Starting The New Year And Saving The World

I'm not Jewish.  Well, all right, according to my DNA test, I am 8 percent.  Somehow I had always suspected I had Semitic blood because I have always, in some weird way, identified with Jewish people, if not their religion. (I don't identify with any religion, though I was raised Catholic.)  But yesterday I was, in a way, Jewish. Or I could have been.

Rosh Hashannah, a.k.a. "Jewish New Year," began Sunday evening and ended last night. As a result, I had two days off from school for a religion I don't observe. (Hmm...How do Muslims feel on Christmas or Easter?)  On Monday, I did a couple of things and didn't do a few more things I could've/should've done.  Yesterday, though, I decided to channel 8 percent of my heritage and observe a new year.

No, I didn't go to schul any more than I went to school.  Instead, I decided that one way to honor my mother--and preserve whatever exists of my sanity--was to make a new beginning with a new year.

Now, since you're reading a bike blog,  you probably have guessed that my new year began with a bike ride.   It's one I've taken a number of times this year:  over the RFK Memorial Bridge to Randall's Island, and from there through the Bronx and Westchester County to Greenwich, Connecticut.  Not surprisingly, I saw a number of people--mainly in groups I assumed to be families--on their way to or from schul, or perhaps to someone's house.  

The weather was more like early summer than early fall:  the temperature rose to about 27C (82F) along with the humidity.  Still, the ride was quite pleasant:  The sun shone enough to cheer me up but was veiled by enough clouds to not drain me.  

After riding home, I made myself a meatless concoction of vegetables:  fresh spinach, scallions, sweet peppers, corn and mushrooms, sauteed in olive oil and garlic and garnished with some cheddar cheese and red pepper flakes. It was tasty, if I do say so myself. I chased it with a small Macoun apple, Anjou pear, some blueberries and a chocolate-glazed French crueller.

Then I checked my e-mail and came across this:



With all of the things going on in the world, it was nice to begin the new year with some good news.  The cyclists are in Spain, but in rescuing that deer, they did a service to the world, as far as I am concerned.  Whoever saves a life saves the world.  Even if you haven't read the Talmud, you probably have heard that line, perhaps in Schindler's List.

They Were Going Their Way. So Were We.

They were crossing and walking in the bike lane.  In families, all of them:  very young girls and boys with curls cascading from their heads, their mothers' hair pulled back or covered, the men crowned with fur hats.  Sometimes they had to stop to take their kids' hands and guide them across the path; others stopped to talk, to behold the evening descending upon them, upon us.

Right in the middle of the bike lane.  All up and down the bike lane.  

And I didn't get upset with them.  None of the other cyclists seemed to, either.  We couldn't, really.  There were hundreds of those families, walking to or from the river or their houses.  There just wasn't any place else for them to walk.

We--for a moment, we became a community, even though none of us knew each others' names, and we may never meet again--all turned right on Ross Street and three blocks later, took a left on Hipster Fifth Avenue, a.k.a. Bedford Avenue, which parallels Kent Avenue and its bike lane.

We, all of whom were riding north on the lane, knew that whatever we thought of riding on Bedford Avenue, it was better than weaving through men and women and dodging children.  It was also, frankly, the most civilized thing any of us could have done.  

Alexsander Gierymski, Hasidic Jews Performing Tashlikh on Rosh Hashanah, 1884

We all knew enough to do that.  I wonder whether we all knew better than to ride through the Hasidic enclave of South Williamsburg at sundown on Rosh Hashanah.  I knew that the holiday began at sundown yesterday and will continue until sundown tomorrow.  But I just instinctively followed the streets to the Kent Avenue bike lane, which I normally take when I'm riding home from Coney Island, as I was today, or anyplace else in southern or western Brooklyn.

And those Hasidic families were, no doubt, walking their normal routes between schul, the river--where they cast pieces of bread into the metallic water for their tashlikh-- and their homes.  We couldn't begrudge them that, even if they were in "our" bike lane!