This week, aside from being one of the most horrific Israel has seen in a long time, has been a build up for me towards Thanksgiving. Now I know with everything else going on it shouldn't necessarily be on the top of my list of important things to be thinking about but I needed the distraction and the comfort of this tradition which my husband and I have chosen to bring with us from the United States.
A quick historical note, George Washington proclaimed the first nation-wide thanksgiving celebration in America marking November 26, 1789, "as a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God". However, Thanksgiving was only first celebrated on the same date by all states in 1863 by a presidential proclamation of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln proclaimed the date to be the final Thursday in November in an attempt to foster a sense of American unity between the Northern and Southern states. So President Washington saw a need for the nation to give thanks after a tumultuous few decades of war and striving for Independence and President Lincoln saw fit to declare it once more against the background of civil war and the need for National unity.
The origins of the day and the historical debates about when and why it arose are surrounded by plenty of speculation but I don't really care right now. I know the day to be one where my family gathered in Alabama and we sat around and had a big, delicious, meal and gave praise to the Lord. All the memories of my playing with my cousins and the food we ate and the pies my Nana made are part of parcel of what I know as Thanksgiving. Family and Food. Pretty straight forward.
Food and family are pretty essential elements to living well, in my humble opinion, in and of themselves however I think more broadly one can point to these two things and say they represent sustenance and fulfillment. And neither of these two things come into play without G-d. Yup. G-d. I said it. The Almighty. Hashem. He deserves some credit here and we should endeavor to refocus the day from what it is we are thankful for, to whom it is that we should be thanking.
You see the past 8 days in Israel have brought some ideas into clear perspective for me. Israel is indeed a blessed country. "By all rights we shouldn't even be here" to quote my favorite hobbit. Time and time again Israel and the Nation of Israel have been witness to miracles big and small over time and throughout history. Pharaohs Kings, Empires, Tribes, Western Countries and Eastern neighbors have tried to kill, eliminate, oppress, manipulate, scatter, and terrorize us and yet here we are. And hey, not only are we still around but we have some new friends. Meet Mr. Iron Dome, meet the FireBall, and oh yes, say hello to EyeBallR1 (if you don't know what these are, go look them up). I'm pretty proud of our new friends. We only invited them to the party because no one wanted to hang out with us but they turned out to be a big hit. So while everyone else was at the 'let's kill Israel party' Hashem blessed us with the 'we kick ass and develop awesome state-of-the-art weapons to minimize civilian casualty and assure astonishing accuracy' shindig. Hashem is pretty great like that.
And with the help of my Rav, I came to realize that Israel's leaders are seeing the value added benefit of recognizing Hashem's hand in all of this. You see the last time we went into Gaza it was called operation Cast Lead. A name that comes from the popular folk Hanukkah song about a fancy dreidle cast with metal. Something man made and yes, something that can be likened to a missile if you want to poetic.
This time, after years of living in terror and dealing with THOUSANDS of rockets raining down on us, we decided to coordinate an operation to root out the terrorists and attempt to bring a little normalcy back to our lives here in Israel and especially the lives of the Israeli citizens living in the South. This time, they called it Operation Pillar of Clouds- constantly mistranslated by the media and then re appropriated as a mistranslation by the Israeli new media apparatus- Pillar of Defense. Chaval (Shame). People should understand where this name comes from. Go look at the Hebrew folks. The Pillar of Clouds comes from the Pillar of Cloud that Hashem sent before Bnei Yisrael to protect and guide us when we left Egypt and journeyed in the desert for 40 years. This Pillar of cloud blocked the Egyptian army's arrows and kept Bnei Yisrael safe from harm.
Names of operations mean something for the IDF. Since each and every battle, operation, incursion, and conflict put at stake lives, human lives- the way we conceptualize our involvement and understand our mission and goals is revealed in the language we use to describe our actions. This time, we recognized Hashem in our actions and our purpose.
If General Washington declared a day of thanks while striving for Independence and if President Lincoln declared a day of thanks with the aim of coalescing National unity- then it seems all the more appropriate for us here in Israel, today, to celebrate in that same spirit and give thanks to Hashem. (And I would be remiss if I didn't point out that in hebrew Hodu means Turkey, but it also means Thanks or Praise)
So today, as Ben and I and our expat American friends celebrate thanksgiving here in Israel, on the day after a ceasefire is established with our enemy, we will recognize G-d's hand in all this. That more people were not killed we are thankful and recognize Hashem. That we are blessed with technological capability and military prowess we are thankful to Hashem. That we have a country, a modern Nation State, and that we have our eternal capital Jerusalem, we are thankful to Hashem.
