Thanksgiving

Rabbi Irwin Wiener, D.D.

In Midrash Rabbah it is written that Rabbi Aibo said: “When the Angels objected to the creation of man, God replied: ‘And of what use are all of the good things I have created unless people are there to enjoy them?’ “

Perhaps that is what Thanksgiving is all about. It is not only the good things that we realize for ourselves through the efforts of our labor, but also to understand that God gave us the ability to discover these treasures.

Thanksgiving enables us to comprehend the true meaning of life: To be thankful for all the harvests of our days. God is where God should be-in our hearts and minds, in our deeds and actions, in our relationships and understanding of each other.

Thanksgiving should help us realize that we are responsible for one another and that there can be no true jubilation without this moral standard. We are responsible to others for our actions and the consequences of those actions. We are responsible to God for those things that relate to our spiritual well-being. We are responsible to ourselves for purpose and meaning in our lives.

Our lives are so tenuous, our existence indeed fragile, and the gift of life so temporary that we should take the time to celebrate, rejoice, and give thanks. “And of what use are all of the good things I have created unless people are there to enjoy them.” God tells us to marvel in His creation, to take advantage of the very essence of life’s wonderment. The very act of creation was and is the gift of a lifetime.

We have so much to be grateful for. We get up each morning and see all that is before us. We watch a bird fly and are astounded that it can soar into the unknown. We walk on the grass and are amazed that as seasons change so does nature. Children teach us about the cycle of time: They crawl, they walk, the make sounds, they talk, they grow and eventually wither and then we witness birth all over again. We lose a loved one but are comforted with the wonder of eternalness.

Thanksgiving is also a time to be thankful for our country and all that it represents to us and the world around us. America represents all that is good in the human spirit. We are a people devoted to the exploration of the imagination. We treasure benevolence and practice it every waking moment. But we also know that we have failings because we are human, created in the image of God to be Godlike, but with fallibilities. We can offend, but we can also forgive; we at times are lonely but understand that love can erase that feeling of emptiness; we can be foolish but blend it with a modicum of discretion; we experience grief but temper it with understanding. We can be all these things and also realize that the journey of life is filled with all this and more because God invited us to participate in His gift of life - not the Angels, but us.

And Thanksgiving gives us the ability to be grateful for the men and women who serve this country with the same zeal of generations past. They serve on distant shores and here at home because they know that the price of liberty is vigilance and preparedness.

Families will gather together on this American holiday to feast on turkey, enjoy stories of yesterday’s celebrations and make wishes for the dreams of tomorrow. We will reflect and finally come to the realization that the insignificant things that drag us down are not important if we are to survive as a nation. And we should never forget how fortunate we are as Americans.

This is what Thanksgiving is all about: God gave us the wonderfulness of life, the magic of day and night, the capacity to hope for a brighter tomorrow. And He did all this, not for the Angels, but for us.