Rabbi’s Message – November 17, 2022
With Thanksgiving next week, the word “gratitude” might be on your mind. For me, and perhaps many families, I’ll be expected to answer the prompt as to what I’m grateful for this year before overindulging in the plethora of comfort foods on the table. There is a lot to be grateful for in our lives and there is something to be said for taking a day on our secular calendar to focus on things that deserve our thankfulness. When we talk about gratitude in Judaism, we can certainly talk about the more traditional sense of being thankful. One of the major categories of blessings in Jewish liturgy is that of thanksgiving prayers. When we talk about gratitude as a Jewish value, the Hebrew term is hakarat hatov, recognizing the good. I think it stems from the idea that in order to feel thankful towards something or someone, we must first acknowledge or experience the good of the thing or person first. There is a balance to seeing the realities of life, to experiencing disappointment and loss and at the same time, also being able to affirm what good there is. Gratitude is not simply finding the silver lining and ignoring everything else; but it can be the counter-balance to our natural inclination to focus on dissatisfaction. I had a teaching mentor once, who before every class session asked all of his teachers to write down three things we were grateful for in a journal – only we could not repeat anything we had previously written down on our personal lists.
The first few weeks of school were easy: family, friends, a job, a house, the usuals that many will hear or share around our tables next week. By the 30th week of class in the spring, nearing 100 items into the list, you might think it got harder. It didn’t. The hardest weeks were earlier in the year, after the biggies were on the list. Compared to them, my shoes did not seem so significant. But once the habit developed, I found myself ‘looking’ for things to add during the week before I arrived on Sunday. That habit, combined with limiting the self-doubt of wondering if this thing was “worthy” is what made the rest of the year ‘easier’ to grow my gratitude list.
Rebbe Nachman of Breslov once wrote, “Gratitude rejoices with her sister joy and is always ready to light a candle and have a party. Gratitude doesn’t much like the old cronies of boredom, despair and taking life for granted.” During this Thanksgiving season, I hope that you find gratitude in the big and small things, and enjoy the company of her companion, joy.