By Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel
CHULA VISTA, California — Once upon a time, some American tourists went to Mexico on vacation; they toured some hot springs and saw the natives washing their clothes! One tourist said to his guide, “My, isn’t it wonderful how Mother Nature provides her children with hot water to wash their clothes?” The tour guide replied, “So you might think, Senor, but the natives complain that Mother Nature doesn’t provide the soap.”
It’s been said that the hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings. Chinese wisdom teaches, “When you drink from the stream, remember the spring.”
Research has shown that people who regularly practiced grateful thinking were more than 25 percent happier, slept better, suffered lower stress levels, and even spent more time exercising. People sure like to complain. Kvetching is—for many—a national pastime, yet complaining tends to diminish the quality of our lives and relationships. According to one recent author, who wrote a book on gratefulness, Prof. Richard Emmons explains that ”Preliminary findings suggest that those who regularly practice grateful thinking do reap emotional, physical, and interpersonal benefits. […] Grateful people experience higher levels of positive emotions such as joy, enthusiasm, love, happiness, and optimism […] The practice of gratitude as a discipline protects a person from the destructive impulses of envy, resentment, greed, and bitterness.”
Cultivating an attitude of gratitude is a lot harder than it might seem. When we contemplate the economic problems of our society today, it is easy to get depressed. For a young family that loses a home, or a job, the economic and psychological effects can be devastating. The idea of offering Thanksgiving might even strike one as cynical. Some of you are probably familiar with Bart Simpson’s famous Thanksgiving quip, “Dear God, we paid for all this stuff ourselves, so thanks for nothing.” I fear that Bart Simpson’s remark probably reflects the contemporary attitudes we often hear in our society.
One day of Thanksgiving will not solve all the problems of the world. Suffering has always been a part of the human condition throughout recorded history. As Rabbi Harold Kushner has pointed out, there’s never been a time in which bad things didn’t happen to good people.
The pilgrims experienced enough hardship to leave them demoralized. When they first began their colony, they were propelled by the strength of their dreams. Despite the bitter winter storms that threatened their fledgling community, they did not give hope. They sat for three days, feasting, rejoicing and grateful for what they had. Rejuvenated, they made it through that first winter, and another, and another — just as our immigrant ancestors who left the Old Country did.
Thanksgiving beckons us to see the cup as half-full, as we focus upon the many blessings we experience daily. The name “Jew,” comes from the root which means “to give thanks,” and that is what our tradition teaches us in so many ways. We expect to wake up in the morning and expect to be healthy, but when we receive a diagnosis that we have an illness, suddenly we appreciate and recognize what we have now lost. There is a quality of mindfulness that we must always have when it comes to being thankful for all of God’s gifts.
As rabbis, we often see people living on the ragged edge of life. Today’s economic problems impact the lives of many people we know. The human face demands that we treat that unfamiliar person with kindness and compassion. When in doubt, it is much better to err on the side of compassion.
The Judaic meaning of gratitude must go beyond the mere recognition of God’s countless blessings we experience in our lives. What exactly does “thanksgiving” mean? Thanksgiving comes from two words, “thanks,” and “giving.” True Thanksgiving involves a willingness to share God’s blessings and create blessing in the lives of others around us. By creating blessing for others, we reveal that we are not choosing to live in a state of scarcity and want. By opening our hearts to the pain of our brothers and sisters, we are infusing them with a feeling of hopefulness for a better tomorrow.
There is something about Thanksgiving that brings out the best in people.
Several families who were behind on their bills received a gift that truly made them thankful. Officials in Iowa City said two days before the Thanksgiving holiday, an anonymous woman walked in city hall and donated $1640. The woman said the money was to be used to pay off 17 delinquent water accounts to assure the families had running water for the holiday. City revenue officials said they were shocked by the woman’s generosity, but they worked with her to identify accounts with overdue balances that she could pay off.
Eleven of the accounts already had their water shut off due to unpaid balances, and six others were scheduled to be turned off within hours of the anonymous donation. All of the families had their water service restored shortly after the payment. Iowa City Revenue and Risk manager Melissa Miller said, “I’ve never seen it happen, and the majority of my staff has been there much longer than I have, and they haven’t heard of anything like it either. It was a wonderful gesture.”
For many, the yearly community service — helping in a soup kitchen, delivering canned goods to the needy, sick or elderly — has been fulfilled, and they can feel gratified in knowing they’ve done a good deed for others.
I am reminded of a comment I once heard about Thanksgiving, from the Jay Leno Show, concerning the human condition. Leno noted how on Thanksgiving, restaurants give away free meals, soup kitchens pop up all over the place, and groups provide all kinds of food to the poor. But, Leno pointed out, for the most part, all those who help out do so only on Thanksgiving. “We give these people one big meal a year, really stuff them and tell them, “That oughta hold you. See you next Thanksgiving.’”
We’ve said our thanks, counted our blessings and passed the peas, along with the candied yams. When Thanksgiving is over, and as soon as the holidays are out of the way, we can get back to our lives. Why do so many of us relegate thoughts of thankfulness and limit kindly-acts to a single day, or a single season?
Albert Schweitzer’s humanitarian philosophy could be summed up neatly in this one wonderful aphorism, “In gratitude for your own good fortune you must render in return some sacrifice of your life for other life.”
How true! The spirit of Thanksgiving should teach us that if we are truly thankful for our freedoms, shouldn’t we speak out against injustices, championing the freedom of others? And if we are truly thankful for our faith, what can we do to bring it into our homes, to keep it alive in the world? The day after Thanksgiving, is as good a time as any to start.
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Rabbi Dr. Michael Leo Samuel is spiritual leader of Temple Beth Shalom in Chula Vista. He may be contacted via michael.samuel@sdjewishworld.com