Posted: Fri, 18 Sep 2009 11:48 PM - 6,597 Readers

By: Joshunda Sanders

Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, begins at sunset today, and some local Jewish leaders say recent rains will help local Jews observe one of its key ceremonies.

Rosh Hashana ushers in the holiest time of the Jewish calendar and is centered around reflection, repentance and reconciliation. During the Days of Awe, between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, Jews also try to make amends for wrongs they may have done to other people. To start anew, some Jews participate in tashlich, a ceremony that involves symbolically casting away one's sins from the past year by tossing bread into running natural bodies of water.

The ceremony is meant to be performed over big bodies of water, but the drought has made even the biggest area lakes less than ideal for the ceremony, which is "a really lovely way to make concrete this idea that we are turning away from our sins and moving forward," said Assistant Rabbi Cookie Lea Olshein with Congregation Beth Israel.

"We're thankful that we'll be able to perform our ceremony in the little stream we have" behind the temple, she said.

Bruce Corman, president of Mosaic, an Austin Jewish outdoors group of about 50 people, said that the small nonprofit group has a tashlich ceremony each year at Red Bud Isle, just south of Tom Miller Dam where Lake Austin ends and Lady Bird Lake begins. Before recent rains replenished area waterways, there was some concern that groups like his might have difficulty finding plentiful natural water sources.

"I imagine that lots of people are grateful for the water," Corman, 40, said. "It is very convenient and fitting to finally get rain."

Mosaic, which Corman describes as an eclectic group of Jewish outdoors lovers, will gather Sunday afternoon for their tashlich ceremony with a "nosh" at a nearby restaurant afterward.

Sheldon Levenstein, 47, said the group recites "a humorous prayer and a traditional prayer" before gathering at a local restaurant to eat.

Because the crumbs "kind of represent what you've been doing wrong," he said, the funny prayer is as follows: "For ordinary sins, (we cast away) white bread, for exotic sins, French Bread," he said. "For twisted sins, pretzels, and for sins of chutzpah, fresh bread."

A traditional reading from Scripture will be read, too: "And you shall cast (tashlich) your sins into the depth of the sea."

*  Story Contributed by: Joshunda Sanders