Dear TBZ Community:
How do we join in celebration this week in the midst of continued suffering? How do we join in thanksgiving when the news around us is devastating? This week, it feels especially hard (again!) after the horrible shooting at Club Q in Colorado Springs. Another act of hatred against LGBTQ people. And another shooting on Tuesday night in a Walmart in Virginia. And the news from Jerusalem of two coordinated explosions that so far (as I write this) have killed one person and injured at least eighteen people. It’s also terrifying that Israeli right-wing politicians are already calling for more violence against Palestinians, just as right-wing politicians at home have been increasing their hate speech against the LGBTQ community here.
How can we be grateful when we witness hatred all around? When we see suffering and devastation?
As hard as it is, I believe that gratitude is a practice that grounds us, that reminds us not to lose hope even in the most devastating times and moments. It reminds us of our blessings and of not taking anything for granted – I think this can be true in our personal lives as well as our communal experience.
Gratitude keeps us grounded. Gratitude is a great response to desperate times. Gratitude reminds us and invites us to act and believe that the world can be better.
Last Sunday, Rav Tiferet, rabbinic intern Sarah Rovin, and I participated in the Annual Interfaith Thanksgiving Service organized by the Brookline Clergy Association. It was our first time together in-person since Thanksgiving 2019. For over 25 years, the Brookline Clergy Association has been gathering, bringing our town’s religious communities to worship, in thanksgiving, as one. I feel very blessed to be actively involved in the Brookline Clergy Association, and I am honored to be one of the co-conveners.
The Brookline Clergy Association meets monthly in different houses of worship. Our meetings allow us, clergy and spiritual leaders from different religions and denominations, to share our spiritual journeys along with the challenges and excitement of our work. We also discuss issues concerning Brookline and bring our voices as religious leaders. I can say that these meetings have deeply enhanced my experience of being a rabbi. For me, interfaith dialogue is key to being a religious leader in America, plus the friendships I have fostered and will continue to foster are profoundly meaningful.
Our Interfaith Thanksgiving Service is an opportunity for us to worship together; there are not many holidays that allow us to do so. Each year we rotate between houses of worship; this year we were at Episcopal Church of our Saviour. The Thanksgiving Service included readings, songs, and prayers from different religions, as well as an invitation to support the Brookline Food Pantry. All our faiths remind us about the practice of gratitude which must be accompanied by generosity and the commitment to help those in need.
I know you have heard me before, as I repeat this often, but gratitude is a practice. It is not just about being grateful once a year (or even a few times), but it is important to be a practitioner of gratitude.
The first prayer we say every day as we wake up is Modah Ani (I Give Thanks):
מודֶה [מודָה] אֲנִי לְפָנֶיךָ מֶלֶךְ חַי וְקַיָּם,
שֶׁהֶחֱזַרְתָּ בִּי נִשְׁמָתִי בְּחֶמְלָה, רַבָּה אֱמוּנָתֶךָ
I offer thanks to You, living and eternal King,
for You have mercifully restored my soul within me; Your faithfulness is great.
Modeh (Modah) ani lefanecha Melech chai vekayam
shehechezarta bi nishmati bechemla, raba emunatecha
What an incredible practice our tradition offers us! To start the day, as soon as we open our eyes, the first thing we say is thank you! Before anything else. Before checking our phones, before having a cup of coffee, before saying good morning to our children or partners., before getting out of bed, our tradition says: as soon as you open your eyes, say thank you! Thank you for being alive, thank you for restoring my soul within me.
And, gratitude doesn’t stop with ourselves: we practice being grateful for the world around us and our place in it. If we are practitioners of gratitude then we are also, hopefully, practitioners of generosity, to those around us and especially to those in need.
Perhaps we can think of the practice of gratitude as linked to the importance of taking responsibility. Celebrating our blessings can go hand in hand with taking responsibility for what we – as both individuals and as a collective – have done and do. When we are able to look inwards and take responsibility, we can also look forward to what we believe can be changed. And we can perhaps savor even more the gratitude of the blessings in our lives which enable us to open our hearts with generosity.
On Tuesday, my youngest daughter had a presentation at school to accompany her second grade class’s learning about the Wampanoag. For this project, they visited Plimoth-Patuxet, learning about their foods, traditions, holidays, sports, and storytelling techniques. It was such a beautiful celebration. We were reminded that in this season when we come together with our families and loved ones, in gratitude for all that we have, the blessing and the bounty, we have to also acknowledge those who came before us, and those who suffered so we could be in this land. And, in the case of our Native Americans, are still suffering through systemic inequity and systems of oppression. I’m mindful that my daughter’s school chose to hold the field trip when many other schools canceled their annual trips to Plimoth-Patuxet in support of a boycott started by Massachusetts’ Native Americans.
A few years ago, my colleague and friend, Rev. Lisa Perry-Wood from United Parish of Brookline, offered a land acknowledgement. Written by Ann Gilmore, a member of her parish, for their Thanksgiving Service, I share it with you today, with gratitude to Ann and Rev. Lisa:
We acknowledge the Wampanoag, also known as the People of the First Light, as the custodians of the traditional lands invaded by the English aboard the Mayflower 400 years ago this month. They have inhabited and continue to live in Southeastern Massachusetts and Eastern Rhode Island for more than 12,000 years, along with their traditional neighbors to the North, the Massachusett, to the West, the Nipmuc, and to the South, the Narragansett, the Pequot and the Mohegan.
We acknowledge that across the United States, we are all living on Indigenous lands.
These lands were stolen from millions of Indigenous people, initially through violent conquest and forcible removal, and later through broken treaties, congressional legislation, and court orders. This theft continues in the 21st century. Millions of Indigenous people and hundreds of Indigenous nations are still here and their lands are still occupied.
It is not enough to simply acknowledge the Indigenous people whose lands we occupy. Our faith calls us through our shared principles to affirm and promote ‘justice, equity and compassion in human relations’ and ‘respect for the interdependent web of all existence.’
We must not only reckon with our collective past, but move forward in right relationship with our Indigenous siblings who have an historical, cultural and spiritual connection with the land. We aspire to find ways to restore to them what is rightfully theirs. Together with them and with their leadership, we must care for the land we live upon and for our living Earth, to whom we all belong.
This relationship between the land and the people was beautifully expressed by Wampanoag leader and ancestor Russell Peters, Sr who wrote:
We are the four directions
We are the East, West, North, and South
We are Punkhorn Point, Popponesset Bay
We are the Mashpee River
We are the Flume that separates the pond from the ocean
We are the herring and the scup
And the venison and the rabbit
We are the scrub pine and scrub oak
We are the protectors of the land
We are the Mashpee Wampanoag.
May we honor these relationships and seek to restore our kinship
with the first people on our lands.
May our celebrations of Thanksgiving be joyful. May our celebration and practice of gratitude ground us in the hope and believe that this world can be better, that we can do better, that we can build a world with love and not hatred. A world where senseless acts of hatred one day end.
As we practice gratitude this weekend, let’s also practice generosity.
May this Shabbat bring renewal and blessings to all of you and your loved ones.
May we find strength, courage, and patience, and open our hearts with generosity.
May all those who are ill find healing. And may we have a joyful, sweet, and peaceful Shabbat.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Shabbat Shalom,
Rav Claudia