Giving Thanks on Thanksgiving

We are coming up on Thanksgiving, the most Jewish of American holidays.

It is a day, that quite simply, to give thanks for the bounty that we enjoy. We might not have everything that we want and on this national holiday, we might be painfully aware of how this nation has fallen short of its promise of liberty and justice for all. 

Nevertheless, all of us have blessings for which we can be thankful, even if we are reading this from inside a hospital, even if we are reading this inside a prison. 

Cultivating a posture of thankfulness is a practice and a choice. 

There are three traditional modes of Jewish prayer - shevach, bakashot and hodaot, or as we generally translate them at BHA, wow, please and thank you.

Of those, hodaot, or gratitude, is perhaps the most central in Jewish thought.

Traditionally, the very first thing that a Jew does upon waking is say:

  מוֹדה אֲנִי לְפָנֶֶֽיָך, מֶֶֽלְֶך חַי וְקַיָּם, שֶׁהֶחֱזֶַֽרְתָּ בִּי נִשְׁמָתִי בְּחֶמְלָה, רַבָּה אֱמוּנָתֶֶֽך

I am thankful before You, Eternal Creator, for restoring my soul to me with compassion. You are faithful beyond measure.

I say that in the mornings because I know that, if left to its own devices, my soul easily finds plenty to complain about - I have so much to do, my knees are aching, it looks like it's going to rain.

I know also that just as wood is bent by the constant, gentle application of pressure, and stone is cut by the constant, gentle application of water, so too our hearts are shaped by the constant, gentle application of gratitude.

In a beautiful Thanksgiving prayer, Rabbi Naomi Levy offers thanks for the laughter of the children, for my own life breath, for the abundance of food on this table, for the ones who prepared the sumptuous feast and for much more. 

As we move into this holiday, I invite you to share the words of Rabbi Levy's prayer and invite everyone at your table to share something for which they are thankful. 

And if you are ready to go further, I invite you to take the next three weeks - from now till the beginning of Hannukah -- and begin each day with these words of hodaot, of gratitude, immediately upon awakening.

Perhaps, with practice, we will all be able to hold a posture of gratitude as a small, private daily celebration of Thanksgiving