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Prospect Park Lake. (Wikipedia.org)

Brooklyn, NY - Local Jewish community leaders are seething over a factually-inaccurate press release blaming local Jews for polluting a local lake.

The Brooklyn Paper (http://bit.ly/15mC0Hc) is reporting that community leaders are demanding a retraction.

Earlier this month, officials representing the Prospect Park Alliance issued a press release aimed at informing local Jews that their practice of tossing their chametz into the park’s lake during Passover was negatively affecting the health of the waterfowl.

The press release said, “For many years people have brought chametz to Prospect Park to throw into the lake to feed the water fowl. While this is done with good intentions, feeding the water fowl can be very harmful to them.”

However, Jewish community leaders across the community say they have never heard of such a thing, citing instead, the traditional communal burning of leftover chametz outside Jewish homes and synagogues on the morning of the first Passover seder, March 25.

“For Passover nobody drops the chametz into the lake. That is totally untrue,” said Gary Schlesinger, executive director of United Jewish Community Advocacy Relations and Enrichment.

Schelsinger added that he finds the Alliance’s blanket statement about the Jewish community “offensive.”

“The press release doesn’t say it’s just a couple of people,” chided Schlesinger—-who called the release “appalling” in his demand for a retraction.

Schlesinger said he and other local Jewish leaders have a hunch the Alliance has mistaken Passover with the Jewish ritual of ‘tashlich,’ wherein it is customary for Jews to toss crusts of bread into the water as a symbolic cleansing.

Schlesinger pointed out that tashlich is generally performed six months down the road in the early fall on the first day of Rosh Hashanah before Yom Kippur.

Chanina Sperlin, executive vice chairman of the Crown Heights Jewish Community Council, said, “They don’t have their facts straight. They should learn the customs of the Jewish community. Nobody is throwing any bread or food or any such items into the lake before Passover.”

A spokesman for the Prospect Park Alliance, Paul Nelson, said the Alliance is certain they have their facts correct and that the throwing of bread into the lake remains a real concern.

“We know nothing 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 the Alliance has brought in eight extra dumpsters and is hoping that Jews will choose to dispose of their chametz that way instead of using the lake.

However, Elisheva Carlebach, who is a professor of Jewish history at Columbia University, warned that anyone choosing to dispose of their chametz in the dumpsters, or by burying them at sea, would be violating the religious law that requires the fermented grains be either consumed, burned, or given away.

Carlebach said that while its entirely possible that someone may have chosen to discard unwanted items in the lake, it has nothing to do with Jewish tradition, or, the Jewish community.

“That’s not the proper way to dispose of chametz,” she said.

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