The God Squad: What the rabbi is thankful for this year
The secular holidays of America are a mixed bag for me. I like some of them. I dislike most of them. And I love one of them beyond words.
I like Veterans Day because it reminds me of the noble sacrifice of Americans who have served and even died to make us free. Sadly, it’s mostly celebrated as an occasion to buy washing machines on sale.
I like the Fourth of July because the founding of America is for me an event in which secular history and the sacred cause of freedom come together to change the world. However, the holiday has become mostly an occasion to watch fireworks and eat hot dogs.
I like Halloween because even though it is about witches and demons, it’s good for kids to have at least one day each year when they can eat lots of candy without getting yelled at by parents who’d rather they eat celery. Valentine’s Day is nice, but choosing just one day to express your love and buy chocolate and flowers isn’t enough for a hopeless romantic like me.
I like Christmas, but I admire it as a profound Christian holiday, not just a secular occasion whose main ritual is maxing out our credit cards. Easter has also been stolen from Christians by secularists seeking to find not the risen Christ but some hidden candy eggs.
Above all, I love Thanksgiving. It’s the perfect mix of the highest spiritual value, which is gratitude, with the uniquely American secular joyousness of parades and family gathered around a feast, with the obligatory football game and falling asleep on the couch thrown in for good measure. Every year, my Thanksgiving column includes my own quirky list of insufficiently appreciated things for which I am deeply thankful.
Please write to me to add your items to my thankfulness list:
1. I’m thankful for baseball. Even though my teams (Mets and Brewers) and the team of my friends (Yankees) didn’t make it to the World Series this year, we were all treated to an amazing climax to the baseball season. Game Six was the greatest game I ever saw and it reminded me of why I love baseball. Baseball is the game that’s most like life because in baseball, as in life, mostly nothing happens. Then, suddenly, something happens and you have to be ready.
If you’re not ready, you have to live with your failure, but you can always hope that later in the game you can make up for it. Like life, in baseball there’s no clock. You know the game will eventually end, and you know your life will eventually end. You just don’t know, and cannot know, precisely when the end will come. I’m thankful that this year at least we saw the greatness of the game on full and breathtaking display.
2. I’m thankful for the Arab Spring.
There’s way too much suspicion and ill will directed against our Muslim brothers and sisters. I would beg everyone to remember that most Muslims are not terrorists. Muslims in America enjoy freedom and love our country. They also want freedom for Muslim nations ruled for so long by ruthless dictators. I’m so very thankful that the Muslim uprising for freedom is now fully underway. Yes, it could all end in new theocratic dictatorships and I’m not naive about the presence of evildoers masquerading as freedom fighters, but my prayers and hopes are with those seeking freedom.
My people were slaves in Egypt 3,200 years ago. May the Egyptian house of bondage be torn down once again, along with every house of bondage in every part of our broken world. The greatest thing for which we can and must be thankful remains freedom.
3. I’m thankful for the tree guys. After the hurricane and the October storm here in the Northeast, the tree guys were out there almost immediately with the electrical repairmen and the emergency rescue folks and the firemen and policemen and utility workers. They risked life and limb to clear debris, restore power and save lives. For those of us who were home playing Scrabble by candlelight, their sacrifices were often overlooked as we gave vent to our selfish, uninformed gripes that the electricity failed to come back on in time to watch the “Real Housewives of Whatever.”
Our expectations bear little relationship to the complexities of our infrastructure. We think power is invulnerable to nature. We think our garbage magically disappears. We think our food grows in plastic trays. So this Thanksgiving, I’m thankful to the people who make our complicated, wasteful, power-greedy lives work so well most days that nature seldom has a chance to remind us we are only very small animals.
4. I’m thankful for all the volunteers serving in soup kitchens. A wonderful and largely unreported tradition has become part of many Thanksgiving rituals. Hundreds of families take time from stuffing themselves to help cook and serve a Thanksgiving meal to those in need.
Some of these families also volunteer on days other than Thanksgiving. It’s nice to know that instinctive, unselfish kindness and compassion are part of our culture every bit as much as the selfishness and cruelty that get so much press. The best dish you can serve your family is a double helping of soup for a hungry family.
Have a happy Thanksgiving holiday weekend!
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