Oddly specific gratitude

My wife doesn’t really love my hat. Not the black hat I wear on Shabbos; she’s okay with that. It’s the turkey hat I wear on Thanksgiving. She’s not a fan. The issue is that I love Thanksgiving. I love the food. I love being together with the family. And I love that my brother and sister-in-law are responsible for the whole thing. I love doing the fully American thing with turkey and cranberry sauce and stuffing – we’re all in, from cornbread to pumpkin pie. But I understand that most of the people in my neck of the shtetl don’t do that because the people who started Thanksgiving weren’t giving thanks exclusively to the G-d of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and so some residue of un-Jewishness remains. But, um, yeah. I like pie.

The one thing I’m not grateful for on Thanksgiving is the extremely uninteresting items my family is grateful for; Grateful for family? Boring. For being together? Lame. I think we can do better than that.

When our sages instituted the reciting of a blessing before we eat, they gave us a whole section of law to help decide which exact and specific blessing is appropriate. And while for our purposes you need not be concerned about the giant controversy in our family regarding the blessing on malawach or fish sticks (please don’t get me started on fish sticks!), what you do need to know is that they guided us towards making specific brachot on specific categories of food because thanks is more meaningful when it’s specific. And it’s with that in mind that I offer this reflection on extremely specific things I’m grateful for.

Get The Jewish Chronicle Weekly Edition by email and never miss our top stories Free Sign Up

You know how when you’re on your 30th-anniversary vacation in Panama and the tour guide points out a statue of General Thomas Herrera sitting on a horse and the horse has one foot lifted in the air and the guide asks if anyone knows why the foot is up and you finally have a chance say it means the general was wounded in battle and died as a result of that wound, which surprises the guide, impresses the other people on the tour, and embarrasses your wife that your brain is filled with mostly useless information, but you’re happy this little random knowledge nugget was finally useful?

I’m grateful for that.

And, yeah I know I should be grateful that I have someone who loves me to share my life with, and I should be grateful that we have reached a part of life where we can travel, and yeah, okay, I am. But also, I know what it means if the horse has one foot up or two feet or if he’s standing on all four legs, and now a tour guide in Panama knows I know, and that was cool, so I’m grateful for that. (And I got to see a ship go through the Panama Canal!)

I used to be grateful for the part of being a zaydie where the little kids are so happy to see you and they smile big smiles and argue over who gets to sit next to you at the Shabbos table because that’s just the best. But you know the part where the grandkids enjoy sitting together at a kiddie table and then the cousins all get up and go play and you can see that they are growing up to be good friends that, you know, like each other, and then they come running back to the table for bubbie’s dessert or because they want more parsha questions so they can get candy and that’s somehow an even better best?

I’m grateful for that.

You know how when you’re responsible for around 50 high school seniors in Poland and Israel, and the parents are super-tense, and because there is a war going on, they are a little super-tenser than usual, even for Jewish parents, but each day, you send the parents messages on WhatsApp, and sometimes they make the parents smile, and sometimes they make them cry, and rarely but occasionally, they make them want to sing Bon Jovi songs, and then when you come back, luckily with all the kids you left with, and everyone is safe and happy, and then the parents are really grateful for all the messages you sent, and one father is so choked up that he can’t even say anything, he just hugs you?

I’m grateful for that.

At school one of my responsibilities is helping interested students find a yeshivah or seminary or other gap-year program that fits them, and recently I encouraged a young woman to sit in on a presentation, and she was at first unsure if the meeting was worth her time, but left the meeting thinking that she was in love with the school and she absolutely wanted to go there, so my small effort helped open a student’s eyes to some new possibility for her, which is sort of the best thing a teacher can do with their life, and I’m grateful for that.

And you know that one time in a hundred when, despite your sock drawer being a total mess you find that second matching argyle sock right away?

I’m grateful for that.

And you know when you come home from shul Friday night and it was freezing outside and your glasses fog up when you come in because your house is warm and it smells like your wife’s amazing challah, and your teenage daughter fell asleep on the couch reading, but she comes to the table the first time you ask (which could totally happen) and the Shabbos table is a really ordinary piece of some beautiful infinity?

And also, warm chocolate chip cookies. I’m grateful for that too.

And this year, the weather on Sukkot was beautiful and none of my students was sent to chocolate jail in Hershey Park (which is a real thing, but a story for a different time), and we got to spend a great yom tov meal with old friends who live far away, but are always very close because space and time work differently in your heart than they do in the three-dimensional universe, and I’m grateful for that.

I’m fully aware that Thanksgiving Day is not something that’s really part of the zeitgeist of my neighborhood. Either because its first adherents weren’t Jewish and so it was a not-Jewish holiday when it began and therefore it still has not-Jewish holiday vibes, OR because, by adding something to our calendar that isn’t explicitly from the Torah, it means that we are not wholly Torah Jews. Or maybe it’s just because logistically, it’s difficult or just odd to make a big meal right before Shabbos. Whatever the reason, Thanksgiving isn’t really part of the mainstream in my world. But I love Thanksgiving and I have the hat to prove it. PJC

Rabbi Mordechai Soskil has been teaching Torah for more than 25 years. Currently he is the Associate Principal of the High School at Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community School. He is also the author of a highly regarded book on faith and hashkafa titled “Questions Obnoxious Jewish Teenagers Ask.” He and his wife Allison have 6 children and a blessedly expanding herd of grandchildren. This first appeared on The Times of Israel.