Pocketable
As Taschlich ( Hebrew תשליך tashlikh “you will throw”) or making Taschlich is a Jewish custom that follows the Mincha prayer on the first day of New Year ( Rosh Hashanah ).
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procedure
The believers go to a body of water ( stream , river , lake , sea , well or spring ) as soon as possible before sunset , shake off their clothes and throw all the crumbs that are in their pockets into the water, symbolizing the sins they have shaken off sink. A prayer according to Micah 7:19 is said three times : "You will ... throw all our sins into the depths of the sea ( we-taschlich )". The symbolic act is intended to stimulate repentance before God and purification.
The pocket prayer is said before sunset on the first or, if the first falls on a Shabbat, on the second New Year's Day on the bank of a river, on the beach or, for example, in Jerusalem near a spring or a water well. The pocket prayer is a plea for forgiveness and forgetting of sins. It also includes a request for a year of life, peace and the fulfillment of wishes. In general, the bags are shaken out and the hems of the clothes are brushed out or breadcrumbs are sprinkled into the water. With this one wants to symbolically shake off all sins of the past year that may have got stuck and sink them in the water; it also asks for forgiveness.
origin
The origin of the custom is not clear. Today it can no longer be determined whether he is based on the above-mentioned Bible verse or whether it was used as a subsequent explanation. In the Middle Ages , the ritual was rejected by some eminent Jewish scholars because they suspected it was of pagan origin. Rabbi Isaiah Horowitz , a 16th century Kabbalist , said it was nonsense to believe that emptying one's pockets in a body of water would rid oneself of one's sins, but suggested that believers go to a body of water rich in fish in order to be reminded that man is like fish and must constantly be on the alert not to be caught.
The misunderstanding of the custom may have contributed to the high medieval anti-Judaist conspiracy theory of well poisoning by Jews during the spread of the plague .
literature
- Julius Hans Schoeps (Ed.): New Lexicon of Judaism. Gütersloher Verlagshaus, Gütersloh 2000, ISBN 3-579-02305-5 .
- Alfred J. Kolatch: Understanding the Jewish World. Six hundred questions and answers. Fourier, Wiesbaden 1996.
- Philip Goodman: The Rosh Hashanah Anthology. Philadelphia 1970.
- Jonathan A. Romain, Walter Homolka : Progressive Judaism. Life and teaching. Translation and editing: Annette Böckler , Munich 1999, p. 173f.
Web links
- haGalil: Really. Forgiveness prayer
- Walter Rothschild: Really. In: Michaela Bauks, Klaus Koenen, Stefan Alkier (Eds.): The Scientific Biblical Lexicon on the Internet (WiBiLex), Stuttgart 2006 ff.