins. If you wear tzitzit, you can shake out those at this time.
- Cast off the dirt/stones/leaves into the water. What does it feel like to let go? If you are able to let go a little bit, does this make some room for transformation? To make amends?
Here are a few variations of the tashlich ritual, of which there are many iterations. How does each version land for you? What does it prioritize/obscure? What do you plan to integrate into your own practice?
Jewish Voice for Peace members created a tashlich ritual designed to reflect and recommit to justice-based work.
This guide from 18 Doors is oriented towards interfaith families and provides a short ritual that can be shared with children.
Chabad’s guide has some of the traditional explanations for tashlich.
This wikiHow breaks it down, step by step.
This article also gets into some variations, their histories, and ritual explanations.
In Blu Greenberg’s How to Run a Traditional Jewish Household she gives a great rundown of the suite of high holiday rituals, including details such as the prevalence of “tashlich couples.”
When to do Tashlich
The tashlich ritual can be done anytime after the afternoon services on the first day of Rosh Hashanah. This year, day one of Rosh Hashanah coincides with Shabbat, during which certain activities are prohibited, so this year, tashlich can be done starting after afternoon services on the second day of Rosh Hashanah. Tashlich can be performed until the last day of Sukkot, a harvest holiday later in the month.
The Fates of Past Sins that Fall into Streams
Much like leaves falling from trees, throwing sins into the water is only one part of a longer process. What happens after the sins reach the water? Wendy Elisheva Somerson pushes back against the idea that we are polluting the water with our sins, writing, “What we ‘cast’ into the water are our own prejudices, which we can think of as a husk around our best selves. We want the water to soak off the husks, revive the holy part of ourselves, which we can think of as a seed, and help us recommit to something bigger than ourselves.” Instead of throwing away sins to be trouble for someone else downstream, “we are transforming their energy in order to renew our commitment to the struggle for justice.” Water is a transformative force for leaves and sins, facilitating a breakdown of each into its constituent parts. Separated from our shame and regret, the “inclination” or “impulse to hurt” (Ruttenberg 2022) can be transformed into life-giving impulses. Leaves, when part of a thriving ecosystem, don’t release a dangerous amount of CO2 but rather, their carbon becomes food for fish, shelter for insects, and the basis for complex biodiversity.
Performing this ritual once a year without the rest of the day-to-day work of t’shuvah doesn’t do much. However, when part of a larger process, tashlich can be a moving occasion, one that helps us somatically and spiritually integrate the lessons of our repentance process. Watching sins go downstream can help us let go of old patterns, allowing us to transform our actions in the coming year.6
Try it out: A month out from the new year, Jews begin gathering to recite psalms and blow the shofar (ram’s horn). What texts and sounds do you return to in times of transformation?
The Fates of Ancient Patriarchs Who Go Into Streams
Every Rosh Hashanah, Jewish people return to a text that describes a deep relational fissure. The Torah reading for Rosh Hashanah afternoon recounts the story of the Akeida, in which Abraham promises to sacrifice his son Isaac to g!d. At the last moment an angel cries out, halting the knife, and Isaac lives. It was only a test. Abraham sacrifices a ram, created for this very moment, securing his covenant with g!d and his place as patriarch of the Jewish people.
Soon after reading this Biblical narrative, afternoon services wrap up, and that is a popular time to perform tashlich. The Kitzur Shulchan Arukh, an Ashkenazi rabbinic commentary from the 19th century, tries to forge a connection between these two afternoon activities. In this text, Rabbi Shlomo Ganzfried recounts:
After the Minchah service you should go to a river [or stream] (to recall the merit of the Akeidah, [the binding of Yitzchak] for the Midrash relates that when our Father Avraham went to the Akeidah with his son Yitzchak, Satan transformed himself into a river to deter him. But our Father Avraham, peace be upon him, walked into the river until [the water reached] his neck and said, “Deliver me, O God, for the waters have reached until my soul (Psalm 69:2).” (Kitzur Shulchan Arukh 129:21)
What is happening here? Basically, Rabbi Ganzfried is giving a reason for why tashlich is performed by a river or stream. The stream reminds us of the merit of the Akeida, the story we have just read prior to performing tashlich. Growing up, I always learned that the meritorious action was when Abraham picked up the knife, showing his willingness to kill his son. Because of the merit of this action, Abraham’s descendants become the Jewish people. However, this commentary clarifies that the action that merits such a peoplehood is actually something that happens earlier, on the way to the mountain where Abraham picked up the knife.
A midrash is a rabbinic commentary that fills in gaps within biblical narratives, often answering a question or proving a point the rabbis want to make. In this case, there is no mention of this river scene in the biblical text, but it is treated as canonical. The midrash says that Satan transforms himself into a river, trying to make Abraham turn back from his journey to sacrifice his son. The key meritorious action of Abraham is that he endangered his own life in order to proceed with his task. In this version, it’s not his willingness to sacrifice his son, but his willingness to sacrifice himself in order to fulfill g!d’s commands.
This midrash seems to be concerned with two things: One, why is the stream an important part of tashlich? And two, if Abraham is so righteous, how do we reconcile that he is known for his willingness to violate his relationship with his “favorite” (according to Jewish tradition) son? Is this the model for righteousness that we should aspire to—anything for the sake of g!d and legacy, at the expense of the wellbeing of the people we have made a social contract with to care for? This seems to go against the principles of t’shuvah, in which we cannot repair our relationship to g!d without first tending to our intra-human responsibilities.
And further, what does it mean for us to throw our sins into a river that reminds us of Satan? Is this an ongoing test? To pass the test, maybe we can’t be lulled into thinking that Satan will wash away our sins without our legitimate reckoning with g!d. If we are not willing to take personal risk, and to have some faith in the potential of transformation, then Satan will cycle the harm right back to us. A river reminds us that what we send out comes back.
What risks can you take for the sake of transformation? What risks are communal and which are personal?
“Such Letting Go”
What about when we can’t tend to our intra-human responsibilities? People die, harm can be so destructive that contact isn’t safe, some or all parties might not be ready and willing to do the work of repair. The original telling of the Akeida reads to me as a story of irrevocable fissure. In the original, Isaac questions his father, asking why they have all the materials for a sacrifice but no animal to slaughter. His father answers that g!d will provide, and Isaac continues up the mountain with his father. This conversation begins with Isaac addressing Abraham as “father” and Abraham replying “Yes, my son.” If no word is wasted in Torah, it seems significant that this opening exchange is included, underlying their relationship as father and son, and all the expectations and trust of the related social contract between family. As my brother Sammy pointed out, Issac is notably absent from the midrash version. In focusing solely on who would be the main character of any tashlich, the one who has done harm, the midrash finds a way to maintain Abraham’s righteousness, but in doing so erases Isaac, a key figure in this relationship.
I am not satisfied with the midrash. In this, I turn to the strategy used by ecologist Jane C. Marks, who revisited the research of her predecessors, but asked different questions in order to better steward riparian ecosystems decimated by colonization and capitalism. Instead of the speediest or easiest way to absolve myself of the ways I’ve missed the mark, I want to ask different questions about this story in order to learn how I might relate and even support the whole ecosystem affected by my actions.
Amidst breakage, what is left to work with? When Satan transforms into a river, does part of him stay as a river forever? Or does he return to another form, leaving behind a river-carved path? What beings dwell along those banks, and who are their descendants? What relationships must be rebuilt, strengthened, or loosened to perform a sort of relational remediation, in which one takes into account how a whole web of relations is affected by harm?
In the past, going to a stream for tashlich soothed me. Amidst the discomfort and retrospection of making amends, the stream reminded me that I am part of a greater world in balance. As I moved towards my reckoning with the source of life at Yom Kippur, the complex webs of living beings at the water’s edge reassured me that change and letting go was painful but necessary, and that new life would spring forth from these cyclical transformations. As Sammy so aptly put it, the tradition of it all is comforting. Jews have been casting off sins into water for hundreds of years at least, and the trees have been dropping leaves for millenia. Whether or not trees are doing so out of self preservation, or out of a commitment to nurturing their fellow riparian beings, or some mix of both, they seemingly always have and always will participate in this yearly ritual.
The Kitzur Shulchan Arukh gives another reason for going to a stream for tashlich. The river bank reminds us of the river banks where we anointed kings in days of old. At the new year, we reassert that g!d is the ultimate king. Making things right between each other as people is part of our holy obligations to our divine sovereign.
But this year, the river is not as strong a reminder of divine balance or g!d’s power. As Alexis Pauline Gumbs so heartbreakingly writes in her recent essay on the overheating ocean, this year’s heat is not a metaphor: “Carbon emissions from fossil fuels, disproportionately burned by corporations and first-world consumers, are drastically heating the planet, causing extreme weather events, raising the temperature of the ocean and the water levels” and thus all beings reliant on those temperatures and water bodies. Even if I could ignore the fates of the microorganisms and insects decimated by rising water temperatures and the dysregulation of leaf decay, I can’t ignore the crushing, heat-induced fatigue that I now experience since contracting Long-Covid.
What does t’shuvah, return, look like when we return to an unrecognizable place, in deeply altered bodies? When the very earth is fissured with Satan’s currents? How do we engage in repair when a river is a test, and it seems that we will never be able to sufficiently counter the decimation of our beloved waters?
In her essay, Gumbs reflects on the literal and unequal intensity of heat during menopause. She invokes revolutionary Black matriarchs, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker, Harriet Tubman, and Mamá Tingó, asking how this liminal phase affected their visionary actions, posing a question that dragged the buried grief from my chest: “What did experiencing a drastic change in their bodies teach these community mothers about the possibility of change on the scale of our entire society?”
Sammy reflects that the feeling of brokenness is nothing new to tashlich. Hundreds of years ago, people went to the water to reflect on their sins and the people they’d wronged. T’shuvah isn’t often easy, and doesn’t necessarily lead to immediate relief. Tashlich reminds us of why we came to the water in the first place. Maybe this has always been a grieving ritual.
As Lucille Clifton writes in “the lesson of the falling leaves,” “the leaves believe / such letting go is love.”
What does it feel like to love in such a world?
What are your rituals for grief?
Try it: Rest by the water, and let the sensations of your body wash over you. What does your body want to tell you? What is possible when…? (how would your body fill in that space?)
As Living Fish
The Kitzur Shulchan Arukh recounts a third reason for tashlich to occur at the riparian zone. We are encouraged to find a body of water that contains fish. The fish remind us of a few things:
1. “that we are compared to living fish who are caught in a net. We too, are caught in the net of death and judgment, and as a result [we will be inclined] to think more of repenting.”
2. “Another reason is to symbolize that the evil eye shall have no power over us, just as [it has no power] over fish, and that we may be fruitful and multiply as the fish.”
3. “Others say the reason is that fish have no eyelids, and their eyes are always open, the purpose is thus to arouse the compassion of the All-Seeing Eye above us.”
Fish are invoked quite a bit in rituals designed to ward off the evil eye. For example, the spoken incantations of early 20th century Eastern European Jewish women in the Pale of Settlement draw on late ancient rabbinic texts comparing Jews to fish, in order to protect clients from the evil eye. A story for another time is how these and other Jewish incantations are accessible to me today through a history of breakage—fissure, fracture, thievery, dishonesty (by ethnographers, archeologists, anthropologists, and other agents of preservation/extraction/colonization). Thus, many of the incantational rituals I have access to are fragmented and incomplete. And yet, at this time of year, when the veil between worlds is thin, maybe we can get closer to the exorcists of old, and grieve together as we find our ways to the water. Similar to the principles of t’shuvah, in my opinion, incantational magic used to deal with the harm or danger of the evil eye is not designed to return one to an earlier, pure state. Rather, these incantations are part of a practice of addressing ailments and aches as best as one can, being with the material reality of the body, and asking, what plants and stones and words and circumstances could help support this body as it currently is, in pain or illness.
Soon, I will return to the river and empty my pockets. I will toss leaves into the river, accompanying this motion with blessings, writing, and contemplation. But what if it’s too hot to leave the house, or one can’t access flowing water, or the fish can’t live in that water anymore? We can pray all we want for the right conditions; we can learn to speed up any process. But what if the “lesson of the falling leaves,” as Lucille Clifton calls it, is the same lesson that Marks learned— that this transformation takes variable amounts of time, and that it is worth supporting, even when the circumstances aren’t optimal?
The Kitzur Shulchan Aruch has instructions for this as well: “…if there is no river that contains fish you may go to any river, or to a well, and you should recite the verses, Mi ke’il kamocha [Who, Almighty, is like you] etc. as it is written in the prayer books in the text of Tashlich. You should then shake the ends of your clothes, symbolizing your resolve to cast away your sins, and to examine and scrutinize your ways.”
Try it out: In some small way, how can you draw close to water? In some small way, what would let you shake off a bit of that husk? And how can you locate yourself within the tangled webs of life? Whether your companions are fish, ancestors, a human friend, a pocket rock, who can you return to in this ritual moment?
Return
This year, I’ll do tashlich at Karakung, also known by the settler name, Cobbs Creek, which runs for 11.8 miles until merging with Darby Creek. Together they flow into the Delaware River, which is, among other things, a source for drinking water to residents of Philadelphia and New York City. Cobbs Creek is used to make a border between counties, and even splits a cemetery—one half to Southwest Philadelphia, the other to Yeadon. I’m working on getting to know this creek, whose name in Lenape means the place of the wild geese.
I haven’t encountered geese on the trails by my house yet, but last spring I met a baby fox gamboling into the brush, and a heron, startled by my phone call with my mother. I haven’t spent much time out there in the past few months. During this hottest summer on record, I wake from dreams of running to heavy limbs and a foggy brain. Soon, I pray, it will cool, and I can return to the water for tashlich.
Stuck on the couch, I meditate on how Long-Covid has fissured my relationship to my body into a before and after. As in the riparian zone, where the most subtle changes in temperature throw the ecosystem out of balance, that same heat and humidity set off a reaction in my body that keeps me in bed for days. For now, the seasons allow me to return to the water. What about when there’s no going back? I think whiteness is the main reason I’m preoccupied with this tiny apocalypse. I orbit the center of my own universe, obsessed with decay and the reversing capacity of my limbs. If “progress felt good” as Anna Tsing writes in “The Mushroom at the End of the World,” the opposite motion feels bad. I don’t want to stay attached to my narrative of progress, forward or backward.
In the note at the end of George Abraham’s “Love Letter to the Eve of the End of the World,” the poet writes “We live in a world perpetually anxious of its own fall—anxious to the point of slaughtering uncountable numbers of people both abroad and domestically.” In other words, apocalypse is created by those who fear apocalypse more than they honor life, such as in the case of the “cyclic apocalypses unleashed on Palestine by the western world out of their own fear of apocalypse.” Amidst what Tsing might call the precarious ruins of so-called “progress,” Abraham distills a question, “What if apocalypse, instead of an abstract fear with an entire mythology of images implanted into us from the colonial imagination’s subconscious, was the gentlest, most sustainably survivable way forward? What new imaginations of life are possible therein?”
How does the cyclical return to the mythologic images of the Akeida affect Jewish people’s capacity for t’shuvah? Some reject the old stories wholesale, citing the ways they have been tangled up with settler-colonialism, especially Zionism, a movement of European colonization of Palestine that began in the late 19th century. These stories are used today to justify the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. However, these stories came from a Judaism before Zionism, and I deeply believe there is a vibrant ecosystem of Jewish practice that can assemble in the precarious ruins of Zionism’s inevitable collapse.7 Alongside George Abraham’s call for divesting from the colonial imagination, I believe Jewish people, especially white Jews and former Zionist Jews, need to reckon with the ways we interpret and question our approaches to canonical texts. These texts are a rich soil from which many forests have grown. Zionism is an invasive monoculture growing by the waters of Jewish life-ways, depleting the soil and throwing all life around them out of balance. While the quickly growing trees may assert they’ve always been there, they haven’t, and it is upon us to remediate the ecosystem of Jewish practice.
In The Murmuring Deep, Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg plumbs the “biblical unconscious,” expounding on the patriarch Abraham’s motives, doubts and later, regret, for the Akeidah. The promise of the future if he goes through with the sacrifice would make the “rigors of the future” in which he has murdered his offspring bearable. Then, “God responds by turning Abraham back to the world of behind, the once inevitable consequences of those traumatizing messages; and a dynamic possibility—that his children, like him, will work to transform and translate the enigmas of their own past (207).”
Of course, there is the immediate material work of addressing the consequences of Zionist violence. This includes honoring the Palestinian Right of Return, and supporting actions that lead to a liberated Palestine. In addition to that work, formerly Zionist Jews must tend to our spiritual well-being. Ignoring ancient texts to feel better about ourselves doesn’t help us reckon with the ways settler colonialism has become intertwined in our subconscious. The trees teach us, if we cast off all the leaves at once, without addressing the trees they grew from, or tending to the depleted soil, the ecosystem will continue to suffer.
We are all the children of our ancestor’s futures. For me, that means I am living amongst the trees my ancestors planted and the rivers they polluted to achieve what felt like inevitable progress. Here, amidst those ruins, there is no pure ecosystem to return to, but it is necessary and possible to intervene. Like riparian ecologists, we must listen to the trees and the fish and the carbon to learn what they need to find balance in their relationships. Through meaningful engagement with where we come from and the ways we may have weaponized that history, we can work to cast off the lingering convictions and cognitive dissonance of fearing apocalypse more than loving life. The work of t’shuvah is slow and we are learning as we go. But we have rituals to support us. At tashlich, we pause to examine and cast-off the convictions that get in the way of true liberatory transformation. We prepare ourselves spiritually to “transform and translate” our inherited future. May the dead leaves cast off into streams remind us that our fates are not yet sealed.
Pronunciation guide
Pronunciation varies, but here is one version:
Akeida (ah-KAY-dah) the binding of Isaac
Av (AHV) the last month of the Jewish calendar
chet (KHET) “to miss the mark”
midrash (mihd-RAHSH) a story to fill in a narrative gap in the Torah
Rosh Hashanah (ROHSH hah-SHAH-nah) “Head of the Year”
Shabbat (shah-BAHT) weekly day of rest
Sukkot (soo-KOHT) fall harvest holiday
tashlich (TASH-leekh) “cast-off”
tzitzit (TZIHT-tzihts)
t’shuvah (tuh-SHOO-vah) “return”
Yom Kippur (YOHM kee-POHR) “Day of Atonement”
Acknowledgements
Thank you Sammy Saperstein who always brings the insights. Thank you Ellary Marrano, my former housemate and resident expert on fisheries management who first turned me on to the incredible world of leaves in streams. Thank you to the Hybrid Poetics crew and our daring leader, Liana Jahan Imam for experimenting with leaf poetics with me. Thank you to Kendra Saperstein for encouraging me to take halakhah seriously and for making sure I eat when I’m writing.
Citations
All visuals by the author. Hebrew texts and translations accessed via Sefaria.org.
18Doors. “Why Tashlich Is a Powerful, Important Rosh Hashanah Ceremony.” 18Doors (blog), January 12, 2020. https://18doors.org/tashlich/.
Abraham, George. “Love Letter to the Eve of the End of the World.” Asian American Writers’ Workshop, March 30, 2023. https://aaww.org/love-letter-to-the-eve-of-the-end-of-the-world/.
Abraham, George. “Teaching Poetry in the Palestinian Apocalypse.” Guernica, September 27, 2021. https://www.guernicamag.com/teaching-poetry-in-the-palestinian-apocalypse/.
Beaulieu, David. “What’s Really Happening When Trees Lose Their Leaves.” The Spruce. Accessed September 4, 2023. https://www.thespruce.com/why-do-trees-lose-their-leaves-6826069.
Blakeney-Whack. “The Disappearance of Sherwood Forest: The History of Cobbs Creek in Philadelphia.” Teachers Institute of Philadelphia (blog). Accessed September 4, 2023. https://theteachersinstitute.org/curriculum_unit/the-disappearnce-of-sherwood-forest-the-history-of-cobbs-creek-in-philadelphia/.
Blumenthal, David R. “Spiraling Towards Repentance.” My Jewish Learning (blog). Accessed September 4, 2023. https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/spiraling-towards-repentance/.
Clifton, Lucille, and Aracelis Girmay. “The Lesson of the Falling Leaves.” In How to Carry Water: Selected Poems of Lucille Clifton, First edition., 43. American Poets Continuum Series, no. 180. Rochester, NY: BOA Editions, Ltd, 2020.
Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. “Riparian Zones—It’s All about the Water,” n.d. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/nrca_glca_2021_riparian.htm.
Greenberg, Blu. How to Run a Traditional Jewish Household. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983.
Gumbs, Alexis Pauline. “Heat Is Not a Metaphor.” Harper’s BAZAAR, August 16, 2023. https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/features/a44819303/climate-crisis-maui/.
Kaushik, N.K., and H.B.N. Hynes. “The Fate of Dead Leaves That Fall into Streams.” Archiv Für Hydrobiologie, no. 68 (June 1971): 465–515.
Kent Katz, Joanna, and Dori Midnight. “TASHLICH L’TZEDEK A RITUAL OF REFLECTION & RECOMMITMENT.” Jewish Voice for Peace, 5778. https://web.archive.org/web/20230202181205/https://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/tashlich-ritual-guide-5778.pdf.
Koppelman Ross, Lesli. “Tashlich, the Symbolic Casting Off of Sins.” My Jewish Learning (blog). Accessed September 4, 2023. https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/tashlikh/.
Kumer, Dinka. “What Is Tashlich?” Chabad.Org (blog), n.d.
Levine, Adam. “Philly H2O: Home Page.” Accessed September 4, 2023. https://classic.waterhistoryphl.org/.
Likens, G.E. “Inland Waters.” In Encyclopedia of Inland Waters, 1–5. Elsevier, 2009. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-012370626-3.00001-6.
Marks, Jane C. “Revisiting the Fates of Dead Leaves That Fall into Streams.” Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics 50, no. 1 (November 2, 2019): 547–68. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-ecolsys-110218-024755.
My Jewish Learning. “Text of Tashlich.” Accessed September 4, 2023. https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/text-of-tashlich/.
Philadelphia Water Department Darby-Cobbs Watershed Partnership. “Cobbs Creek Integrated Watershed Management Plan,” 2004. https://resilientdarbycobbs.com/resources-2/.
Poppick, Laura. “The Life That Springs from Dead Leaves in Streams.” Knowable Magazine | Annual Reviews, August 6, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1146/knowable-080620-1.
Rechtman, Abraham. The Lost World of Russia’s Jews: Ethnography and Folklore in the Pale of Settlement. Translated by Nathaniel Deutsch and Noah Barrera. Jews in Eastern Europe. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2021.
Ruttenberg, Danya. On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World. Boston: Beacon Press, 2022.
Stein, David E. S. (translator) THE JPS TANAKH: Gender-Sensitive Edition, The Jewish Publication Society (forthcoming).
Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. New paperback printing. Princeton Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2021.
wikiHow. “How to Do Tashlich: 11 Steps (with Pictures).” Accessed September 4, 2023. https://www.wikihow.com/Do-Tashlich.
Zornberg, Avivah Gottlieb. The Murmuring Deep: Reflections on the Biblical Unconscious. New York: Schocken Books, 2009.
- This list is distilled from Jane C. Marks, “Revisiting the Fates of Dead Leaves That Fall into Streams,” Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics 50, no. 1 (November 2, 2019): 547–68, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-ecolsys-110218-024755. ↩︎
- This prompt was generated by members of Hybrid Poetics in 2023, when I led a workshop for our group to come up with poetic forms based on the ecological process of leaves falling into streams. ↩︎
- According to ecologist Amy Marcarelli, as quoted in Laura Poppick, “The Life That Springs from Dead Leaves in Streams,” Knowable Magazine | Annual Reviews, August 6, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1146/knowable-080620-1. ↩︎
- Translation via Sefaria.org from David E. S. Stein (translator) THE JPS TANAKH: Gender-Sensitive Edition, The Jewish Publication Society (forthcoming). ↩︎
- This is where we get the ritual’s name from: “And You will cast [ve’Tashlich] all our sins into the depths of the sea (Micah 7:19).” ↩︎
- For more on transforming harm, see Danya Ruttenberg,“On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World.” ↩︎
- See Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins, for in depth analysis of assemblages, precarity, and ruins. ↩︎