Cry Me A River: Tashlich’s Aqua Vitae

“Ol’ man river, dat ol’ man river, He must know sumpin’, but don’t say nothin’. He jus’ keep rollin’, He jus’keep rollin’ along.”

– “Ol’ Man River” Showboat, Oscar Hammerstein II (1927)

“I can wait, Doctor. The river saved me, you know, Tashlich… I’ll explain when I see you.”

No, I don’t know.

I know Tashlich is a Rosh Hashanah ritual in which we throw bread, symbolizing our sins, into the water to give us a clean slate for the new year. I know Esther, who left me the message, is a perspective new patient whom I can’t see for three weeks because of Sukkot, so I need to ascertain if she can safely wait that long.

Apparently, the answer is yes. I don’t begin to comprehend the rest of her message.

Tashlich saved her life? How? I’ll have to wait three weeks to find out.

Growing up in Washington Heights, Tashlich had been incredibly convenient. Walk three blocks east or west, you’re at a river.

As a toddler, in the early 50s, the Heights was awash with Jews. Every Shul had its own particular self-selected spot on the river. Like the Easter Parade, we promenaded past each other in our holiday finery offering curt Germanic nods in acknowledgment.

As a teen, in the late 60s, the Jews had largely washed out of the Heights. Tashlich once, almost cost me my life. I dawdled too long by myself at the river past dark, was chased several blocks by a local gang brandishing switchblades.

As a young adult, in the 70s, in Kew Gardens, Tashlich had been incredibly inconvenient. We have to walk several miles to the closest body of water in Flushing Meadow Park. But it was worth it.

Thousands of Faputzed (adorned) young Jews from Forest Hills, Kew Garden Hills, as well as imports from elsewhere, assembled there in a Jewish Woodstock, literally closing down the roads, simultaneously opening up new, sometimes permanent, romances.

Living in Midtown Manhattan, in the new millennium, there are many Shuls with divergent Tashlich destinations. The scene is occasionally reminiscent of the Heights Easter Parades seven decades ago, other times redolent of the Flushing flirtations.

None of these however, are life-saving experiences.

When I finally met Esther (ironically, my mother, oldest and youngest granddaughters’ name), her story was painfully familiar.

Like I, she was a child of Survivors. Like I, she had a dementia-afflicted widowed mother. Like I, her mother was adamantly, unrealistically convinced she could still live autonomously.

That was where our stories diverged.

Finally, belatedly, moving her mother involuntarily out of her decades-long rental apartment, she physically refused to leave. It escalated into fisticuffs.

Her mother, with a history of angina, received her wish to never leave her home. She collapsed and died there.

Esther was convinced she had murdered her mother. Her sibs, husband and children repeatedly pointed out to her how unrealistic that was, but she couldn’t hear them.

That Rosh Hashana, she had prayed with greater fervor than ever before. She wasn’t praying to be inscribed in the Book of Life, or to be forgiven. She knew she didn’t deserve either. She was praying for salvation.

She didn’t find it in Shul, but she did that afternoon at the river.

As she started to throw her bread, she burst into tears. Her children began to rush over, but her husband stopped them sensing she needed to rid herself of something more precious than bread.

Crying, speaking to the river, Esther described for the first time, in harrowing detail, her mother’s death. She repeated every vicious epithet she had received from her mother, in her mother’s accent. She acted out her mother attempting to kick her and scratch her eyes out, then, her mother falling, and her own futile attempts to revive her.

When she was done, she was done.

She stopped crying, allowed her family to fully embrace her for the first time since her mother’s death. As she returned home with them, her previously familiar smile returned to her face for the first time since her fatal encounter.

I listened to her in silence and envy. Tashlich had provided her the catharsis every psychiatrist aspires to achieve, but few do.

She had released her demons into the water. The Aqua Vitae, water of life, had cleansed her soul.

What a fool I’ve been my entire life!

I’ve always enjoyed Tashlich, but after listening to Esther, I realized I never truly experienced it.

The opportunity to talk to God doesn’t begin and end in a synagogue or church. No matter how impressive those sanctuaries are, they weren’t created by God.

He did create the bodies of water where we perform Tashlich. Where do we imagine He is more likely to listen to us?

Synagogues prominently display “Know Before Whom You Are Standing!” in the front of the atrium (to encourage decorum.)

We don’t need that sign standing in front of His creation. We already know.

Decades after meeting Esther, I will go to Tashlich again this year with my family.

My family has grown, and so have I.

I will, as always, recite the prayers and throw the bread. I will also however, use the opportunity to talk to God.

I know He will be listening.

Before leaving, I will make sure to express my eternal gratitude to Esther.

All four of them.