Dearest TBC Friends,

Here we are just a day or so from Thanksgiving. At this time of year, many of us find it meaningful to reflect on what we are grateful for. Some years that is harder than others. With that in mind, I would like to offer some thoughts that I shared at our Congregational Meeting on Sunday on the Jewishness of giving thanks in the face of uncertainty or, what to do when gratitude is hard. 

It’s almost Thanksgiving, a favorite holiday for many Reform Jewish clergy because it’s one holiday on which we don’t have to work! I think the real reason Thanksgiving is so beloved though, not just to clergy but to so many Jews is because it is at once radically inclusive – a holiday that belongs to all Americans regardless of language, faith, ethnicity or class, and has a message that is universally meaningful and simple – gratitude.

We have loads to be grateful for! When so much of our American culture is rooted in a scarcity mindset, it’s easy to forget how fortunate we are. Messages like, we don’t have enough, aren’t enough, and there isn’t enough are reinforced daily. This mixture of capitalism and evolutionary biology has us believing we don’t – and can’t ever – have enough stuff and security, leaving us forever wanting.

Judaism, however, is a foil for this because abundance and gratitude are deeply woven into our liturgy and tradition. Upon waking each morning, we are supposed to recite a prayer of gratitude simply for being alive, the Modeh Ani. It reads:

Thankful am I before You, ever-living Sovereign of all, for you have returned my soul within me with compassion; great is your faithfulness.

Shortly after Modah Ani, we recite the Elohai Neshama, which contains these words:

My God. The soul which You placed in me is pure. You created it, You formed it, You breathed it into me. You guard it in me. You will take it from me in the future, and return it to me in time to come. The entire time the soul is within me I am grateful to You, Adonai, my God and God of my Ancestors.

But why start our days with gratitude when realistically we are more likely to be groaning or smacking the snooze button? The Shulchan Aruch, one of our most important legal texts, explains it this way:

...[we say Modeh Ani/I am grateful] because while lying in bed [each morning] you should realize before Whom you lay and as soon as you awaken you should remember the kindnesses of The Holy One, Blessed be the Name, that were granted to you; that your soul was returned to you [for another day]. You committed it to the Creator faint and weary [when you lay down to sleep] and it was returned to you new and refreshed, enabling you to serve God for a whole new day...(Kitzur Shulchan Arukh 1:2)

Amazing! And right now, that feels a bit detached from reality. For over a year, to many of us, the world has felt like an increasingly scary place, one ripe with violence and antisemitism where we as Jews cannot take for granted the ability of others to see our humanity. In such fraught times, communally, and as individuals, when we are sick or sad or lonely, it can be hard to feel grateful or profess gratitude. So, then what?

Not surprisingly, our tradition addresses this ambivalence. The last section of the Mishnah, the first written collection of our Oral Law, wrestles with the question of gratitude in bad times. We read of a lively Rabbinic debate about whether we are required to bless the bad as well as the good. Why even consider blessing the bad? Because Judaism’s emphasis on daily gratitude is actualized in the obligation to bless. It is a Mitzvah – a commandment. From the moment we wake in the morning until the moment we go to sleep, we are meant to find things to bless. We bless before we eat, after we eat, we bless when we dress, when it rains, we bless because we’re Jews. 100 blessings a day is the goal. And the Mishnaic Rabbis were also realists who contended with the question of how to bless in a world that, at best, doesn’t always feel overflowing with blessing.

On a recent episode of the podcast, “TEXT-ing”, Professors Elana Stein Hain and Christine Hayes discussed this Mishnah, and the Rabbis meaning of blessing the bad and the good.

Here’s one example: In Mishnah Brachot 3 the Rabbis are recorded as saying – one who recites a blessing for the bad as though it’s good or for the good as though it’s bad, all of these blessings are in vain. For example, when there’s a flood because a dam is breached and some water comes onto my land, that’s good for me. But it’s bad that there’s a flood, so we shouldn’t say a blessing as though it’s good. Instead, we are meant to say a blessing over an evil thing that has some measure of good, or that is a mix of good and bad: a mixed blessing.

Another example from the Talmud this time is a story about finding a treasure which, on the face of it, is a good thing. But in the Rabbinic period, finding a treasure often meant the king would take it from you. Despite that, the Rabbis insist, you should not say, oh cursed is my luck that I found this treasure. You should acknowledge the good, even knowing that it may be fleeting – Don’t give a blessing that denies reality. So, don’t say blessings for things that are good for you and bad for other people, like the flood. And know that sometimes, something good is happening and worthy of blessing even if you know it is only temporary.

Are we then meant to focus on gratitude when things are bad, or do we let the bad things limit how and what we bless? The short answer – life is complicated, full of blessings and curses, and ideally, we are not supposed to say blessings that go against reality. But the truth is that most of the time, reality has both good and bad aspects to it, and we need to acknowledge both, which can be difficult. We need space to express that we’re not always grateful for everything.

Which brings us back to Modeh Ani, our daily prayer of gratitude. If, as we just learned, reality has both good and bad aspects, why the Modeh Ani? Why have Jews, for thousands of years started each day with a prayer of gratitude? Perhaps the Rabbis worried that when bad things happened, we would lose our faith and our ability to be grateful. So, they insisted we find a way to bless what is, to be grateful for what we have, then even in the worst of times, we will know we have not been forsaken, we will take action and we will survive.

Thanksgiving is upon us, and it’s OK to be both grateful and realistic. Grateful for all the good, pragmatic about the bad, and definitely, hopeful, even excited, to know that by coming together and doing the right and good things, there will certainly be more good, more blessing and so much more for which to give thanks. Modah Ani l’fanechem – Grateful am I before all of you. 

From my family to yours, wishing you and all your loved ones a joyous and meaningful Thanksgiving…

Cantor Harriet Dunkerley