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Paula Maccabee shares a bit about how water is connected to Jewish traditions and is part of renewal at the new year.
How is water a part of your cultural, spiritual, or community traditions?
Transcript:
My name is Paula Maccabee and my pronouns are she/her, and I am serving as the Advocacy Director and Counsel for Water Legacy, and it's what I've been doing for the past 13 years, more than full time on a contract basis. All of my professional work has been about Minnesota waters and the communities, whether it's plants or animals or human beings, who rely on having abundant and clean fresh water. I live about a mile from the Mississippi river.
Oh, you asked what's the first word that comes to my mind when I hear the word water, and the first word that comes to my mind is mayim, which is the Hebrew word for water. And many of the songs that I heard growing up celebrate water. And in my tradition from Judea, from Jewish communities, every year at our high holidays new year the idea is that we go to the water and we symbolically cast bread on the water as a way of renewing ourselves, casting away all the things that we regret from the past year, and deciding as a community and as individuals to do better to bring light and life and resolution into the world.
