Real Change: Rethinking Tashlich

The ritual of Tashlich on Rosh Hashana has always struck me as both mysterious and symbolic. As a child growing up in an observant, chassidic home, I would walk with my family to the water’s edge of the Chicago River, recite the prescribed prayers, and watch as people shook out their garments as though ridding themselves of their sins. We were taught that the fish in the water, immune to the “evil eye,” could somehow take on these sins without consequence, leaving us unburdened as we entered the new year.

At the time, it felt like a curious ceremony, sacred certainly, but distant. More performative than transformative.

This year, however, the ritual unfolded differently for me. As I dressed in black to go out, I was struck by the thought that perhaps Tashlich can signify something deeper than casting crumbs into water. Perhaps it can represent the symbolic death of the old self, a conscious laying to rest of the habits, patterns, and identities that no longer serve us.

If the new year is truly to be a renewal, it is not enough to simply discard isolated “sins” or mistakes. We must be willing to bury the outdated version of ourselves in order to make room for the person we are capable of becoming.

Modern psychology and ancient wisdom converge on this idea: change is not achieved through intention or resolution alone. To create a new reality, we must begin to inhabit a new identity. Words and promises cannot, by themselves, bridge the gap between who we are and who we hope to become. Real transformation requires an inner re-casting of the self.

After completing the prayers by the water, I shared these thoughts with a friend. We sat together, reflecting on which parts of our lives, and which parts of ourselves, we might need to relinquish to make room for something greater.

It was not the fish that carried away our burdens, but the water itself. A reminder of life’s constant movement, of death and renewal, of release and becoming.

There is a simple parable about this idea. If you want to buy new clothes, you first have to make room in your closet. You cannot keep filling the closet without removing what you no longer wear. The same is true of the self. We cannot continually add new aspirations, new habits, new relationships, and new ways of being without first making room for them.

Another version is even simpler: if your hands are full, you cannot pick up anything new. Before you can receive something, you have to be willing to let go of what you are already holding.

What struck me most was the simplicity of the shift. By reimagining Tashlich not merely as a ritual of discarding, but as one of symbolic death and rebirth, it became less about external observance and more about internal transformation.

It reminded me that the most powerful traditions are often the ones we allow to evolve, to meet us where we are, to speak to our lives as they exist today, and to challenge us to grow.

In this way, standing by the water, dressed in black, was not merely the reenactment of a childhood ritual. It was the conscious burial of an old self.

And what emerges from that burial, if we are willing to let it, is a truer and more intentional life, one capable of shaping not only the year ahead, but the very trajectory of who we are becoming.