Thanksgiving Jewish Thought
Rabbi Zevi Saunders
Published by Zevi Saunders · 1 hr ·
By the time you read this, the tryptophan from your turkey is probably slowly seeping out of your body. The smell of cooking leftover turkey for Shabbat is slowly wafting through your nose. Perhaps you will be camping out waiting in line for the Black Friday sales, or perhaps sitting on a beach somewhere enjoying your break. Giving thanks is a very Jewish idea. We give thanks every day to hashem for everything we have in our lives. We make a Bracha before we eat or benefit from anything in this world as a way of saying thank you to hashem for providing us with it. We give thanks when we leave the restroom that everything is working well internally. We give thanks when we recover from surgery. In fact every year in the temple times we had to bring the first fruits of the seven species that Israel is praised for, and offer them to the priests in the temple. We would make a declaration thanking hashem going back to the times when Jacob was saved from his father-in-law, Lavan. The RAMBAN( Nachmanides) at the end of parshat BO says the reason we have so many Mitzvot commemorating the exodus from Egypt, is to prompt us to be grateful and thankful for having been saved.
Perhaps we should take this time to think of a few things that we are thankful for in our own lives. We should be thankful for our good health. We should be thankful for our children, grandchildren and all the other things we have in our lives.
I would like to show my thanks to everybody in the Delray community for welcoming me and my wife and family so much and making my family and me feel very special. This is a wonderful community and I’m sure we will grow into the premier location for snowbirds in South Florida.