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RABBINIC REFLECTION BY RABBI michael berk
Thanksgiving Interfaith Service November 21, 2007
On Gratitude
As I was thinking of what message I’d share with you this Thanksgiving eve, I began focusing on the human characteristic that bothers me the most: arrogance, which I believe is especially prevalent in people who experience gratitude the least in their lives. And I began to wonder: from where did I learn gratitude? If you are here tonight, I suspect it’s because you recognize that Thanksgiving is more than a day to consume nearly 5,000 calories (which the NY Times reported yesterday is the average number of calories Americans will consume at tomorrow’s feasts), but a time to experience gratitude, as the name of the holiday explicitly reminds us. So in addition to thinking about what you are grateful for, I wonder if you can think about who in your life taught you to feel gratitude.
For me, I think it was my father. My father was born in 1917, graduated high school in the worst years of the depression, left home and began working. I never met anyone who worked harder. Yet my father was just about the most enthusiastic person I ever met. He enjoyed the simplest of things: if he was really thirsty, and he drank a glass of soda, he’d say: “This was the best glass of 7-UP!” One night the family was awoken in the middle of the night by a terrible wind storm and power outage. We sat in silence in our living room at 3 in the morning. Suddenly my father proclaimed: “Boy did I have a great shower this morning!”
I realize now that I’m older that these expressions of his were prayers – prayers of gratitude. I never realized until I was older that my father in his way was quite religious. He even named the pool in our backyard, Mechayeh, which is difficult to translate but is a Yiddish-Hebrew word meaning something which revives you, breathes new and refreshing life into you. Every time he jumped into that pool, he said it was a mechayeh. That was his prayer of thanksgiving for the privilege of being able to experience the simple joy of swimming after the hard work he did all day.
As Jews and Christians who have come together on this Thanksgiving Eve, we can point to another place where we have learned about gratitude, the part of the Holy Scriptures each of us treasure. We all know that the our nation’s leaders were quite well versed in Scriptures, and they based this holiday of thanksgiving on the thanksgiving festival in the Hebrew Bible, called “Sukkot” – which translates simply as, “Huts.” The focus of Sukkot and Thanksgiving is all that we have to be grateful for. These are holidays which turn our attention outside of ourselves so that we see how close we all really are, how dependant we are on each other.
These thanksgiving observances are beautiful holidays. The decorations we use for both are symbols of our plenty, signs of an abundant harvest. But the reality of life is that abundance is far from the condition faced by many at this time. We could literally toss darts at a world map and one out of three would hit a spot of famine, disease, or disaster.
It is so easy to become complacent, to believe that we are special, and we are blessed; to disconnect ourselves from others. It’s so easy to tell ourselves that since life is good for us, then all must be well with the world. Those bloated bellies we see in newspapers and on our televisions are not here, and they are not new, and gee, what can I do, and besides, I have my own thanksgiving holiday to prepare for. So I think the first message of our thanksgiving holiday must be: prepare your thanksgiving feast, but be mindful that others have little or nothing to put on their tables. Be sensitive to the universal condition, our traditions teach us. There will always be poor folks and there will always be starvation and there will always be people in need. Be mindful of that, and be sensitive. As we prepare our feasts, let’s not forget to put aside a bit for others.
This is not a time for us to feel guilty for what we have. The Jewish tradition does not teach that those who have should feel guilty for their good fortune. On the contrary, we should feel most grateful for what we have and we should see it for what it is… good fortune. It is not divine judgment that we are more worthy than others. We have what we have because we were in the right place at the right time. Transpose the place of birth of any one of us to, say, Darfur, and chances are good that we would not now have the wherewithal to feed our families on a consistent basis or to see ourselves as persons of dignity and self respect, much less prepare a huge, 5,000 calorie-per-person feast.
The Jewish Thanksgiving festival, and our American Thanksgiving holiday ought to remind us to take care of those who have less than we, but not just because we have abundance. In the Jewish tradition, even the poor are supposed to give charitably. In the Bible we are told that anyone who owns a field must always leave a corner of it unharvested for the poor and the stranger. No matter what our circumstances, Judaism expects us to be grateful for what we have, and to express that gratitude by being kind to others. That is, we are all supposed to enjoy our Thanksgiving feasts, but be mindful that others have nothing, or little, to put on their Thanksgiving tables.
There is a beautiful mystical tradition associated with Sukkot. We are taught that seven Biblical personalities visit each Sukkah, the huts we build in our backyards, each year. This custom is called ushpizin, and the visitors are Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, and David. Why these seven people? Because, one tradition states, they are all refugees and they know what it means to wander. So another aspect of giving thanks for our bounty is to reach out and welcome others to your feasts. This means helping others in need, of course, but it also means being available to neighbors and family and friends, those who are suffering the pains and pangs of life – the recently widowed, the newly infirm, the recently divorced. It means to open the doors of our hearts to others – as we saw so many in our community do recently during the fires which ravaged our county a few weeks ago. Thanksgiving observances remind us to extend not only the arm of aid and assistance, but also the hand of hope and compassion.
When we give thanks for our blessings, when we count our blessings, we become sympathetic to the plight of others even as it points to a heightened awareness of our good fortune. Don’t take life for granted, Thanksgiving teaches us. Time is swift in its flight, and our lives and our conditions are transitory. Nothing is static; everything in life is ever changing. The older I get, the more I learn the truth of the words, “If you want to make God laugh, tell Him what you are planning to do tomorrow.” So, this holiday beckons us to be grateful for what we have, but also to be ready to reach out to those who have lost, who are in need, who are in turmoil.
The ideas in this sermon are really quite simple, but I think very poignant in our times. We live in an age where so many, especially our young, operate with a level of entitlement unknown in human history. And while the level of this arrogance may be new, the concern for it is very ancient. In Deuteronomy we are warned: “When you have eaten your fill, and have built fine houses to live in, and your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold have increased, and everything you own has prospered, beware lest your heart grow haughty and you forget the Eternal your God… and you say to yourselves, ‘My own power, and the might of my own hand have won this wealth for me.’ Remember that it is the Eternal your God who gives you the power to get wealth.” One of the sages of the Jewish people commented on this, describing people I am sure we all know: “Forgetting God occurs when you connect your success to your own strength, and you don’t bless [God] for it.” Another commentator wrote: “If it should occur to you that it was by your strength and the might of your hand [that you have succeeded], remember the One who gave you strength and might.”
How do we guard against this kind of haughtiness? Given enormous success, especially in this country, which says to each of us, the only limits to your success is your own energy, creativity, and intelligence, how do we keep our egos in check? How do we remain grateful to God? There is one very simple antidote, which goes a long way. In the Talmud, the rabbis teach: “It is forbidden to enjoy anything of this world without a benediction, and if anyone enjoys anything of this world without a blessing, he commits sacrilege.” Rabbi Levi went on and contrasted two apparently conflicting Biblical verses. “It is written, ‘The earth is the Eternal’s and the fullness thereof,’ and it is written, “The heavens are the heavens of the Eternal, but the earth God has given to human beings.” There is not contradiction,” the sage taught. “…in the one case it is before a blessing has been said, in the other case, after.”
In other words, our prayers of thanks for the food we eat is our way of paying what’s due to the Creator of everything; the ultimate source of our bounty. We Jews start each meal with a simple blessing, which, according to the rabbis of the Talmud, is how we become entitled to enjoy the food we are about to eat: “Blessed are You, Eternal One, our God, Ruler of the universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.” It is unthinkable to a religious person not to be grateful for the food he or she is privileged to eat, especially in a world where more than half of population will go to bed hungry tomorrow night.
So I return to thinking about the man who taught me about gratitude. I know I should be grateful that my father lived so long, and I am, but I still feel the pain of his death. I loved him and miss him. But when I feel that ache, I recall how my dad dealt with pain – and he knew a lot of it in his life: be strong, be thankful, celebrate life. Turn pain into appreciation, thanksgiving, celebration, compassion. My father’s sweetness keeps rising inside me. It’s hard to be bitter when someone in your life taught you how to deal with bitterness and how to find the goodness in life. My father had a thousand reasons to be bitter, to complain about the struggles and difficulties in his life. But he had no bitterness. He didn’t even complain about the hell he endured for the last eleven and a half years of his life spent in a wheelchair. My father taught me about the quiet heroism of someone who dreads transferring from a wheel chair to the toilet but still feels grateful for every breath he took. He put all his strength into it. No whining. Just strength. I pray for the strength to face life with his courage and his gratitude.
The psalmist wrote: It is good to give thanks to God
And to sing praises to Your name, O Most High
To proclaim Your goodness in the morning
And Your faithfulness at night.
Rabbi Michael Berk
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