David CookEarlier this week, Times Free Press staff writer Holly Leber collared me and business reporter Ellis Smith into a lunchtime adventure: to the Walnut Street Bridge to toss bread crumbs into the blue-green river below as part of the Jewish ritual known as the Tashlich ceremony.
“It symbolizes casting away of regrets, transgressions and negativity into the water,” she told us.
(The newsroom was full of folks. Are my transgressions that obvious? Ellis, think she’s trying to tell us something?)
We walked 100 yards or so down the wooden bridge, where about 25 others had gathered in a quiet, uncomplicated ceremony. Taking a plastic bag of torn bread pieces, about the size of small croutons, we leaned over the edge and began to surrender them into the river below.
“It’s kind of crummy,” said Adam Schwartz, another Tashlich participant on the bridge.