Hitzonim | Outsiders

How Jewish Atonement Informs Christian Liturgical Practice

Today marks Ash Wednesday in the Christian Liturgical calendar and the beginning of the Lenten season. This is a reminder that beginning Monday, we’ll pursue a study together: The Jewish History of the Lenten Season. We’ll follow Jewish Studies and New Testament professor at Vanderbilt Divinity School, Amy-Jill Levine. Read to the end to sign up!

In the Introduction to Levine’s book, Entering the Passion, she writes:

In a sense, Lent, and especially Holy Week, is a lot like the ten days leading up to the Jewish Holiday of Yom Kippur. Those days between Rosh Hashanah, the new year, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, represent a tie of introspection during which Jewish people take stock of what we have done, what we did not do well, and what we failed to do (pp. 11-12).

As Christian readers of this newsletter may be doing to prepare themselves for this season, I wanted to offer a Jewish perspective on the introspection that Levine describes.

Micah 7:19 imagines a casting off of our shortcomings this way:

“He will again have compassion upon us; he will tread our iniquities under foot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.”

In the Jewish tradition, this is referred to as Tashlich, and this article suggests a throwing of breadcrumbs (sometimes rocks) into a body of water, each crumb representing something we have not done well or that has harmed another.

So to my Christian siblings, may you use today as the starting point of lightening the heavy burden of wrongdoing that carry throughout the year.

I hope you’ll join us in study through this Lenten season, if you haven’t already.