Reverse Tashlich isn’t just a beach cleanup, Rabbi Ed Rosenthal says, “it’s a mitzvah.”

Every year, Jewish people all over the world participate in Tashlich, symbolically casting off their sins by throwing breadcrumbs into the water during Rosh Hashanah.

But throwing breadcrumbs into streams is bad for wildlife. According to the Institute for Environmental Research and Education, when animals such as birds eat breadcrumbs, they feel full but miss essential nutrients that are crucial for them to survive. Any uneaten bread decomposes into the water and leads to depleting oxygen levels and harming aquatic life.

So this year, the Baltimore Sustainability Network and Adamah are partnering with Tikkun HaYam-Repair the Sea to do something different: Reverse Tashlich.

“It does immediate good, and it establishes a value that can set the tone for how we behave in the coming year,” said Rabbi Nina Cardin, co-chair of the Baltimore Environmental Sustainability Network.

Reverse Tashlich was initiated in 2016 by Rosenthal, who at the time was the regional director for Hillel in Tampa Bay. During Rosh Hashanah, a student said to him, “Rabbi, there’s already more than enough human sin in the water. Why don’t we take some of it out instead?”

“I said, ‘That’s a great idea, Let’s do a reverse Tashlich,’” Rosenthal recalled. “And so I had five students join me, and those five students cleaned about 75 pounds of debris from the mangroves on campus … It was incredible.”

When plastic gets into the waterways, it is eaten by aquatic life, blocking their digestive systems. In birds specifically, Rosenthal noted, they think they’re full and “slowly starve to death without knowing that they’re starving.”

According to National Geographic, there are 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic in the ocean and counting, having deadly consequences for seabirds, fish and marine animals.

Rosenthal added there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish by 2050, which is not just bad for fish, but “it’s bad for the planet.”

“The ocean, as we know it, is dying, or I should say, humans are killing it through overfishing, through pollution, through coastal development, through so many different factors,” Rosenthal said. “The simple fact of the matter: If the ocean dies, we all die.”

As Rosenthal continued the program with his students, he expanded it to local synagogues. Then, roughly four years ago, he decided to start the nonprofit organization Tikkun HaYam-Repair the Sea. This year will be the ninth annual reverse Tashlich and this is the first year The Associated is getting involved.

Along with the actual cleanup, Tikkun HaYam provides a service with educational material about the program and “bal tashchit, the prohibition against needless waste and destruction.”

“What humans are doing to the aquatic environment is a violation of bal tashchit,” Rosenthal said. “Beach cleanups are great, but when you do it as a mitzvah, you take an ordinary event, an excellent beach cleanup, and … you raise it to a level of holiness.”

Cardin, of the Baltimore Environmental Sustainability Network, added while no one particular task is going to solve the problem, taking an event so embedded in the Jewish tradition can help people make real change in their lives.

“Anything that we can get the public’s imagination to grasp on to to help us understand the broader picture of sustainability and … the need to live lives that support and enhance the environment is important,” said Cardin.

She emphasized that much of the litter and waste that washes up on shorelines that will be picked up during the event will likely come from a variety of places.

“People could have thrown stuff on the ground. Rainwater washes things into the waters. There is no such thing as ‘away,’” Cardin said. “Everything will find its way into waterways and areas that affect us and our health.”

“The holidays move us to ask ourselves difficult questions: What can we do to be better people?” Rosenthal added. “The nature of the reverse Tashlich is to ask ourselves equally as difficult questions. How many single-use plastic bottles do I use in a year? Do I own a reusable water bottle? How many plastic forks have I used in a year?”

Last year, Tikkun HaYam had 320 communities participate in reverse Tashlich in 31 countries. For Rosenthal, “when Jews get involved in an issue, substantive change takes place.”

Cardin added, “While you’re doing this reverse Tashlich and gathering together and being in community and having fun with each other, you’re also committing yourself bodily to saying, ‘this is a value of sustaining the world that I am practicing and that I can carry forward into the year to come.’”

mresnicow@midatlanticmedia.com