Is there any divinity save You who forgives the sins and pardons the transgressions of the remnant, your People? … You will return to us compassionately, overcoming the consequences of our sin, hurling our sins into the depths of the sea.

From tashlich prayers

The remnant, your People.

For New Haven’s Holocaust survivors and their children, parts of Edgewood Park were hallowed ground. Every year, between the first and second days of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, I joined a group of griners, greenhorns as they called themselves, where the West River fed a duck pond. There, we recited tashlich prayers.

At the ritual’s conclusion, we tossed our sins – represented by torn pieces of bread – into the water and observed kotshkes, ducks, scrambling to gobble them up. Despite the antisemitism witnessed and the trauma they endured and passed on to their children, these survivors were the ones seeking forgiveness. 

Across from Edgewood Park’s northern end was the Farband Organization’s small cemetery. Survivors joined Farband in the 1950s because membership entitled them to purchase inexpensive plots – real estate acquisitions that took precedence over home buying. Though only in their 20s and 30s, they were planning for something their destroyed families lacked. A proper burial, with headstones attesting to their existence.

These griners would later help establish the country’s first Holocaust memorial erected on public land. Its Edgewood Park location was situated between the duck pond receiving their symbolic sin castoffs and the cemetery receiving their remains.

                                      *

“Just give me a year’s notice.”

Gina Wesler and I had been dating for more than two years and her father, Phil, sensed our relationship was heading toward the chuppah, the wedding canopy. Like me, Gina was the child of a Holocaust survivor mother and American-born father.

It was September, 1977, and she joined me for the tashlich ritual.

Holding hands as we walked down crooked stairs from Chapel Street to the soft meadow below, Gina and I approached the group assembled at the pond. Ducks were in a row, ready to receive bread morsels.

At that moment, I looked into Gina’s eyes.

“Do you remember what your father wanted us to do?” I asked.

“Give him a year’s notice! I do!” she responded in rapid succession.

“So do I!” 

There was no bending on one knee and no ring – yet – to slip onto her finger. As soon as the service concluded, Gina and I practically sprinted back to my house and rifled through the pages of a calendar. She put her finger on a date. I nodded. We placed a call to her father.

“Daddy, guess who’s getting married September 17, 1978?” she giggled into the phone. 

Phil had his notice. 

You do not maintain anger forever, for You delight in love.

From tashlich prayers