The sun shone through the clouds like a Renaissance-painting. I broke the bread into smaller and smaller pieces for increasingly abstract sins but ran out before I got to lying, like the way I told my former roommate I was doing taschlich because I didn’t want to go to services, unable to admit I liked the ritual. Riverside Park was packed – Reform Jews took Rosh Hashana selfies, little Orthodox boys tripped on their fringes, a group of mostly older women danced the Hora and beat tambourines. An earnest blue-eyed rabbinical student said, “there was once a rabbi who put a piece of paper in each pocket: ‘I am but dust and ashes,’ and ‘the world was created for me.’” “Is that enough for you?” asked the rabbinical student. “Because it’s not enough for me.”
Illustration by Cameron Lee and Lily Ha