On the second day of Rosh Hashanah, I set out for Monk’s Pond to do my own tashlich. It’s a short hike from Kripalu, the yoga retreat center in the Berkshires where I have come alone on this, the first New Year of my divorce.
At Monk’s Pond, a sign marks the water as a private supply. It’s unclear how a raisin challah from the kosher bakery in Newton would be viewed floating in the water, so instead I find a few sticks to toss in: my symbolic sins. As I watch them sink, I say the general confession prayer. Ashamnu, Bagadnu, Gazalnu: we have sinned, we have transgressed, we have stolen, we have rebelled, we have scoffed. Not only is guilt communal, but so is penance: no lonely I but a scripted eternal we.
All other years, I said these plural words in synagogue, and as alone and disconnected as I might have felt, I was always surrounded by a congregation of others. Without giving much thought to their meaning, I had recited words that cast me as part of a group.
Now it strikes me how alone I am and how unaccustomed I am to this. I realize that I have a fear of being alone. Is this, I wonder, why we pray in the communal voice, for fear of who we are on our own? This year though, no longer married, no longer part of a ready-made community, I want to stare fearlessly at that lone state. I want to remind myself of what it means to speak in the singular, to return to who I was, and to remember how to be alone.
Read blogger Sharon Alger’s response to Tova’ Mirvis’ Jewel HERE.
