Jewish Press of Tampa

Reverse Tashlich: Local waterway cleanup program goes global



San Diego Hillel members cleaning up trash on beach.

San Diego Hillel members cleaning up trash on beach.

Reverse Tashlich has gone international, catching on around the globe in just four short years since Jews in the Tampa Bay area began what is now an annual community tradition.

For the uninitiated, here is the concept behind the Reverse Tashlich: On Rosh Hashanah, it is customary for Jews to go to a body of water and symbolically cast away their sins during the Tashlich service. In a Reverse Tashlich, instead of throwing sins into the water, people remove human sins from the water by cleaning up local waterfronts.

This year, on Sunday, Sept. 12, Tikkun HaYam® (Hebrew for Repair the Seas) and the Hillels of the Florida Suncoast will host the coastal cleanup known as Reverse Tashlich.

So far this year, 119 synagogues, Hillel chapters, federations, JCCs, day schools and other non-profit organizations in 16 countries – U.S., Israel, Argentina, Australia, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Canada, England, Georgia, Ireland, Moldova, New Zealand, South Africa, Sweden, Ukraine and Palau – have created teams to participate in the event, making the Fourth Annual Reverse Tashlich program a truly global event.

“From Auckland, New Zealand to Anchorage, Alaska, and from Maui to Moldova, Jews around the world are recognizing that we can make a difference to save the ocean,” says Rabbi Ed Rosenthal, director of Hillels of the Florida Suncoast, and an advocate for cleaning up our oceans and waterways.

It was under his tutelage that the Eckerd College chapter of Suncoast Hillels created two organizations that became involved in protection of the seas – Scubi Jew and Tikkun HaYam. Both of those programs have also expanded to venues across the nation.

It is the students of Scubi Jew to whom credit goes for creating the first Reverse Tashlich in 2016 – with just five students participating at the Eckerd campus. The students liked it so much they encouraged Rabbi Rosenthal to make it an annual event for the entire Bay area.

The growing program appeal

While Hurricane Irma postponed the first full-fledged Reverse Tashlich in the greater Tampa Bay Jewish community in 2017, the program has grown in scope since.

In 2019, 49 teams with more than 800 participants removed thousands of pounds of debris from their local waterways in the U.S., Israel, Canada and Argentina. Participation dipped some in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic, but it is more popular than ever this year.

For the 2021 event the number of participating teams has doubled and Tikkun HaYam and the Suncoast Hillels hope to register more than 1,000 participants and collect thousands more pounds of coastal debris worldwide.

Rabbi Rosenthal gave credit to Shayna Cohen, Tikkun HaYam outreach and engagement coordinator, for expanding the reach of the project:

“Reverse Tashlich is bringing Jews around the world together for a day to raise awareness and encourage action to protect the marine environment through the perspective of the Jewish traditio,” he said.

“I am overjoyed that what started as a small beach cleanup with five students six years ago has become an international event. I never would have imagined that our online marketing materials would need to be translated into Portuguese, Spanish, Russian and Hebrew … so far,” Rosenthal said. “Reverse Tashlich is now on the map, literally and figuratively, and I couldn’t be more proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish.”

Locals on board

This year, due to the Delta variant of the virus, volunteers are again being asked to take precautions.

Already 15 teams of volunteers have signed up to clean waterways in the Tampa Bay area. Teams that have notified the Jewish Press on their designated areas are:

• Congregation Beth Am in Tampa will clean up the Hillsborough River shoreline at Reed Park in Seminole Heights

• Rodeph Sholom in Tampa will work the Ben T. Davis Beach

• Congregation B’nai Israel in St. Petersburg will clean bay waters at the US Coast Guard’s Blackthorn Memorial along the Sunshine Skyway

• The Tribe, the young adult group from the Jewish Federation of Florida’s Gulf Coast, will clean the Johns Pass area in Madeira Beach

• Temple Beth-El in St. Petersburg will be cleaning the Pass-a-Grille Beach area.

• Congregation Beth Shalom in Clearwater will be along the Courtney Campbell Parkway

• The new iVolunteer program from the Tampa JCCs and Federation will concentrate their efforts in and around Fred Ball Park.

All volunteers should check with their organization or synagogue for details of when and where they will be working. Each team will choose a meaningful clean-up location in their respective area

To register to participate (as part of an existing team, a new team, or an individual) in this year’s Reverse Tashlich, visit www.repairthesea.org/reverse-tashlich. Registration deadlines vary based on individual team

Tikkun HaYam and Scubi Jew

Suncoast Hillels created Tikkun HaYam to take marine conservation from a campus program to the greater Jewish community. Scubi Jew is the college branch of Tikkun HaYam initiative. The programs improve the ocean locally and around the world through coral restoration, marine debris removal, conservation education, shark and manatee awareness. Visit www.repairthesea.org for a full overview of the program.

Hillels of the Florida Suncoast

Hillels of the Florida Suncoast supports Jewish life on four college campuses: University of South Florida, University of Tampa, Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, and Florida Southern College in Lakeland.

For more information, visit www.suncoasthillels.org or contact Linda Wolf, assistant director for Hillels of the Florida Suncoast, at (813) 899-2788 or shalom@suncoasthillels.org.

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