the KlezmerShack

But, here's the thing. America has been a wonderful place to be Jewish. We haven't felt at home since the peak of influence of the Council of the Four Lands (Poland, during the earlier, larger part of its history when Jews were more welcome, and Jewish culture reached a wondrous peak of depth and scholarship and even security), maybe we haven't felt as at home here since the heyday in Babylonia and the subsequent yeshivas in which the Babylonian Talmud was written.

My father's father, like all of my grandparents, was born in this country. He felt that America had been good to him, and to Jews, in ways that his grandparents had never experienced in Lithuania, whence they came. For him, giving thanks to the existence of America, and for the way in which it welcomed Jews, was a big deal. In that sense, as for all of us, I think, Thanksgiving is certainly a Jewish holiday.

But let's not confuse our giving thanks for living in a country that, by and large, has been good to us.

There are many reasons for us to join other folks living in this land to set aside a day to give thanks in a secular context with a Jewish context (which doesn't stop us from organizing and trying to ameliorate many activities—many currently ongoing—in which this country is not doing good and needs some correction—and that, too, is for another forum, and certainly, for me, part of the aforementioned Jewish context). Thanksgiving is not a Jewish holiday. Why that should stop Jews from celebrating it, and even from bringing a shekheyanu and some good klezmer to the table I dunno. In that sense, let us all emulate Cantor Jack Mendelson as portrayed in the recent, amazingly warm and wonderful documentary, "A Cantor's Tale," and bring nusakh to Thanksgiving, as to everything.