A Thanksgiving Reflection

November 22, 2023

“If in that terrible time, [Lincoln] could see cause to celebrate this country’s bounty, perhaps we can as well in these fraught days.”

In 1983, I made my first trip to Israel for my brother’s wedding. Newly-married ourselves and traveling on my parents’ largesse, we used the opportunity to buy items that we treasure to this day—a honey dish, an etrog box for Sukkot, and a lithograph by an artist named Bruria Mann, portraying Jacob’s dream of angels ascending and descending a ladder to the Heavens. Imprinted on the lithograph is a verse from the narrative, from this week’s Torah portion: “The ground on which you are lying I will assign to you and to your offspring.” The picture hangs on our dining room wall, next to where I sit. 

It's been a few years since we have celebrated a normal Thanksgiving. Even last year, when it seemed the worst of the pandemic had passed, my wife woke up in the morning with Covid, and we spent the day packing her elaborate Thanksgiving meal into take-out packages for all of our guests to pick up and bring home. This year, again, she has been preparing a feast, and we hope our family and friends will sit together around our table tomorrow. But it still will not be a normal Thanksgiving.

The Pilgrims and Puritans who settled Massachusetts conceived themselves to be the New Israel, America the promised land, the “City on a Hill” as Governor Winthrop described in his famous sermon as he crossed the ocean on the Arbella. Jews never viewed it quite that way. Our City on a Hill—rendered ir al tilah in the Friday night poem Lecha Dodi—was always Jerusalem. But surely, America was the Goldene Medinah—if not the Promised Land, a land of limitless promise. On Thanksgiving, as with other immigrant groups, so many of us celebrate as Americans, embracing our national story. If on Passover, we view ourselves as if we had, ourselves, left Egypt, on Thanksgiving, we view ourselves as if we too had landed on Plymouth Rock. We believe this land, long inhabited by indigenous peoples and then settled by the Christian crowns of Europe, to be our own.

But this year, I know that my eyes will be drawn time and again during dinner to that picture on my wall. In the last week, I have walked by anti-Israel demonstrations in Philadelphia, reported two incidents of anti-Israel graffiti at our Museum, visited Nashville where another anti-Israel demonstration was taking place, and read countless musings and uncomfortable reflections on whether America is still a hospitable home for Jews. There are people who have concluded that we are reliving Germany in the 1930s—facing apocalypse, but too trusting or comfortable to heed the warning signs. Some would suggest that the only place a Jew can be safe is in Israel, under the protection of a Jewish army. It was easier said before October 7^th.

Jacob dreams of the ladder and of God’s promise to him as he is fleeing from danger in Canaan—the hatred of his brother Esau—to seek uncertain refuge but fortune as well in his uncle’s home in Mesopotamia. It is in that same place where Jacob rested that night—that liminal space between Promised Land and land of promise—that we find ourselves this Thanksgiving. Danger there, danger here, too. We are suddenly so more aware that there is, in a sense, no here or there; the safety and security of Jews in America is entwined with Israel’s. We are suspended between.

“I will protect you wherever you go,” says God to Jacob. So angels ascend, and others descend, changing the Heavenly guard, as if the Torah anticipates danger everywhere, but also, how the security challenges of a Jewish sovereign state differ from those of Jews living in lands not truly their own. 

This Thanksgiving will again not seem a normal one. 

It can’t hurt to recall that it was President Lincoln, in the dark days of Civil War, who first proclaimed Thanksgiving a federal holiday. If in that terrible time, he could see cause to celebrate this country’s bounty, perhaps we can as well in these fraught days. 

Danger abounds, but God’s protection is without boundary. I’m fortunate that I can turn my head to see Jacob’s ladder beside my holiday table, its angels descending to bring God’s protection to us, no matter where we are. And for that I give thanks.

Happy Thanksgiving,

From the Weitzman's galleries:

Address on the Death of Abraham Lincoln

Reverend Sabato Morais, Philadelphia: Collins, 1865

Like Jewish communities across the nation, Philadelphia's Congregation Mikveh Israel mourned the death of President Lincoln, "who, like our own law-giver, Moses, brough a nation to the verge of the haven of peace, and like him was not allowed to participate in its consummation."

Library at the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania. 

Click here to view The Weitzman core Exhibition online. Select the "Union and Disunion" gallery from the drop-down menu for more on this period in history.

Arthur Sandman has served as Chief of Staff at The Weitzman since early 2022. He previously worked at the Jewish Agency for Israel, the Jewish Federation of Metro West New Jersey, and UJA Federation of New York. He writes weekly reflections for family, friends, colleagues like the one above in which he connects each week's Torah portion to American Jewish history and current events. If you are interested in receiving these weekly reflections, please reply to [email protected] and let us know.