Interfaith Thanksgiving Day Message-broadcast 9:05 am this Sunday WDEL 1150 AM with Cantor Elisa singing

Rabbi Michael Beals                                                                                                        November 2012

The Rabbi Speaks

Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free

'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,

And when we find ourselves in the place just right,

'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gain'd,

To bow and to bend we shan't be asham'd,

To turn, turn will be our delight,

Till by turning, turning we come 'round right.^[2]

          At Thanksgiving time, no song seems to fit the season as well as Simple Gifts.  It is a Shaker song, written and composed way back in 1848 by Elder Joseph Brackett.  Maybe it’s kind of odd opening the Rabbi Speaks with a Shaker song.  Of course there IS a Jewish connection.  The song was virtually unknown outside the Shaker community until a nice Jewish boy named Aaron Copeland made it famous in his magnificent ballet score for Martha Graham’s ballet, Appalachian Spring, first performed in 1944.

          And speaking of gifts – what a gift to hear this piece sung by my friend and colleague, the new Cantor of Congregation Beth Shalom, Elisa Abrams.  And if you think it’s eclectic to have a rabbi showcasing a Shaker song, get this.  Elisa Abrams is the first Latina to serve as a Jewish spiritual leader in the History of Delaware – she’s Cuban on her mom’s side and Argentinean on her dad’s side.  Do you know what that means? It means the liturgical music sung at Sabbath services at Beth Shalom suddenly got really interesting.  But don’t take my word for it – come check out services at Beth Shalom, over on 18^th and Baynard Blvd. any Friday night or Saturday morning, and see for yourself.

          I am VERY grateful to be working with Cantor Elisa.  At this time of year, gratitude should start with those closest to you – your co-workers, fellow students, your spouse, your parents, your children.  We need a Thanksgiving Day to snap us out of our complacency – to truly appreciate what we have and not take those closest to us for granted.

          I’d like to let you in on a little secret not commonly known outside the Jewish world.  I know, on the secular calendar, this past Thursday was Thanksgiving.  But on the Jewish calendar EVERY day is Thanksgiving day.  No, we do not consume turkey every day – if we did Jews would be known NOT as The People of the Book, but rather, the People of the Yawn, due to the well-known sleep-inducing qualities of tryptophan – a byproduct of turkey meat.

          Jews are commanded to say 100 blessings every day – and a lot of those blessings are blessings of gratitude.  Follow me as we take a walk in the footsteps of an observant Jew.  If you are Christian, think of this as the ultimate WWJD experience, as there was no more observant Jew than JC.

          The observant Jew awakes, and the first thing he says is Modeh Ani, the first thing she says is Modah Ani … I am thankful.  I am thankful, Melech Chai v’kayam, Sovereign who lives and establishes, for you returned in me my soul with kindness, great is your faithfulness.  For the Jew, every morning is Resurrection Day.  For the devout Jew, every day is Easter Sunday, every day is miraculous as each and every one of us experiences resurrection … daily!  It is as if God is saying I validate you, I believe in you, that is why I decided to reimplant your soul in your body – now make something of this day!

          We get up. We get out of bed.  We use the bathroom.  As we come out, we say a blessing thanking God that each of our internal plumbing closed and opened at the appropriate time or else it would be impossible to stand before our Maker.  Come on.  What other religion has a “Going to the Bathroom Gratitude Prayer”? We are a grateful people. But wait, there’s more!

          The serious Jew then goes to synagogue where the first thing out of our mouths are 14 prayers of gratitude, beginning with praising the rooster, yes the rooster, for knowing the difference between night and day so it would cockle doodle doo and wake us up, then we utter  gratitude prayers for our ability to get out of bed, to put on clothes, all the way through a general prayer of thanks for giving us strength to make it through the day when we are weary.

          I was listening to National Public Radio last week.  Yes, I give thanks for NPR. They interviewed an author named Anne Lamott, who just wrote a new book, called Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers.   In an excerpt from her book, she writes: "Well, I've heard people say that God is the gift of desperation, and there's a lot to be said for having really reached a bottom where you've run out of anymore good ideas, or plans for everybody else's behavior; or how to save and fix and rescue; or just get out of a huge mess, possibly of your own creation.

"And when you're done, you may take a long, quavering breath and say, 'Help.' People say 'help' without actually believing anything hears that. But it is the great prayer, and it is the hardest prayer, because you have to admit defeat — you have to surrender, which is the hardest thing any of us do, ever."

          I was particularly interested in the ordering of her three prayers:  thanks first, followed by help, and culminating in wow.   For 2000 years, three times daily, during the week, Jews recite the Amidah, 19 benedictions, beginning with Wow – we call it Praise, but Wow works fine, followed by Help, concluding with Thanks.  Of gratitude, Lamott comments, "Thanks is the prayer of relief that help was on the way. ... It can be [the] pettiest, dumbest thing, but it could also be that you get the phone call that the diagnosis was much, much, much better than you had been fearing. ... The full prayer, and its entirety, is: Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you. But for reasons of brevity, I just refer to it as Thanks.

"It's amazement and relief that you caught a break; that your family caught a break; that you didn't have any reason to believe that things were really going to be OK, and then they were and you just can't help but say thank you."
          In the Jewish faith, this gratitude prayer, is called Modim, Here is an excerpt: “We thank You and proclaim Your praise for our lives which are in Your hand, for our souls which are in Your care, for Your miracles which are daily with us, and for Your wondrous kindness at all times—morning, noon and night.”

          And then there are those special moments: festivals, New Moon celebrations, times consecrated with an additional Hallel service, corresponding to moments in our Biblical past, where special sacrifices were brought first to the Tabernacle, during our 40-year wandering in the desert, and later to the Temple in Jerusalem.  With the destruction of the Temple, we lost the sacrifices but we have held on to the Hallel service.  As we look on our Thanksgiving celebration, it seems appropriate to remember the quintessential prayer of the Hallel liturgy: “Give thanks to God, for God’s love endures forever.”  And who better to conclude this special Thanksgiving edition of the Rabbi Speaks than Cantor Elisa Abrams, setting these words of gratitude to their original Hebrew text. This is my thanksgiving gift to you.

          Hodu l’Adonai ki tov, ki l’olam hasdo.