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Climate change at the center of Lab/Shul’s Rosh Hashanah services at Hammerstein Ballroom

Lab/Shul hosted this year’s Rosh Hashanah services at the Hammerstein Ballroom in Midtown Manhattan (Photos by Tequila Minsky)

BY TEQUILA MINSKY | Lab/Shul’s High Holy Day services are being held this year in 34th Street’s Hammerstein Ballroom.

After the artist-driven, god-optional assembly of high holiday observers outgrew the City Winery in its first years, services were held further downtown, the Upper East Side and Brooklyn, as well as streamed on-line.

Always led by a ritual team of talented musicians, this year’s services included an earth altar created by Lab/Shul’s artist-in-residence Day Schildrket and in the middle of the 34th Street ballroom.

Climate change is a theme this year and each observant, given a leaf on entry, added their leaf to the earth alter.

Following services, as is the ritual, congregants walked from 34th Street to Pier 64 for the Tashlich shedding ritual, throwing bread crumbs into the moving water to represent casting away the past.

Based on Varick Street in Hudson Square, Lab/Shul will host Yom Kippur services on Oct. 8-9 at the Hammerstein Ballroom. Visit their website to reserve your seats.