Spirit and Story Archive

Welcome to Spirit and Story, where you will find the latest thoughts and reflections by CLAL faculty and associates on the contours of our contemporary spiritual journeys. Every other week you will find something new and (hopefully) engaging here!

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Jews on Thanksgiving

By Daniel Brenner

Hunting for turkeys is no work for a nice Jewish boy. And while I appreciate the cute little Pilgrim outfits trotted out nation-wide for school plays, celebrating the freedom of a group of authoritarian religious extremists is not my idea of fun.

So when it comes to Thanksgiving, I prefer the other side of the tale, identifying -- as most Jews have probably done through the years -- with the American Indians. My sympathies are with the oppressed underdog. As a Jew, I resonate with the Indians, with their ritual sensibility and their wisdom tradition. I even dig their shoes. I’m there on every level.

Actually, I once was there. A dozen years ago, I met with the chief of the Western Shoshone Nation outside Tonopah, Nevada. At this powwow, I decided to join in an act of civil disobedience to reclaim his tribal land, now the Nevada (nuclear) Test Site.

I was arrested, spent a day in the stockade, and came to feel a deep solidarity with the Native Indian leaders who later took me out to a pizza place across the street from the jail.

I don’t think about this experience on most Thanksgivings. I generally just trade stories with the cousins, eat, and try to watch a little football. There are, moments, however, during November, when I consider what it would mean to infuse Thanksgiving with a more Native American sensibility.

A few years ago a Cantor I know living in Chicago did a Thanksgiving seder. All the foods eaten at the seder were native to the land before the colonists came, and he created a ceremony that integrated Native Indian poetry and other symbols that date to the pre-colonial period. He also incorporated a Jewish element into the celebration, drawing upon rituals and themes from the Jewish harvest festivals, Sukkot and Shavuot.

While I’m not planning on creating a ceremony of this kind for this Thanksgiving, I will engage in what I call “the Thanksgiving digestive walk.” This is a short hike through the woods at a local park during which I fantasize about what the pre-colonial American wilderness must have been like. In this walk through the woods I can almost sense the presence of the people who first trod this ground. Soon I am lost in the dream of a life attuned to nature’s rhythms, and I connect spiritually to the words of the psalmist who declared that “all the Earth sings out to the Holy One”.

My Thanksgiving fantasy is of an America returned to a pristine state. But the reality is that America is now a messy home for all of us – Jew, Indian, Pilgrim, and more. At our best, we are nurtured on each other’s tales, and we celebrate the great convergence and abundance that is this nation’s gravy.

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