Temple Devises Way to Send Sins Out to Sea

In a project akin to building a better mousetrap, Temple Ramat Zion in Northridge has created a clever way of upholding a Rosh Hashanah tradition that asks Jews to symbolically purge their sins by casting bread crumbs into the sea.

The challenge? Finding a reliable source of running water that flows to the ocean in the landlocked San Fernando Valley. The challenger? Rabbi Steven Tucker, who used a bit of engineering ingenuity to come up with a suitable substitute.

“I can’t bang in a nail to save my life,” he said, but Tucker was able to sketch a crude example of a slanted trough to be placed over a storm drain at the synagogue. With the labor of congregation member David Baitel, the result is a 32-foot sluice that will send worshipers’ crumbly sins gently floating to the ocean via water from a hose.

According to Tucker, the tradition known as tashlich originated in 13th-century Europe as a way to make a fresh start of the new year.

“The idea was to empty your pockets of all the bad stuff that you’ve accumulated over the year,” he said.

With Baitel’s creation, Tucker noted that the temple has now found a nice replacement for an earlier low-tech version that seemed to miss the point.

“We used little plastic wading pools,” he said. “It didn’t really work well symbolically. You’d throw your bread crumbs into this pool and it would just kind of sit there.”

In preparation for Sunday’s service, Tucker successfully tested the contraption with a group of children on Monday afternoon.

The verdict? “It certainly got their attention,” he said. “It’s a terrific teaching device.”

Perhaps more importantly, however, Tucker said the brief demonstration illustrates that the trough better captures the purpose of the ceremony. “It felt right. It felt great,” he said.