The Magic of the High Holidays

Pockets are indispensable. Sometimes, especially around the High Holidays, they're even magical. In Bella Chagall's memoir, Burning Lights, (published in Yiddish in 1945, translated into English the following year), the author describes her turn-of-the-century childhood in Vitebsk. In the chapter on Rosh Hashanah, she describes a fearsome atmosphere, as seen through the eyes of a small girl. When the shofar blows, "I recall all my sins. God knows what will happen to me: so much has accumulated during the year!" Young Bella (or Bashke, as she was known then) accompanies her mother to the riverbank for Tashlikh. She sees the men turn their pockets inside out, "little crumbs, scraps, detach themselves from the linings. But how shall I shake off my sins? I have no crumbs in my pockets -- I do not even have pockets." Bashke must settle for her words as a sin offering, casting them into the river until it is "swollen with all our sins …"