Tashlich is the Rosh Hashanah custom of tossing bread or other small objects into moving water, to throw away our “sins” or our negativity. But today we’re going to learn about something different — reverse tashlich, in which we remove our sins from the water. We’ll explore the picture book biography, Diving Deep on Rosh Hashanah: Reverse Tashlich for a Better World by Rachelle Burk, which profiles Rabbi Ed Rosenthal and his Jewish scuba-diving ocean cleanup project, Tikkun HaYam, or Repair the Sea.
To celebrate the new year, this episode’s Share Your Shelf bonus segment is available to everyone, free and paid subscribers alike! You’ll hear it at the end of the episode, so just keep listening. Shana tova!
Love, Heidi
NEWS
My “Jewish Joy” series continues on Multicultural Kid Blogs. Here’s my interview with past Book of Life guest Adam Gidwitz. READ HERE
Interesting article from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency: “Feeling excluded in the literary world, Jews are launching their own publishing houses” READ HERE
CALLS TO ACTION
Public libraries are invited to apply for the 2026-2027 cohort of Between Two Worlds, a national program from the Yiddish Book Center that explores Jewish culture and identity through Yiddish literature in translation. Deadline to apply: August 14, 2026. APPLY HERE
The Jewish Book Garden’s kidlit discussion series, "How Does Our Garden Grow?" will meet on Sunday, August 16 at 1:30PM ET for a Zoom discussion of the picture book Shabbat Is... by A.J. Sass. REGISTER HERE
The 2026 Jewish Book Council Virtual Writers’ Conference will take place on November 8, 2026. Panel proposals will be accepted until August 18. LEARN MORE HERE
EPISODE SHOW NOTES
Rachelle Burk’s website
Rabbi Ed’s Repair the Sea website
Tikkun Olam: Sign up for Reverse Tashlich and avoid single-use plastic
Sample Share Your Shelf bonus segment — free for all subscribers this month! This is what the bonus segments always look like, take a peek.
SHARE YOUR SHELF SHOW NOTES
From Rabbi Ed’s Shelf:
Why the Moon Only Glows by Dina Rosenfeld
Hairy McClary from Donaldson’s Dairy by Lynley Dodd (see Sam Neill read-aloud video)
The Korban Mincha
From Rachelle’s Shelf:
People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks (hear 2008 Book of Life interview)
Toby Belfer Never Had a Christmas Tree by Gloria Teles Pushker
And today, one from Heidi’s Shelf:
The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin (not Jewish, but you’ll hear why when you listen to the segment)
TRANSCRIPT
Note - If you are reading this in your email, you may need to click at the bottom where it says “[Message clipped] View entire message” to read the entire transcript.
Rabbi Ed Rosenthal 0:00
[COLD OPEN] The book is alive. It tells a story. When my wife and I got married, I took the boutonniere that I wore and I pressed it in the section of the Torah portion for that week, and I wrote our names and the date. And somewhere along the line, somebody else is going to find this book. The book, it’s alive. It embodies to me books in general. Books are living things, and they tell stories, and not just the stories on the page, but the stories of the people who turn the page, and the stories of the people who listen to them, and the children who fall asleep to these stories, and the parents who cuddle with their kids, people who are praying from the books. That book to me embodies what books really are.
Heidi Rabinowitz 0:51
[MUSIC, INTRO] This is The Book of Life, a podcast about Jewish kidlit. I’m Heidi Rabinowitz. Rabbi Ed Rosenthal is the founder of Tikkun HaYam, or Repair the Sea, a nonprofit dedicated to keeping our oceans clean. Rachelle Burk is the author of Diving Deep on Rosh Hashanah, Reverse Tashlich for a Better World, a picture book biography about Rabbi Ed. Today, I’ve got both of them on the podcast for an inspiring conversation about citizen science and water Torah. You can find show notes, a transcript, and bonus content at BookOfLifePodcast.Substack.com.
Usually, I start each episode of The Book of Life with a clip from within the interview, but today’s cold open is from Rachelle and Rabbi Ed’s Share Your Shelf segment. The Share Your Shelf bonus segments are a treat for paid subscribers to The Book of Life, but this time I’m sharing the segment with everybody for free. You’ll hear it at the end of this episode — just keep listening. If you’d like to hear other guests share their shelves, you can get access by upgrading to a paid subscription to support the podcast. Thanks, and Shanah Tovah. [MUSIC FADES]
Rachelle Burk and Rabbi Ed Rosenthal, welcome to The Book of Life.
Rachelle Burk 2:18
Thank you!
Rabbi Ed Rosenthal 2:19
Thank you for having us!
Heidi Rabinowitz 2:21
Rachelle, tell us about Diving Deep on Rosh Hashanah. Just briefly, what is it about? Like an elevator pitch.
Rachelle Burk 2:27
Diving Deep on Rosh Hashanah is a picture book biography about Rabbi Rosenthal’s organization Tikkun HaYam, which is about repairing the sea. It started with his organization at Hillel, the Scubi Jews, which he can tell you more about, and it eventually became this worldwide organization, and I found it so inspiring, I just knew that kids would too.
Heidi Rabinowitz 2:52
So, Rachelle, how did you learn about Rabbi Ed and Tikkun HaYam, Repair the Sea?
Rachelle Burk 2:59
I had written already two Jewish true adventure stories. It started with Space Torah about astronaut Jeffrey Hoffman, who took the Torah into space. And then I discovered this awesome story about a Jewish mother and daughter who climbed Mount Everest and had a Passover Seder at base camp on the mountain. And I really wanted to do more true Jewish adventure stories, and because I’m a scuba diver, I really wanted to find one with that, and I put in lots of Google searches with holiday names and scuba diving, or sea. I could find nothing at all. Now, the illustrator of my two previous books was really determined to work on another book together, and he did research, and then pitched me the story, and I said, “Well, we found it! This is our next book!” And that’s how it came about. And another little interesting factoid is, when he told me about it and I started looking up the organization, and looking up about Ed, I discovered that he’s based in Tampa, and I was set to go to Tampa one month later for a school visit. And so we were able to meet, and the plan was to go on a scuba dive together….
Heidi Rabinowitz 4:09
Oh, that’s amazing! So it was meant to be.
Rachelle Burk 4:11
It was meant to be until, until the boat wouldn’t start. So we were all there, ready to go.
Rabbi Ed Rosenthal
That’s right.
Rachelle Burk
But I got a lot of good interviews. I know we will ultimately go scuba diving together.
Rabbi Ed Rosenthal 4:20
We will, we will.
Heidi Rabinowitz 4:22
So, Rabbi, how did the organization Repair the Sea come about?
Rabbi Ed Rosenthal 4:28
It came about because I worked with Hillel, the Foundation for Jewish Campus Life, for 23 years, and in an effort to engage students who wouldn’t normally come to Hillel, I started a Jewish scuba club. Because I was of the mindset that any activity becomes a Jewish activity when Jews do it together. So being an avid scuba diver, I started a scuba club at my Hillel, it was called Scubi Jew, and the students loved it, and it just grew over the years because the students who participated were mostly marine science majors, and so they were getting their passion for the ocean fulfilled through their studies. So it forced me really to do a — no pun intended — but a deep dive into what Judaism teaches about water. And what I found just sort of blew me away.
In our tradition, we see water on a very superficial level as an agent for purification, or a vehicle for miracles, or a metaphor, but there’s really so much more to it. And I shared that with the students, and it was a whole ‘nother… it’s like a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, there’s two great tastes that taste great together, [LAUGHTER] and Judaism and water in the ocean just go together beautifully.
Heidi Rabinowitz 5:48
So, you’re saying that there’s more to it than that surface level…
Rabbi Ed Rosenthal 5:52
So much more!
Heidi Rabinowitz 5:53
Again, no pun intended [LAUGHTER]. Can you tell us a bit of that? What is the deeper meaning of water in Judaism?
Rabbi Ed Rosenthal 5:59
I mean, if we’ve got a couple hours, I could keep telling you. [LAUGHTER] Yeah, it’s… we think about miracles in water, we think about the parting of the Red Sea, or Miriam’s well, or Noah’s Ark, but what we don’t realize is, for example, in the very beginning of the Torah, where it says, Bereshit bara Elohim et hashamayim ve'et ha'arets, in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And then it says, veruach Elohim merachefet al-peney hamayim, the spirit of God — it’s always translated as “hovered” on the surface of the water, but what people don’t recognize is that word for hovered is actually in the present tense, and so a better translation should be “the spirit of God is on the water,” because it’s not until the next verse, which says, and God said, ‘Let there be light, and there was light,” and that’s usually where people jump to, that’s where creation began. But the reality is that the water existed before God even spoke. And then when you start getting into other aspects of it, the parallels between our understanding of — call it God, call it whatever you want — and water: God is omnipresent, water is everywhere, God is MeChayei HaKol, the one who gives life to all. Water gives life to everything. And there’s actually a Kabbalistic text, which in the Kabbalistic cosmology, how the Kabbalah understands the nature of the world or the universe, they see everything in our world as a reflection of its true metaphysical spiritual self. So the question has to be asked, if everything in this world is a reflection of its true spiritual essence, what in our world is a reflection of what they refer to as the light, God. And Sefer HaBahir, a first century Kabbalistic text, states explicitly, Or... HaChayim Shel Mayim, that the Light, in our world, is reflected as water. And so when you think about the fact that every living organism on this planet is made up mostly of water, you begin to recognize that the spiritual essence of everything is interconnected. You know, water has no beginning and has no end. Maimonides said, God has no beginning and no…. you know, water that I’m drinking is billions of years old, but it’s fresh and delicious. There’s so much more there, and I could, I could ramble on and on. I hope you’re going to edit this, because otherwise it will be…. [LAUGHTER]
Rachelle Burk 8:37
I love listening to you talk!
Heidi Rabinowitz 8:40
Yeah, this is great! This is amazing.
Rabbi Ed Rosenthal 8:42
Thank you.
Heidi Rabinowitz 8:43
So, you created Scubi Jew as a way for the Jewish Hillel students to get together. How did that evolve into Repair the Sea, Tikkun HaYam?
Rabbi Ed Rosenthal 8:51
Well, I was teaching some Scubi Jew students back in 2016 about tashlich, and I said to them, On Rosh Hashanah, we go to a body of water, and we symbolically cast off our sins or our negativity from the previous year, so that we can enter the new year with a clean heart. And one of the students — you know, when you work with college students, there’s one in every crowd — and this one student said, You know, Rabbi, there’s already more than enough human sin in the water, why don’t we take some of that out instead? And I said, That’s a great idea, let’s do a reverse tashlich! The school is Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, and it’s a waterfront campus. So I had five students, and they removed about 75 pounds of debris from the mangroves on campus, nobody had ever cleaned them. And the following year I had 10 students, and then I had this idea to reach out to all the synagogues in the Tampa Bay area and invite them to join us, and I was amazed at the response. Every synagogue participated. The following year, I reached out to other synagogues in Florida, and I was just motivated by the response I was getting, that everybody thought this was a wonderful idea, and they wanted to be a part of it. And I am passionate about Judaism, and I’m passionate about the ocean. Since nobody else in the Jewish environmental world is doing water in the ocean, I thought, why not? It’s got to be raised, because the Jewish community is not engaged in awareness about the ocean.
Heidi Rabinowitz 10:18
So, I just want to make sure that our listeners understand about tashlich and reverse tashlich, so let’s define tashlich in the first place.
Rabbi Ed Rosenthal 10:28
Tashlich is a ceremony on Rosh Hashanah where we go to a body of water — a lake, the ocean, a river — and symbolically cast off the negativity that we have in us from the previous year as we enter the new year. And a lot of people do it with bread crumbs but I always tell people don’t use bread crumbs because it’s bad for the birds and it’s bad for the fish, it’s not their normal food, so use seashells or pebbles — it’s much better.
Heidi Rabinowitz 10:55
That’s a good idea, I never thought of that. Reverse tashlich — again with the metaphors [LAUGHTER] — dive a little deeper into reverse tashlich. How does that work?
Rabbi Ed Rosenthal 11:04
The sad fact is that there is human pollution in every body of water. The reverse tashlich, really it encourages people to go to a body of water wherever they live — not everybody is on the ocean, we have teams joining us in Oklahoma, in Wisconsin, in Africa, all around the world. So they go to a body of water, and we have a service that goes with it, and connect to it from a Jewish perspective, that what we’re doing is the fulfillment of the mitzvah of bal tashchit, which is the prohibition against needless waste and destruction, and it also is connected to the mitzvah of tza'ar ba'alei chayim, which is the prohibition against causing pain to animals, because when the plastic and the chemicals and the debris gets in the water, the marine life ingests it, and it can kill them slowly and painfully. So that’s why we do this. People do beach cleanups all the time, and that’s wonderful. What we’re doing is connecting it to A) the new year and B) to mitzvot. And the idea is that whenever you have a beach cleanup, it’s a good thing, but when you have a beach cleanup and you do it as something that’s holy, you raise it to a higher consciousness and a higher level, and that’s the reason for the reverse tashlich.
Heidi Rabinowitz 12:21
I love that. So, I’m a child of the 70s, so I watched The Undersea world of Jacques Cousteau on TV.
Rabbi Ed Rosenthal 12:28
Absolutely!
Heidi Rabinowitz 12:30
I enjoyed the shout-out in the book, but today’s young readers are probably not familiar with the show. So, Rachelle, why did you decide that it was important to include it?
Rachelle Burk 12:40
Because it’s part of Ed’s story, [LAUGHTER] That’s exactly the question that I asked him, what got you interested? Go back to your childhood, when did you first get interested in the ocean? And he told me how he used to watch that show and imagine himself like that, and if you see the illustration that Craig Orback did on that page, where he’s like lying on the floor watching television, but in his mind these, all these creatures are swimming around in his living room. He did an amazing job.
Heidi Rabinowitz 13:09
So, for any listeners who are not familiar with Jacques Cousteau, could you tell a little bit about him?
Rabbi Ed Rosenthal 13:15
Jacques Cousteau was a French oceanographer, and he invented scuba. We know scuba as the name of this equipment that people use when they go diving underwater, but SCUBA is actually an acronym, it’s Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus, and it was invented by Jacques Cousteau. People were in the ocean long before that, but what he created made it possible for people to be untethered and become part of the environment, as opposed to being tethered to the surface for their air.
Rachelle Burk 13:48
You know, Ed, I’m glad that you answered that question, because I just learned something new. I did not know that Jacques Cousteau invented scuba equipment. I knew about the acronym, but I didn’t know that it was Jacques Cousteau!
Heidi Rabinowitz 13:59
I’ll put a link in the show notes to some YouTube videos of Jacques Cousteau, so people can get a taste of that.
Rabbi Ed Rosenthal 14:04
Oh, that would be wonderful! That would be wonderful.
Rachelle Burk 14:06
Yeah, really.
Rabbi Ed Rosenthal 14:07
And, as strange as it sounds, and it wasn’t in the book, because it’s a little creepy, one of my favorite movies of all time is The Creature from the Black Lagoon. [LAUGHTER]
Rachelle Burk 14:18
Oh, I love that one, I love that one! I still have an image of that black and white creature walking back into the lagoon.
Rabbi Ed Rosenthal 14:22
Yes, but what people have probably lost sight of is, if you go to the very beginning of the movie, the movie begins not with the creature, not with anybody in the Amazon. It begins with a narrator saying, In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
Rachelle Burk 14:43
Wow, I’m gonna have to go back and watch it now.
Rabbi Ed Rosenthal 14:45
Yeah, it starts off with Torah!
Rachelle Burk 14:47
[LAUGHTER] Wow!
Heidi Rabinowitz 14:49
That’s awesome. This conversation is going in directions I didn’t expect! [LAUGHTER] So, the illustrations by Craig Orback are fairly realistic. I can definitely recognize the actual Florida landscape in them. Do either of you have a favorite scene that you’d like to call out?
Rachelle Burk 15:09
There’s the end pages at the beginning that I really like, and Craig, and I talked about it because I said, this is kind of what I envisioned. I don’t tell him what to do with any of the other images, because there’s no way that I can ever imagine anything as good as an illustrator can, but I said I sort of imagine before it even starts, showing how one little piece of plastic can work its way into the sewer, and then into a little stream, and then how it just works its way right into the ocean, to make people really aware how one tossing away of something can end up harming an animal. And so I really love how he did it. It was better than anything I could have imagined. So that’s one of my favorites, even though it’s before it starts. And I also love, besides the one at the beginning, where the creatures are in the room, I love that one, the way it mixes the reality with the fantasy. He does it similarly in the scene where Ed is talking to the congregation, and he’s sort of wanting them to envision themselves as part of the ocean. He kind of incorporates the fantasy into it.
Heidi Rabinowitz 16:06
We see people floating underwater, wearing prayer shawls, wearing kippahs, holding a Torah. Books are floating around! [LAUGHTER]
Rachelle Burk 16:14
Right. The text says “At Shabbat services, Ed spoke to his students about how the Torah teaches the importance of protecting our environment. If only they could see what he had seen on his underwater adventures, colorful reefs bursting with life.” So he’s imagining them seeing it, in a service that they’re under the ocean, surrounded by shark, a stingray, you know, turtles, fish, you know, of all kinds. So it’s really just a fantastical and fun illustration,
Heidi Rabinowitz 16:43
Awesome. Thank you. Rabbi, do you have a favorite illustration that you want to talk about?
Rabbi Ed Rosenthal 16:48
I love them all. I have to say, Craig did something so beautiful. He did this school of fish in the shape of a heart.
Heidi Rabinowitz 16:57
Oh, yes, you’re right, it’s subtle.
Rabbi Ed Rosenthal 17:00
Yeah, it’s very subtle.
Heidi Rabinowitz 17:01
To describe this scene: we have a bunch of divers with their scuba equipment on, and there’s some other creatures there watching them pick up trash. There’s an octopus and a manatee and a turtle helpfully carrying a shopping bag in its mouth, like it’s about to hand it over to them. [LAUGHTER] And you’re right, the school of fish that’s that’s schooling behind them is forming a heart shape.
Rabbi Ed Rosenthal 17:22
And I love this one, because what it’s saying to me is, marine life just lives. I mean, it’s there with you, and I like to think that they recognize that when we’re there, we’re trying to do some good for them, and so that’s what I saw in that picture.
Heidi Rabinowitz 17:40
Yeah. I’ll just tell you that one of the illustrations I really like is the illustration of Rabbi Ed sitting on a rock at the edge of the water with your feet in the water, and I love how in this illustration, you’re dry but there’s rain happening just beyond you, [LAUGHTER] and that is so Florida to be sitting there in the sun and the rain at the same time.
Rabbi Ed Rosenthal
It is so Florida! [LAUGHTER]
Heidi Rabinowitz 18:06
Yeah. It’s Tikkun Olam time. So, this whole book and the whole Repair the Sea organization are about Tikkun Olam. So, you could go into more detail about repairing the sea, or if you’d like, you can call out any other action you’d like listeners to take to help heal the world.
Rachelle Burk 18:26
Well, as you know, I recently returned from a scuba trip to Indonesia, and whenever we dove near land, as opposed to the dives that were in the middle of the ocean (because we were on a live-aboard, we were living on the boat for over a week), but when the dives were near land, we encountered a deeply discouraging amount of garbage in the coral reefs. While I was away, I actually sent Ed a photo that I took of a jellyfish that had a piece of plastic trapped inside its transparent body, and I have not been able to shake that image. It’s just swimming around with this thing stuck inside its body that you can see through it. So, my Tikkun Olam challenge is actually, it’s really a Tikkun HaYam challenge, is I encourage listeners and any organizations they’re part of to sign up for Repair the Sea’s Reverse Tashlich program and any other ocean or beach cleanup. And also to seriously consider ways to reduce their use of single-use plastics, because it was an enormous amount of that in the water, so for me that’s what I would hope the takeaway would be, is how important the ocean is, and how whether it’s a straw or a plastic bag that just blows away in a drain in a suburb, that will end up in the ocean eventually.
Rabbi Ed Rosenthal 19:40
The book of Ecclesiastes says all rivers run to the sea, so no matter where you are, our garbage ends up in the ocean. You know, in the Jewish communal agenda, the environment is very low, especially after October 7, and it’s understandable. But water in the ocean is not even on the radar. And in the Jewish environmental world it’s all about climate change. The reality is that if our planet gets hotter, it’s not going to be very nice. I mean, we’ve got an idyllic situation now, but we’re humans and we will adapt, because that’s what humans do. But the ocean as we know it is dying, and there’s a very simple fact: if the ocean dies, we all die, because the planet cannot sustain life with a dead ocean. The ocean produces 50 to 70% of all the oxygen we breathe on earth, and what we’re doing to it is a gross violation, in so many ways, of Jewish values and ethics and mitzvot. And so, as Rachelle said, I would encourage everyone to either join a reverse tashlich team where they live, if it already happens, or start one. RepairTheSea.org, it’s under Cleanups. Last year’s Reverse Tashlich had 320 teams in 31 countries.
Heidi Rabinowitz 20:58
Wow!
Rabbi Ed Rosenthal 20:58
We want more, because we want to raise this awareness. So join a reverse tashlich team or start one of your own, and as Rachelle said, get reusable products instead of single use. It’s so much better and so easy. It’s so easy.
Heidi Rabinowitz 21:15
Where can listeners learn more about your work?
Rachelle Burk 21:18
RachelleBurk.com. Of course, they’ll probably misspell my name because everybody does, it’s R A C H E L L E B U R K, No “e” dot com.
Rabbi Ed Rosenthal 21:31
And for me it’s just RepairTheSea.org. It talks about our programs. Most importantly, we have a section on our website called Ocean Issues, what the issues are from a scientific perspective and a conservation perspective, and then what is the correlation in Judaism that connects us to it.
Heidi Rabinowitz 21:51
That’s great. I love that.
I am not a scuba diver, but both of you are, so I want to ask you each to tell me a little bit about scuba diving and why you love it.
Rachelle Burk 22:02
I actually just got back from scuba diving trip in Indonesia. It’s hard to describe, as I can tell you, there’s nothing else like it that I’ve ever experienced. I didn’t learn to scuba dive until I was 52. I have close to 350 dives now. That’s how into it, you know, my husband and I are, and when you’re under the water, and when you’re seeing things that you didn’t even know existed, the marine life you’re seeing from a Jewish perspective, or any religious aspect… if anybody has questions about the existence of God, you can’t see these things without having a sense that this can’t be by accident. I never feel closer to the creator than when I am under the ocean. I never feel a greater sense of peace.
Rabbi Ed Rosenthal
Me too.
Rachelle Burk
Yeah, yeah, with my busy, never-quiet mind, there is nothing that gives me the quiet and peace as I feel when I am under the ocean.
Heidi Rabinowitz 22:57
That’s beautiful.
Rabbi Ed Rosenthal 23:00
What she said. [LAUGHTER]
I feel the same way as Rachelle, and I’m a terrible rabbi, because I feel closer to God when I’m under water than I do in any synagogue. Psalm 95 says, Asher lo hayam, the sea is God’s. When you think about it, you can put a human being anywhere on dry land, in a desert, on a mountain, in a forest, in a jungle, in a city, in a town, in the plains, and with the proper skills, that person can survive. But you drop a human being in the middle of the ocean, and they won’t. Why? Because the ocean is not ours, the sea is God’s. Going back to what I said before, every living being is mostly water. Our bodies are 70% water. 70% of the planet is water. So, when I’m underwater, I’m connected to everything. I do a lovely program with students. We do an underwater meditation on the Shema.
Rachelle Burk 23:55
Wow!
Rabbi Ed Rosenthal 23:56
Because, because when you’re underwater and when you’re connected to the water, you literally are touching every corner of the earth, or you’re connected to it.
Rachelle Burk 24:07
Can I add another sensation? And I think Ed will agree with this too. It isn’t just that sense of peace as you’re looking at the beauty, but everything that you see, the most phenomenal, the most strange, the most spectacularly gorgeous creatures under the ocean. You’re not just looking at them, you’re being with them.
Rabbi Ed Rosenthal 24:27
Yes!
Rachelle Burk 24:28
You know, I have pictures that I’m so close to a turtle, practically nose to nose. You know, they don’t all see you as a threat, and so you’re actually with them, you’re part of their world. While you’re down there, you can have a shark swimming right by you, and it doesn’t give you a second look, because it just sees you as one of them, and you start to feel like you’re really a part of it. There’s just no experience like it in the world. Is that how you feel too?
Rabbi Ed Rosenthal 24:54
Absolutely. If you go on safari in Africa, you have to stay in your Land Rover, otherwise the lions will eat you. But in the ocean, I’ve been diving with bull sharks, and everybody says, Oh, bull sharks. Not for a second did I feel any threat or danger. They are so graceful, and so powerful, and beautiful, and they just swam right around us, and there was never any worry.
Heidi Rabinowitz 25:23
Wow. Well, do either of you have any scuba diving stories, like a particularly wonderful or eventful or unusual thing that happened?
Rachelle Burk 25:37
Many, many, many stories like that. Yeah, there was a time that we were just about to get back on the boat, and I could hear this little chattery sound, and I look around me, and suddenly we’re surrounded by dolphins! And all the dives I’ve been, I’ve only seen dolphins while I was underwater five times, so it’s a fairly rare experience, but to be surrounded by them… and they’re fascinated with you, just as you’re fascinated with them, and they’re playing with the bubbles that you’re making, you know, with your dive equipment, and they’re curious, and they’re going around, and then they leave, and then they come back. That was truly amazing.
Then there was another time that I was on a night dive, it was in the Philippines, and I saw the most beautiful octopus. It was very tiny, and it had these incredible blue rings visible on it. I didn’t know what I was looking at, but I was taking photos of it, and I get back on the boat, and I say this to the dive master, I said, Look what I saw, look what I took a picture of, and he says, Do you know what that thing is? You know that is that is the very rare, very deadly blue-ringed octopus, and the rings only appear when it’s feeling threatened. And of course, at this point I already was, you know, experienced to know you just don’t touch anything underwater, which is a good thing, because I might not be here talking to you right now! [LAUGHTER] So, those are those are two of many, many, many experiences. Oh, I got body slammed by an eagle ray during a night dive in Cozumel.
Rabbi Ed Rosenthal 26:59
Oh, really? [LAUGHTER]
Rachelle Burk 27:00
Yeah, I don’t think it liked my light, and it came right at me and slammed me in the chest.
Rabbi Ed Rosenthal 27:04
No kidding!
Rachelle Burk 27:05
Yeah, you can even hear me on my video going, OOF. [LAUGHTER]
Rabbi Ed Rosenthal 27:09
You know, I think because the underwater world is so foreign to us as terrestrial beings, every experience underwater is just magical. When you breathe underwater: we’re not supposed to do that, and to do it and not die is kind of a big deal. [LAUGHTER]
I’ve only had encounters underwater with dolphins once, and it was the most magical experience I’ve probably ever had. I went early in the morning in Israel to the Katza dive site in Eilat. I was told that they would be there early in the morning, and there were no dolphins. They were getting ready to turn around and go back to shore, and all of a sudden I heard chirping. It was getting louder, and then I actually could almost feel my skin tingle because of their sonar, and next thing I knew, two huge dolphins came right up to me and my dive buddy! And you don’t touch anything, but they were right there, and I wanted to hug them, but I knew better. They were probably there for only a minute, but it was just, it was just magical.
And last year being in the water with whale sharks. You can’t scuba dive with whale sharks in Mexico, you can only snorkel with them there, but to snorkel with whale sharks is an incredibly humbling experience. They are just these gentle giants that don’t hurt anything and are about the size of a school bus, and when you’re in the water, and this magnificent being is swimming right towards you. I mean, we’re the ones who have to get out of their way [LAUGHTER], but when they’re coming right at you, and their mouths are open because they’re filter feeders or skimmer feeders, it’s just, you know, I think humans have to recalibrate our awe meter [LAUGHTER], because we don’t experience awe often enough. The awe meter was a phrase coined by Rabbi Jamie Korngold, who is a friend and who’s just amazing. She’s written some children’s books as well. She was the one who said Recalibrate our awe meter, because we don’t experience it enough, but when you’re underwater and you see these wonders, you can’t help it. You experience awe.
Heidi Rabinowitz 29:27
Is there anything else that either of you want to talk about that I haven’t thought to ask you?
Rachelle Burk 29:32
I would like to add that for any of those who say, Wow, scuba diving sounds fun, I just want to reiterate that I was 52 when I learned, and the group that I was scuba diving with, there were people in their 70s. If it’s something you’re interested in, and you’re already a senior like me, you can still do it. It’s not difficult physically, and so I really encourage anybody to look into it, and if it’s something that would interest you.
Rabbi Ed Rosenthal 29:55
Also being deeply engaged with the water is not easy. It requires a commitment. It’s easy to go for a hike in the woods and to meditate, but you have to learn how to be scuba certified. You have to learn how to sail anything that gets you on the water. You can’t just do it, and it takes that level of commitment to recognize that there’s something so incredibly powerful and awesome about the water that you can’t just walk into it, you got to really be prepared, but once you’ve made that kind of commitment, you’re hooked. That’s all there is to it.
Heidi Rabinowitz 30:36
It’s an interesting point that you can learn it when you’re older. How young can you scuba dive?
Rabbi Ed Rosenthal 30:42
They’ve got a junior certification at 10.
Rachelle Burk 30:45
Yeah, there’s restrictions on that, but you can be really young.
Rabbi Ed Rosenthal 30:48
Yeah.
Rachelle Burk 30:49
One of the things that has given me, I can’t express how much joy, is going on dive trips with my entire family. To be able to share it with your children is just such an extraordinary thing.
Rabbi Ed Rosenthal 31:01
My son is a diver. When he was actually, I guess he was 14, I took a group of Hillel students on a trip to Curaçao to combine scuba diving and Jewish heritage, and I brought my son along. We were holding hands and diving together, and it was just… it’s one of those memories of our kids’ childhood that we just never will forget.
Rachelle Burk 31:22
Doesn’t it make you like the coolest parent too?
Rabbi Ed Rosenthal 31:25
[LAUGHTER] Yeah, well, you know the reason I started Scubi Jew, and I’ll admit this: I am an incorrigible shadchan, a matchmaker. Scuba is like the most bonding experience you can ever have, because when you’re underwater, your life literally is in your buddy’s hands, and you’re seeing wonders that you can’t even imagine, but you can’t talk. And so you get above the surface, and it’s like, Oh my god, did you see that? Just so I started Scubi Jew when I was the campus rabbi at Emory University, and I wanted to buddy nice Jewish boys with nice Jewish girls… or nice Jewish boys with nice Jewish boys, I don’t care. Just to buddy them up together to strengthen relationships, maybe make a match here and there. I just think that it’s the most bonding experience you can have, and encourage parents and children alike to do it together.
Heidi Rabinowitz 32:16
Rachelle and Rabbi Ed, we’re going to go talk about your personal libraries now to see what books you’ll be sharing from your own shelves, but in the meantime, Rachelle Burk and Rabbi Ed Rosenthal, thank you so much for speaking with me today, and Shana Tova. [MUSIC FADES IN]
Rabbi Ed Rosenthal
Shana Tova, thank you!
Rachelle Burk 32:33
Shana Tova.
Heidi Rabinowitz 32:35
Share Your Shelf bonus segments are a treat for paid subscribers to The Book of Life, but this time I’m sharing the segment with everybody for free. Just keep listening! If you’d like to hear other guests share their shelves, you can get access by upgrading to a paid subscription at BookOfLifePodcast.Substack.com.
[MUSIC FADES OUT] This is The Book of Life’s Share Your Shelf bonus segment with Rachelle Burk, author of the picture book biography Diving Deep on Rosh Hashanah, and Rabbi Ed Rosenthal, the subject of that biography. Check the show notes for a link to their full interview.
So let’s set the scene by learning about your home libraries and how you organize your books, so Rachelle, let me start with you.
Rachelle Burk 33:25
I don’t actually save very many adult books, unless it’s a reference book that I’m going to go back to over and over. There’s so many books in the world, and I can’t get them all, so I’m not likely to read the same one again. The exception is children’s books. I’ve saved like a few hundred of the ones that my children loved the most, and of course, I know a lot of children’s authors, so I love collecting their books, signed copies when I can. So my children’s library is organized by type, like the age range of the children, and I have a separate section for my Jewish books, and within that, a separate section of my signed Jewish children’s books, and I’ve been saving all those for when I have my own grandchildren to share them with. [LAUGHTER]
Heidi Rabinowitz 34:06
All right, great. And Rabbi, how about your bookshelves?
Rabbi Ed Rosenthal 34:10
My bookshelves are out of control. [LAUGHTER] If we’re talking children’s books, my favorite children’s book was by Dina Rosenfeld, Why the Moon Only Glows. The story in the Torah about how the sun is the mightier, the bigger of the two lights. It’s about two children that their father is explaining this Torah story to, and I actually whited out the names of the two children and put my own kids’ names in [LAUGHTER], just try to make it more personal. As far as a non-Jewish children’s book, I used to live in New Zealand. Our son was born there, and the classic New Zealand children’s book is Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s Dairy. [LAUGHTER] So that was a real favorite in our house, and still is.
Heidi Rabinowitz 34:59
That’s a great title.
Rabbi Ed Rosenthal 35:00
Well, in fact, it’s such a classic in New Zealand: during Covid, Sam Neill, the actor who’s from New Zealand, has a whole YouTube of him reading Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s Dairy. [LAUGHTER]
Heidi Rabinowitz 35:11
Oh, how fun. I’ll have to look for that.
Rabbi Ed Rosenthal 35:13
You have to look for it. It’s great.
Heidi Rabinowitz 35:15
So I’m going to ask each of you what books you would like to share from your personal bookshelf. So, Rabbi, you shared children’s books. Do you have any other books that you wanted to mention from your own shelves?
Rabbi Ed Rosenthal 35:27
I have a book that is precious to me. When I was in rabbinical school, I was sent to a small synagogue in deep south Texas as a student rabbi, and there was a little building behind the synagogue they used to use for their religious school, and it had been empty for years. There were boxes in the Sunday school building that had just been sitting there forever, and could I look through them to see if I found anything? And I went, and the building hadn’t been opened in years, and it was like so hot and horrible, and there were lizards and snakes, it was terrifying. And there were boxes of books, and they were all old Sunday school books that, when you touched them, they just fell apart. And I put my hand in a box, and I hit something solid. It was a bima sized edition of an old sidur called Korban Mincha. And I took it out, I started looking at it. It was published by the Romm Press in Vilna in 1864. The Romm Press was the biggest Jewish publishing house in Europe prior to the Holocaust. And I started thumbing through the pages. It was such high quality paper. I got to the section of the Pilgrimage Festivals, the Shalosh Regalim, and somebody had put in the spine of the book four 4-leaf clovers and I thought, Oh my gosh, Who did that? And then I started turning more, and I saw splotches on the page, and I thought, What is this? And it was the Haggadah and the Dam, Tzefardeia, somebody dipped their fingers in the cup of wine and touched it to the book. And then I looked closer, and there were matzah crumbs, where we say the mitzvah of eating matzah, Al Achilat Matzah, and then I looked back a few other pages, and there were bread crumbs for the Bedikat Chametz, and then I kept looking through this book, and I got to the section of Selichot, of prayers before Rosh Hashanah. I got to the prayer for a sick child, and I turned the page, and there was a lock of blond hair with a blue ribbon around it, and then I moved it to the side, and underneath was written “Helen, May 22, 1895.”
Rachelle Burk 37:40
Wow.
Rabbi Ed Rosenthal 37:41
And the book is precious to me, not only because of the book itself as a prayer book. The book is alive. It tells a story. When my wife and I got married, I took the boutonniere that I wore and I pressed it in the section of the Torah portion for that week, and I wrote our names and the date. And somewhere along the line, somebody else is going to find this book. The book, it’s alive. It embodies, to me, books in general. Books are living things, and they tell stories, and not just the stories on the page, but the stories of the people who turn the page, and the stories of the people who listen to them, and the children who fall asleep to these stories, and the parents who cuddle with their kids, people who are praying from the books. That book to me embodies what books really are.
Heidi Rabinowitz 38:36
That is an amazing story. It’s like a real-world version of People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks about the Sarajevo Haggadah. She imagines what happened to make these artifacts present in the book afterwards. So you found the same thing, you found the actual stuff in the book that represents people living with the book and using the book! [LAUGHTER]
Rabbi Ed Rosenthal 38:58
Yes, yeah!
Heidi Rabinowitz 38:59
Actually, it reminds me also of a personal book of mine. It’s not a Jewish book, The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin. When I was college age, I had a copy that I loved, and I reread, and then I lent it to my friend Matt so that he could read it. For years, I was like, What happened to my copy of The Dispossessed, whatever happened to that book? [LAUGHTER] Well, we didn’t see each other for 18 years... and then we reconnected… and now we’re married.
Rachelle Burk
Oh!
Heidi Rabinowitz
We each had — we each brought with us our copy of The Dispossessed, and when I saw his copy: that was my old copy [LAUGHTER] that I didn’t know for years what happened to it. And in it there was a note from when people used to take telephone messages in his mom’s handwriting, where she wrote, “Heidi called you, call her back,” [LAUGHTER] and it was stuck in the book as a bookmark!
Rabbi Ed Rosenthal
Oh, that’s great!
Heidi Rabinowitz
That book now represents the earlier part of our connection and the later part of our connection. So that’s, you know, artifacts in books, it’s pretty amazing.
Rabbi Ed Rosenthal 40:05
I love it. That’s great.
Rachelle Burk 40:05
That is so weird. What a great story!
Heidi Rabinowitz 40:09
So, Rachelle, what book would you like to share from your personal bookshelf?
Rachelle Burk 40:14
It’s really funny, because even before Ed mentioned that book that he’s talking about, I was thinking of Geraldine Brooks’ People of the Book, and as he’s telling that story, I’m thinking, Oh, wow, I’ve got to tell him that, that this is just like the book I was going to recommend!
Heidi Rabinowitz 40:31
Oh, that’s so perfect! That’s the book you were going to talk about?
Rachelle Burk 40:33
That was the adult book. If you recall, there was the present day woman who actually found this Haggadah, and there were so many mysteries, because it was supposed to be printed in one place, and they had some artifacts in the book, like book plates that were created that was from one country, yet that there was flowers pressed in the book that was only from another… and so it goes back in time, and they have different chapters that actually take the reader back to that time, starting from when the book was written, and this goes back hundreds of years, and then it goes through how the book got in different hands and in different countries, and then finally where it is today. It was just an amazing book.
So, my complaint was, I listened to it in audio. There’s two different ways you can say Haggadah. You can say HagGAdah, or in Hebrew, they would say HaggaDAH. You’d think that the narrator of the book would have researched it a little, but continued to say it HAggadah the whole time, and it drove me absolutely crazy. [LAUGHTER] HAggadah, and it’s like, really?? It’s the one thing you should have gotten right in this book! But that was the one that I was going to share, in terms of a Jewish book.
Heidi Rabinowitz 41:36
That’s like so perfect that you shared that particular book after what we just talked about. I also want to point out that actually, because this podcast has been going for so long, I interviewed Geraldine Brooks about People of the Book, like 19 years ago, or whatever it was. So…
Rachelle Burk 41:54
Oh, wow.
Heidi Rabinowitz 41:55
Yeah. So, I’ll put a link to that in the show notes.
Rachelle Burk 41:58
She’s pretty awesome. I just absolutely adore her writing. So, in terms of a children’s book, probably my oldest children’s book that I have on my shelf, but it’s also the one that is the most deeply personal to me, it’s called Toby Belfer Never Had a Christmas Tree. It was published by Pelican Books, which is a Louisiana publisher, in 1991. And this children’s book was written by my late, very beloved great aunt. It was the first in what became a series of picture books about a young Jewish girl growing up in rural Louisiana. And what makes this book especially meaningful to me is that, although it’s written as fiction, it is rooted in my own family’s history. What happened in the book really did happen. I’m a third-generation descendant of Russian immigrants who settled in New Orleans, where the Jewish community was and still is very small, and this book opened the door to conversations with my aunt about her experiences growing up as part of the only Jewish family in this small Louisiana town. So I think of this book in the context of L’dor Vador, the passing of stories, values, and identity from one generation to the next, and notably, this book is still in print since 1991.
Heidi Rabinowitz 43:11
And that’s quite a feat, because books go out of print quick.
Rachelle Burk 43:14
Absolutely, absolutely.
Heidi Rabinowitz 43:17
This is amazing. I’m so happy that we were able to have this conversation, because this has been just incredible. Was there anything else that you guys wanted to share before we wrap it up?
Rachelle Burk 43:27
Well, Ed and I have been planning to have a book release event underwater on a scuba dive in Florida. We’re working out the details of that, but it is going to happen. This is going to be the most exciting book release event that I’ve ever had.
Heidi Rabinowitz 43:40
So, won’t the book get ruined if you take it underwater? Like, how does that work?
Rachelle Burk 43:45
Well, yeah. [LAUGHTER] Yeah, yeah, it will. It could be worth it, or we also bat around the idea of laminating a photo of the cover and taking that, so it could be one of the other. You know, if we take it down and it’s all ruined and wet, it’s almost like a keepsake that this is the one that went underwater.
Heidi Rabinowitz 44:02
That’s true. Well, Rachelle and Rabbi Ed, thank you so much for sharing your shelves and for joining me on the book of life. Happy reading!
Rabbi Ed Rosenthal 44:10
Thank you, Heidi.
Rachelle Burk 44:11
Thank you, and thank you so much for having us.
Heidi Rabinowitz
Shana tova!
Rabbi Ed Rosenthal 44:15
Shana Tova to you.
Rachelle Burk 44:16
Shana Tova.
[MUSIC, DEDICATION]
Amy Fellner Dominy 44:20
Hi, this is Amy Fellner Dominy, author of A House with No Door.
Barbara Lerman-Golomb 44:25
This is Barbara Lerman-Golomb, author of The Sukkah Hop.
Sidura Ludwig 44:28
And this is Sidura Ludwig, author of Our Spectacular Sukkah. We’ll be joining you soon on The Book of Life podcast, and we’d like to dedicate this episode to all the sukkah builders, past, present, and future. It’s amazing how this temporary structure is something that we come back to again and again, year after year, and every year when we build a sukkah, it’s like we’re putting ourselves right in the Jewish story. So we just wanted to honor that with this upcoming episode.
Heidi Rabinowitz 45:06
[MUSIC, OUTRO] Say hi to Heidi at 561-206-2473, or bookoflifepodcast@gmail.com. I’d love to hear from you! Subscribe for free to BookOfLifePodcast.Substack.com to get show notes, transcripts, Jewish kidlit news and calls to action right in your inbox. If you’d like to receive the bonus Share Your Shelf segments, you can upgrade to a paid subscription. The Book of Life is also on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and our 20-year back catalog is online at BookOfLifePodcast.com. Want to read the books featured on the show? Buy them through bookshop.org/shop/bookoflife to support the podcast and independent bookstores at the same time. The Book of Life is sponsored by the Association of Jewish Libraries, the leading authority on Judaic librarianship. Learn more at JewishLibraries.org. Additional support comes from Congregation B’nai Israel of Boca Raton, Florida At CbiBoca.org, AJL also sponsors our sister podcast, Nice Jewish Books, a show about Jewish fiction for adults. Stick around past these credits and you might hear a promo for the latest episode of Nice Jewish Books! Our theme music is provided by the Freilachmakers Klezmer String Band. Thanks for listening and happy reading! [END MUSIC]
We started doing Reverse Tashlich at our shul last year and it was a great success. Mazel tov on the new book highlighting his work!