Friday November 29, 2024/28 Heshvan 5785
Parashat Toldot/Thanksgiving Weekend
Hevre/Friends,
They say that timing is everything.
Yesterday in New York, like so many others, my family and I gathered to enjoy a beautiful meal and express our gratitude for one another and for all the blessings that fill our lives. We indulged in food, drink, stories and laughter.
A few blocks away in one direction and across the river in the other, two different families were contending with a different kind of Thanksgiving. Having each just suffered a death in the family, for them last night's annual summoning of American families to tables laden with abundance was burdened with an unmistakable emptiness.
For one, grieving the loss of their 93-year old matriarch to the relentless forces of aging meant weaving together deep sadness with profound gratitude. For the other, grieving the sudden death of their patriarch due to the often inscrutable and unstoppable forces of illness, their alchemy of pain and thankfulness demanded yet a different force to forge.
It sounds so simple: be grateful for all we have. And yet, there are times when it’s just really hard to feel it. A world battling so many wars - military, ideological, political, ecological - doesn’t help. Feeling a deep sense of Jewish vulnerability also doesn’t help.
And yet, though it may take some effort, each of us has what to be thankful for; and often considerably so.
At 95 years old, my mother-in-law Mavis has many cherished memories. But also some bitter ones. She lost her beloved husband, Sidney, 22 years ago. She lost her daughter, Elyse, 17 years ago. Eleven years ago she left her homeland of South Africa to come live near us, leaving behind everything - and everyone - she knew. Mavis has every reason to envelop herself in a cloud of sadness and longing. And yet, she is the most grateful human being I have ever met.
Each morning she gazes outside her window and marvels at how lovely the trees look. A gift of some flowers brings on gushes of thanks. A phone call from her niece, Linda, is regaled for days. A coffee and croissant from the local cafe is appreciated like a Thanksgiving feast. A joke keeps her giggling for hours. Her granddaughter Tamar’s engagement prompts a seldom-made, difficult trip into the city. Mavis has lost so much and yet every day she sustains herself with an awareness of how much she has had, and still does. And with an awareness of how precious some of life’s most basic gifts truly are.
She is a simple woman, unencumbered by our stresses to work endlessly, earn copiously, be connected always, consume constantly. Yet Mavis possesses a wisdom none of our successes or smarts can buy: gratitude.
I hope I get to be old like Mavis. But more, and well before, I hope I can be ever-grateful like her.
With ongoing prayers for the hostages and their families, the bereaved and the injured, and for a lasting peace in Israel and around the world, I wish you Shabbat Shalom and Happy Thanksgiving.
Dini
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