Tonight is the eve of Rosh Hashanah. For the past four years, I have said Tashlich with Jews from a West Lafayette, Indiana shul, standing atop the bridge over the Wabash River. But I am new to this area, and haven't taken the time to discover a place and people with whom I can seek G-d's forgiveness and forgetfulness.
I have nowhere to go to throw my sins away tomorrow—no water to toss bread into, no current to sweep away my soggy symbolic sins. Maybe I will wander down to the ocean, walk myself through rituals and prayers that are not completely mine, but which possess me entirely. I am both captive to and captivated by your promises, frail though they might feel.
And perhaps this is why we sometimes terrorize those whom we mean only to love. From whence do jealous rages and ridiculous insecurities come? Petty and pathetic, weak and fearful, we sometimes lie prostrate before our own shortcomings, begging them to wrap themselves around us, when really we should be showing them what it means to love toughly.
Who is like You, God, who removes iniquity and overlooks transgression of the remainder of His inheritance. He doesn't remain angry forever because He desires kindness. He will return and He will be merciful to us, and He will conquer our iniquities, and He will cast them into the depths of the seas.
Give truth to Jacob, kindness to Abraham like that you swore to our ancestors from long ago.
From the straits I called upon God, God answered me with expansiveness. God is with me, I will not be afraid, what can man do to me? God is with me to help me, and I will see my foes (annihilated). It is better to take refuge in God than to trust in man. It is better to take refuge in God, that to rely on nobles.
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