Two less Chanukah gifts to shop for:
A Jewish News gift subscription and
the free gift that comes with it.
Thanksgiving
Every Day
Order a Jewish News subscription today and receive
an AppleTree gym bag as a FREE gift.
ERICA MEYER RAUZIN SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS
L
et's say that one of my chil-
dren asked me, "Hey,
Mom, why isn't there a
Jewish Thanksgiving
Day." (No one did, unfortunate-
ly, because I needed the set up.
But, for the purposes at hand,
let's pretend.)
The question doesn't take so
much thought. First of all, Amer-
ican Jewry observes the fourth
Thursday in November as a na-
tional Thanksgiving Day, as set
forth by George Washington,
,proclaimed by Abraham Lincoln
and decreed by Congress in
1941. (See, that makes it seem
like I looked it up, but all my his-
torical facts come directly from
my daughter's Highlights for
Children magazine.)
Secondly, to praying Jews
of all ranks and files, every
day is a day of giving thanks.
For instance, the Modim, the
prayer of thanksgiving that
proclaims "Your miracles are
with us everyday," is said morn-
ing, afternoon and evening,
three times daily. (I did look that
up.)
Shabbat begins with, "It is
-.good to thank God and to sing
praises" and ends with thanks
in the Havdalah service.
Each holiday has messages of
gratitude built into its prayers.
As time cycles, we express our
thanks for the New Year, for for-
giveness, for survival in booths
in the desert, for the Torah, for
the miracle of the Macabees, for
the bravery of Esther, for free-
from slavery in Egypt, for
the loyalty of Ruth, for trees, for
Jerusalem, and more. An our
festivals are holidays of thanks-
giving; they're just not called
Thanksgiving.
We even have a set of bless-
ings for specific events and nat-
ural phenomena: lightning,
thunder, a rainbow, a comet, the
sea, scholars, good news, bad
ews, recovery from illness, ex-
ceptionally beautiful trees, ex-
ceptionally strange animals, and
each spring, a new fruit, or two.
You'd think we're the most
grateful people on earth.
But we're not.
Like all other human beings,
our greatest natural tendency,
sometimes even as we stand
holding our prayer books and
reading words of thanks, is to
take things for granted.
Perhaps it would be frighten-
ing to remain in a constant,
quivering state of perpetual
gratitude instead of relaxing into
our blessings like a warm bath,
as if they couldn't all go down
the drain in an instant. Perhaps,
that is faith.
Part of living out our grati-
tude is spending our time living.
If, each time the children came
home from school, I greeted
them with, "Thank Heaven,
you're home safe and sound, not
kidnapped, or murdered, or ad-
dicted, or ravaged
with disease, or
covered with
mud," I'd be a
nervous wreck
and so would
they.
That doesn't
mean that
somewhere in
my heart I'm not
reciting, internally,
that exact litany. It
just means that the chil-
dren coming home from school
is normal, not unappreciated,
but blessedly routine. Of course,
I am deeply grateful that
they are well, safe, sane, and
more or less clean. Of course, the
idea that anything dreadful
could happen to them is a terror-
inducing nightmare. Of course,
we work hard to keep them well
and protected. Of course, we
know who controls their well
being and are grateful, but we
are occupied with living our
blessings, as well as counting
them.
Yet, we want to make our
gratitude actual, instead of just
spoken. Perhaps we must be
aware of Heaven's gifts and of
our own fragility to truly appre-
ciate our blessings and our
strength. I wonder if that is the
purpose of prayer, and of
Thanksgiving Day or days of
thanksgiving: to tell us to stop,
to sigh, to think about where all
these blessings come from, to ap-
preciate deeply, to work at sin-
cerely climbing all the way up to
the level where gratitude takes
our breath away.
And then to exhale. And move
along.
❑
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family magazine logo, it's a perfect bag for carting around rollerblades, iceskates and more.
And, a Jewish News subscription makes a great gift too, for yourself, friends, or relatives.
It's a yearlong gift that opens up into a weekly surprise of exclusive features, up-to-the-
minute news and in-depth stories. Plus, every month our new family magazine, The
AppleTree is inserted inside.
This Chanukah, figuring out what to get the kids - or grandkids - is as easy as ordering a
Jewish News subscription.
To order a Jewish News subscription for yourself or as a gift, and receive a free gym bag, call
(810) 354-6620 or return the coupon below.
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