Rabbi Jon's Website and Blog

Giving Thanks

The Hebrew word for Jew is Yehudi, after our ancestor Yehudah (Judah).  The h-d part in Judah's name is the root of the word Todah, which means "gratitude" or "thank you."  When Judah was born, his mother Leah explained his name:  "This time I give thanks to Adonai."

In other words, a Jew is by definition a person of gratitude.  For traditional Jews, the first words uttered on waking in the morning are Modeh Ani, "Thankful am I."  Rabbi Shai Held teaches that in this prayer before we get to the word "I", the focus on self, we turn to God in gratitude for the fact that we are alive another day.

So even though Thanksgiving is not a Jewish holiday per se, thankfulness is a fundamental religious quality.  Some of us are thankful because now is a time of comfort, good health, family serenity.  Others are thankful for blessings that emerge or become apparent at difficult times:  support during illness, encouragement during unemployment, friendship amidst loss or feeling adrift.

And we know that many in our own community, in our families, in our world, have fewer blessings to count at Thanksgiving than they deserve.  We should ask ourselves not only, What I am thankful for?  But also:  What am I doing, so that through me someone else has what to be thankful for?

A couple years ago I recorded a podcast about the middah (ethical character-quality) of gratitude.  It's mostly about cultivating a habit of thankfulness through everyday, seemingly banal or neutral experiences -- gratitude as the opposite of complacency.  It's pretty good and placid, if you'd like to thank more about thankfulness from the standpoint of calm and comfort.  Lately I've been thinking a lot about what gratitude and hakarat hatov ("recognizing goodness") means when life is difficult.  The audio doesn't speak to that, and it's something I hope to have more to say about soon.

I hope that wherever you are in your life right now, you can have a day of gratitude tomorrow.

L'shalom,

Rabbi Jon

Thanksgiving

Every month in the Jewish calendar, I am focusing some teaching on a different middah.  A middah is a ethical character quality, a habit we can work on in ourselves.  (Click here for the podcasts, more study material to follow.)

I began teaching last Shabbat about the middah of gratitude.  And I'm finding that at least for myself, naming a trait for the month really does draw my attention.  So yesterday I found myself at a perfect example of something I mentioned in my Dvar Torah.

I mentioned that when our youngest daughter was just starting to talk, she would say "Thank you" when she gave me her empty plate after eating.  She had associated "thank you" with giving and receiving, but was a bit fuzzy on the details.  Shouldn't I be thanking her for helping to clear the table?

But in a way, I said, she had this insight:  It doesn't matter who says thank you.  When a good or helpful deed is being done, everyone can experience gratitude.  For being the recipient, for recognizing the power of good inside yourself, for being in an environment where people take notice of each other's good deeds.

That's what I said.  So yesterday I had the honor of being a guest at the local Rotary Club lunch meeting.  Donations were being given to tens of local organizations.  One by one, each recipient got up to say "thank you" to the group.  This was after a number of thank-you's and recognitions within the meeting for volunteer work that members had done recently for one another.

Two days before Thanksgiving, it was very powerful to hear maybe fifty people say "thank you" from the microphone, one every 45 seconds or so.  And I realized the truth of my teaching, that is doesn't matter who says the words.  The organizations were no doubt thankful for the financial support.  But it was clear that the assembled gathering of givers were deeply thankful for, and awed by, the work that these organizations do.  To hear every 45 seconds about yet another group of people who meet a community need -- to know that people like this are out there -- was even more powerful

Far from being repetitive, each successive thank you built a higher and higher wave of gratitude, lifting together those who were giving and those receiving.