By Rabbi Ben Kamin
SAN DIEGO–What must God think of all the arguing about religion?
Thanksgiving is a day when heaven may get some relief from this concern, when Americans of all faiths sit at one spiritual table with many of the same trimmings and family customs. Thanksgiving liberates us from specific theological claims and allows us to contemplate the common creed of gratitude. In a way, it’s the only pure holiday.
We celebrate Thanksgiving as a uniquely inclusive American moment of community faith. It is an untainted day, a blessed coda just prior to the commercial frenzy of Christmas and Hanukkah.
We are all seated at the table with one God.
Almost every other day of the year is tinged with religious constraints and spiritual divisiveness. This holiday mitigates the fundamentalism that seeps into too much of the great American faiths, creating a sense of exclusion that divides our children and obviates the exemplary spirit of togetherness shown by Native Americans to the new pilgrims back in 1623.
If this day offers warm bread for empty bellies and cold turkey from religious coercion, then our children are well served and our country is morally redirected.
Young people think a lot about God, and they tend to view religion with some skepticism. Perhaps they are more convinced of adult hypocrisy in this category than in almost any other. Dealing with fears that were unimaginable when we were in high school a generation or two ago, these kids are generally unimpressed with any obsessive claims that one religion may hold against another.
Today, we should talk to our children about the meaning of spiritual wholeness. They hear a lot from religious zealots in school, on television and across the Internet. Today is one of those rare days when we actually gather as families, and it is worth noting that every American family fortunate enough to have a table and some bread is pretty much saying the same prayers.
This is the shared Thanksgiving epiphany—the gospel of gratitude.
Thanksgiving allows all the religions to share inclusive spiritual nourishment. Soon enough, some of our children will return to college, the homeless will return to lonely desperation, and many of us will regress to the mercantile madness of the December holidays. Jewish parents will fret again about the proliferation of Christmas symbols and images while both Jews and Christians will forget to infuse the subsequent holidays with the ethical symmetry that Thanksgiving gives us for now.
Jews, remember what you feel today when you light the Chanukah lights in a few weeks. Christians, recall today’s spiritual equity when you light the candles of the Advent wreath. At Thanksgiving, there are no politics in religion. There is only one table set for God.
[This article originally appeared in the Cleveland Plain Dealer].
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Kamin is a freelance writer based in San Diego. He may be contacted at ben.kamin@sdjewishworld.com