Park Urges Jews to Stop Tradition the Doesn’t Exist
Prospect Park officials are urging Jews to stop throwing bread into the green space’s massive lake as a Passover rite, but religious Brooklynites insist that’s not even part of their holiday tradition.
The Prospect Park Alliance sent out a press release earlier this month warning Jews that waterfowl suffer when the observant use the park’s 60-acre lake as a place to toss chametz — leavened breads that cannot be consumed or kept in the house during the eight-day holiday.
“For many years people have brought chametz to Prospect Park to throw into the lake to feed the waterfowl,” the release reads. “While this is done with the best of intentions, feeding the waterfowl can be very harmful to them.”
But Jewish community leaders across the borough say they have never heard of anyone disposing chametz into a body of water — instead they say that on March 25, the morning of the first Passover seder, Jews will take part in a thousand-year-old tradition by symbolically and communally burning their leftover chametz outside either their homes or synagogues.
“For Passover nobody drops the chametz into the lake. That is totally untrue,” said Gary Schlesinger, the executive director of the Williamsburg-based United Jewish Community Advocacy Relations and Enrichment organization, who added that he takes offense to the Prospect Park Alliance’s singling out of the Jewish community as a whole.
“The press release doesn’t say it’s just a couple of people,” said Schlesinger who has called upon the Alliance to retract the “appalling” release.
Schlesinger and other Jewish leaders suspect that the Prospect Park Alliance is mistaking Passover with the Jewish ritual of tashlich — a custom in which Jews gather by bodies of water to toss bread crusts in a symbolic cleansing ceremony.
But tashlich is generally performed on the first day of Rosh Hashanah before Yom Kippur in the early fall — roughly six months from now.
“They don’t have their facts straight,” said Chanina Sperlin, the executive vice chairman of the Crown Heights Jewish Community Council. “They should learn the customs of the Jewish community. Nobody is throwing any bread of food or any such items into the water before Passover.”
Prospect Park Alliance spokesman Paul Nelson said that he is certain his organization did not mix up the holidays — and that bread-tossing is a real concern for park birds.
“We know about the religious ceremony right before Yom Kippur. That’s not the issue,” said Nelson. “We have observed for years people bringing bread to the park right before Passover. It’s not one neighborhood or one branch of Judaism. It’s not an organized process or one group. That’s why we’re trying to get the word out to as many different places as possible.”
Nelson said that the Alliance has installed eight additional Dumpsters in the park in hopes visitors will choose to trash their chametz instead of throwing it into the lake.
But Columbia University Jewish history professor Elisheva Carlebach says anyone using Dumpsters or burying chametz at sea is not following religious law, which requires fermented grain products be consumed, given away, or burnt.
“It’s completely possible that such a thing happened and that there may be some individuals who are on their own dumping stuff in the lake, which they shouldn’t, but it has got nothing to do with the Jewish tradition and nothing to do with the Jewish community,” she said. “That is not the proper way to dispose of chametz.”
Milhouse
Columbia University Jewish history professor Elisheva Carlebach has no idea what she’s talking about. Throwing chametz away, whether into a dumpster or the lake, is a perfectly acceptable way of getting rid of it. So is throwing it in the sea, or crumbling it and letting the wind blow it away, or just leaving it in a public place and declaring it ownerless (so long as it’s done before 12 noon this Monday).
Milhouse
And by the way, there’s no real tradition of throwing bread at tashlich either, but people do it anyway, either out of ignorance or because they like it.
chanchi
C. Sperlin is not the executive vice chainman of the Crown Heights Jewish Community Council. He was thrown in an election of the Crown Heights Jewish Council. All he is is a puppet of Dove Heikind
George Costanza
They are talking about all the Jews that feed the ducks year round.
both wrong
actually throwing bread at tzhlich becomes a shaaleh because one is not allowed to feed the animals that don’t count on them daily ofr food, on shabbos or yom tov
You are wrong too
One may feed ANY animals on shabbos or yom tov IF the person has a benefit from it. Therefore one may, as the custom in MANY Jewish communities, put out kasha for birds on shabbos Shira, because the person benefits by making a zecher for kriyas yam suf. Likewise, throwing crumbs into lake also benefits the person, because it symbolizes throwing avros into the depth of the sea. If you have a shaylah, find a tshuva (answer)!
Milhouse
No, he is not wrong, he’s exactly right. An adult may *not* feed the birds on Shabbos Shira; the minhag is davka that children under bar mitzvah feed the birds, and if an adult wants to do it he should do it before Shabbos.
And there is no source at all for throwing crumbs into the lake, and therefore it is assur, and the poskim warn about this, but what can one do when there are amhoratzim like you who perpetuate this false custom.
DB
Don’t you think the park would knows what goes on at their own premises?Tradition or not,if people do it,they want them to stop.However, many other people other than Jews probably do it too,but that is not the point here.
Milhouse
The Prospect Park Alliance does not own the park! It’s not their premises.
DB
Whatever the case ,they do run the park and would know what goes on there.
Anon
Animals are not supposed to be fed processed human food which is why they have signs saying to not feed them.
Cma
Calm down community leaders. Stop making a mountain of a molehill.
You got the Wrong end of the stick
they are just anti semetic
any chance to diss us they will come!
B`chol Dor V`Dor…….
teachers teach children that we shake out our pockets to show that we are shaking out our aveirois so that’s why some people shake out crumbs!
so now it has become a habit to put bread in your pockets to make crumbs then spill them in the water!
LOGIC!
Massachusetts
Don’t know about anyone else, but after cleaning out my freezer the other night, I just sent my babysitter and kids with a huge bag of bread to feed the ducks and geese at the local pond.