I was born into a modern American religious family on my father’s side. I was especially proud to be a fourth-generation American Jew. I played a great game of baseball, enjoyed reading the Sunday funnies and celebrated American holidays. My mother’s family was the complete opposite. They all came from Europe and had no appreciation for baseball or any American pastimes.
Growing up in the 1950s, I went to a small cheder (Jewish school). Almost all of my classmates were children of refugees.
One year, I was introduced to a very strict, no-nonsense Jewish rebbe. He had very little patience for me, as I was very different from his European students. I was an American, a Yankee boy.
According to my rebbe’s thinking, all American customs were taboo. They were considered traif (non-kosher). Halloween, Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July were all jumbled into one big no-no. They were American and were out of bounds!
To prove his point, he would quote Leviticus 18:3: “Neither shall ye walk in their statutes; do not follow their social customs.”
However, not all Jews think that way.
A week before Thanksgiving, my father called up my European grandparents and told them that he had received an 18-pound turkey from his synagogue’s caterer. This was a gift to our large family for Thanksgiving. On Thursday we would have a Thanksgiving repast.
That Monday, the rebbe made a speech. “Thanksgiving is forbidden. It is a pagan holiday. No Jewish boy is allowed to eat turkey.”
Now I was in trouble. I thought that if I ate turkey my teeth would fall out. What would I do? I told my rebbe about the early Indians and the first Thanksgiving. I thought he would realize that Thanksgiving could be considered a good deed for both Jews and gentiles. I tried to tell him about the friendly Indians; how they saved the starving Puritans; that the Thanksgiving meal reminds us of the foods the Indians showed the settlers; and that it taught them how to survive through the rough winters in the new world. This was a mitzvah, to share and give thanks to God.
“Yingele [sonny], I told you we don’t celebrate these holidays. It is forbidden to even listen to your bubbemeises [tall tales],” he said.
That night, I told my dad that I wouldn’t participate in a pagan holiday. “It’s against the Bible,” I said. He flew into a rage. I thought he was going to clobber me.
“You are an American. A fourth-generation American. Be happy that you have a country that believes in God. If anything, Thanksgiving is a Jewish idea.” He told my mother that if this continues he would take me out of the cheder.
For the next few years, my father bought a large turkey for Thanksgiving, and we had two turkey meals: one on the American Thanksgiving and one on the following Shabbos.
I thought that my dad had a point. Thanksgiving, indeed, was a holiday that fit into the Jewish idea of remembering God’s goodness in providing us with our needs. Thus, we could have Thanksgiving every Sabbath.
I reconciled my dilemma between rebbe and family when I saw one of the original manifestos for the celebration of Thanksgiving.
On March 30, 1863, Abraham Lincoln signed a proclamation appointing a national day of prayer and fasting. In it he stated, “We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown.
“But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.
Six months later, on Oct. 3, 1863, Lincoln wrote his Thanksgiving Proclamation, declaring the holiday would be observed annually on the fourth Thursday of November. In it, he wrote: “It has seemed to me fit and proper that God should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people. I do, therefore, invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November as a day of Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father Who dwelleth in the heavens.”
I think if my rebbe would have seen this wonderful proclamation, he might have joined us in prayer at the Thanksgiving meal.
