‘Cleaning our souls and cleaning our water’: Jewish groups host lake cleanup
Members of the local Jewish faith community helped spruce up a local lake area as part of an international initiative tied to the Jewish High Holy Days.
Emanuel Synagogue coordinated the special cleanup blitz on Friday at Lake Overholser, in partnership with the Jewish Federation of Greater Oklahoma City. Temple Bna’i Israel and OU Hillel, a Jewish student organization at the University of Oklahoma, also joined in the gathering at the west Oklahoma City lake.
About 65 people of all ages fanned out along the lakeshore to pick up trash and debris. Rabbi Abby Jacobson said the clean up was held in conjunction with the fourth annual “Reverse Tashlich” International Jewish Community Cleanup. The collaborative waterfront cleanup is an initiative of the Jewish marine conservation movement Tikkun HaYam, which means “repair the sea.”
The rabbi said more than 170 communities in 61 countries held similar activities in advance of Yom Kippur, which begins at sundown on Wednesday.
Tashlich means “casting off ” in Hebrew. As part of the traditional Tashlich ceremony, individuals symbolically toss bread crumbs or fish food into a pool of water, traditionally an open body of water like a pond, river or lake.
The water ritual traditionally is held on the afternoon of Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year, or during the Jewish High Holy Days, the 10 days between Rosh Hashana, which was Sept. 6-8, and Yom Kippur.
Jacobson said the recent clean up was essentially Tashlich in reverse — a way of cleansing the waters as participants cleansed their soul in preparation for Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.
“Before we throw our sins in the water — our bread crumbs or our fish food — we take sins out of the water by doing a marine cleanup,” she said.
Taking stock of past year
The rabbi came up with a fitting slogan for the recent event: “Cleaning our souls and cleaning our water.”
“On Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year, we’re supposed to take stock of our past year, everything we’ve done — our missteps and our mistakes, things we want to atonement for and things we know we need to do better at,” she said.
“Symbolically, we throw those in the water. It’s viewed as a cleansing, part of the deep introspective work that each individual Jewish person is expected to do every year. Since we’re doing a physical cleanup where we are cleaning up the trash, I thought it (slogan) went along nicely.”
After the cleanup, the traditional Tashlich ceremony began. The group lined up along a walkway to throw TetraPond Pond Sticks fish food — a symbolic stand-in for their sins — into the water.
Several participants said they liked the idea of incorporating a community service project into one of their beloved faith traditions.
“It’s symbolic, you know, that we are helping the waterways instead of throwing even bread into the water,” said Linda Aberson. “I think it’s wonderful that we helped Lake Overholser a little, although I found a lot of areas were really pretty clean. We did our part for our community which I think is very important being part of Oklahoma City.”
James Branum said he and his family members have always enjoyed Lake Overholser so the recent outing gave them an opportunity to care for an area that they regularly frequent.
“We wanted to participate because the Tashlich ceremony was important to us already. The idea now of combining an act of service with this religious ritual is a really good thing,” he said.
Roberta Clark, executive director of the Jewish Federation of Greater Oklahoma City, said her organization was honored to be included in the event and appreciated Jacobson and Emanuel Synagogue for putting the cleanup effort together.
“It was a neat opportunity for many members throughout the Jewish community to come together during the High Holy Days season to perform a mitzvah of cleaning up the lake and the area around the lake, to perform the mitzvah of Tashlich, and most especially, to be together as the Jewish community,” Clark said.