This year’s Rosh Hashanah event for Galim and Bogrim had a lot to prove. At the 5773/4 event the sun was out, university hadn’t started yet and everyone was raring to go after only creating the event at Veidah that year (or the previous year, depending on how you look at it) This year people where already at university and it was slightly overcast!
Yes it’s true that the weather and timing where against us, most Bogrim having already left London for their university towns and cities, but wasn’t going to stop our esteemed movement workers Tamara and Gabriel from planning hands down one of the best services and kef (fun) sessions I’ve done all year.
We began with Gabriel’s Rosh Hashanah service, complete with beloved classics like Avinu Malkeinu and Adon Olam, as well as more contemporary ideas like a photographic reconstruction of the Akeidah (available on Twitter). With guitar accompaniment by former Movement Worker Graham Carpenter and Benjy Cohen we attracted more than one compliment from random park-goers praising our wonderful music.
After the service we took rice paper and wrote down our sins from the year now gone to perform Tashlich. We went out onto the bridge and dropped the sins into the water, thereby cleansing ourselves and repenting for and transgressions. It was a peaceful and wonderful moment, watching our sins dissolve into nothingness before our eyes (or, in many of our cases, watching them get eaten by ducks, but what can you do?)
We returned to the park whereby we embraced the new year with a bit of twenty-first century fun courtesy of Tamara. Using texting and camera phones we took part in what must have appeared to passers by as nothing more than running fast and occasionally stopping to pose with a dog, but to us it was an epic and wonderful scavenger hunt, and I’m not just saying that because my team won…I promise.
In all seriousness it was an incredible way to end a near-perfect afternoon. Our new Movement Workers proved their chops by running a fantastic event that I would thoroughly recommend. If you are anywhere from sixth form to 25 I hope you come next year, I know I will.
Ben Combe, Boger.