Ye who hath not sinned
I knocked on T’s door and asked her to walk to the bayou with me – I had a slice of bread and plenty of sins.* She thinks of me as a novelty act, I’m sure, but Rosh Hashana is the Jewish New Year and also a time for forgiveness – both forgiving those who have wronged you as well as asking forgiveness to those you have wronged. Needless to say, I should have taken a loaf of bread down there, but a slice was representational at least. We halved the slice, I took the bigger half, and we took little pieces and threw them in the bayou and silently asked forgiveness for our myriad sins. By the end of my slice I was just asking for general forgiveness for lying, for sloth, for not appreciating every moment and thing and person in my life.
Then we said a prayer out loud – that New Orleans recover better than she was before, that H&T find a house to call a home, that the LaLa get finished without killing me, and that we live our long healthy lives together here in New Orleans.
*It’s become a tradition to take bread and walk to a body of water and as a symbol of renewal and redemption you throw representational sins into the water to wash you clean. The New Year is all about forgiveness. Jews love ritual – think of Passover when we pour out the wine in drops to symbolize all the plagues. Plagues, sins, you name it – we love all this representational stuff.