A Community Wide Social  Action Program

“ Reverse Tashlich”

Sunday, September 24, 2017, 9AM- NOON

For and From the Jews of Tampa Bay

Sponsored by Scubi Jew & Eckerd College Hillel

Congregation Kol Ami has committed to being a part of this unique and important community wide Social Action program.

On the first day of Rosh Hashanah, following the afternoon prayer, we go to a lake, river or sea (preferably a body of water that has fish), and recite the Tashlich prayers.  In doing so we symbolically cast our sins into the water and leave our old shortcomings behind us, thus starting the New Year with a clean slate.

The Mission of Scubi Jew is to raise awareness in the Jewish Community about our obligation as Jews to preserve and protect God’s Sea and all of its creatures.  In 2016, Scubi Jew conducted a “Reverse Tashlich” ceremony on Rosh HaShanah. Scubi Jew members felt it would be a meaningful experience to reverse the process of Tashlich and remove our sins from the water.  So, they performed a “Reverse Tashlich” and organized a cleanup project of the waterfront on the Eckerd College Campus.  Over the course of two hours, the students removed almost 100 pounds of trash from the mangroves, beach and water around the campus.

This year the students will take this program to the entire Jewish Community in Tampa Bay, and organize a community-wide “Reverse Tashlich.”  It is their hope to engage every synagogue and Jewish agency, in Pinellas and Hillsborough counties, in the project to heighten awareness of the plight of the marine environment, create a sense of unity across all divides in the Jewish Community, and promote a large scale, collective service project on behalf of the Jewish Community for everyone in Tampa Bay.

Scubi Jew is working with Keep Pinellas Beautiful (KPB) and Keep Tampa Bay Beautiful (KTBB) to make this project happen, and has scheduled it for Sunday, September 24th.  KPB and KTBB will provide all necessary equipment, material, logistics and training to facilitate the cleanup.  What they are asking of the synagogues and agencies is to recruit and create cleanup crews from their respective communities to participate in the cleanup.  Each participating congregation and agency will be assigned a waterfront cleanup site, and a group of Scubi Jew students to join your team.  At the end of the program, staff from KPB and KTBB will gather all the trash that the group has collected, collate data, separate recyclables from garbage and dispose of all the collected material.  Prizes will be awarded for the group with the most participants, and the group that has collected the most trash.  We will conclude the day with an “after party” for a collective Yasher Koach and Gamar Hatimah Tovah, as well as a tally of the day’s efforts.