Orange Temple Starts New Year With Symbolic Beach Clean-Up

Press release from Temple Emanuel:

Oct. 16, 2022

Members of Temple Emanuel of Greater New Haven in Orange turned a centuries-old tradition on its head by cleaning Altschuler Beach in West Haven.

About 20 members of the congregation gathered at the beach recently to put a twist on a Rosh Hashana tradition called Tashlich. Tashlich takes place on the first day of the Jewish new year. During that ceremony, Jews symbolically cast off their sins of the previous year by throwing them in the water. The sins are represented by pebbles or crumbs washed away by the water.

On Oct. 2, members of Temple Emanuel joined 244 other mostly Jewish communities around the world in taking some of those sins out of the water by cleaning up the beach. It’s an international program called Reverse Tashlich. Temple Emanuel is one of five Connecticut organizations involved with program, created by an organization called Repair the Sea, based in Tampa, Fla.

“We’ve always talked about ‘repairing the world’ as part of our duties as part of the Jewish community, especially around the New Year,” said Karen Fenichel, a temple member and one of the organizers of Temple Emanuel’s Reverse Tashlich day. “This is a very real way for entire families to participate in ‘repairing the world.’” Adam Spiewak also helped organize the event locally.

Fenichel and Spiewak worked with a local non-profit, Save the Sound. The New Haven-based environmental-action group donated supplies for the effort and obtained the permits from the City of West Haven to do the work on the beach.

Those filling bags included Temple Emanuel’s rabbi, Michael Farbman. He recalled the beauty of the symbolism of Tashlich and Reverse Tashlich. Before picking up his bag, he addressed the group on the beach. He said in the next few days, Jews would read about creation in the Torah, the scrolls containing the Five Books of the Moses.

“We’ll be reading, ‘In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,’” the rabbi quoted. “It was beautiful and it was clean. Today we get to restore that a little bit. We get to participate in the act of creation ourselves.”

Equipped with a large plastic bag and a clipboard on which to tally the trash they retrieved, teams made up of families and friends walked along the beach. They gathered old coffee cups, wrappers, bottles, cans and cigarette butts. Cigarette butts carried extra value because of their toxic nature and plastic content. In all, the group filled five bags with debris from the beach.

The bags of trash were turned over to West Haven. Fenichel and Spiewak tallied up the garbage in the bags and sent the report to Repair the Sea. The program sponsors use the information to help with scientific research and to help write legislation and policies that address pollution.

“A day on the beach is a great way to celebrate the beginning of the world and the beginning of the year,” said Fenichel. “It’s a great way for our community – families and friends – to spend some time. This year was small, but a success. We hope it’ll be a new tradition for our congregation.”

This press release was produced by Temple Emanuel. The views expressed here are the author's own.