As a kid, I always enjoyed Thanksgiving. Freshly-roasted turkey, gravy alongside mountains of creamy potatoes, home-made pumpkin pie – these were just some of the Thanksgiving staples in my house.
But not only did my family make all the traditional Thanksgiving foods; we had another custom as well. During the Thanksgiving meal, in between forkfuls of delicacies, each person would take a few moments to tell everyone present what he or she was thankful for in his or her life.
Some were thankful for their spouse, some for their jobs, and every once in a while during this routine, someone would say he was thankful to live in the United States with all of its freedoms and liberties. Even as a kid, as the grandson of Holocaust survivors, I could understand on some level that our freedom in America was something special and should not be taken for granted.
Millions of people in the United States celebrate Thanksgiving by expressing genuine appreciation for this great country. Indeed, the entire basis for establishing Thanksgiving as a holiday – as evident in George Washington’s Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1789 – was thanking G-d for establishing the United States and ensuring its success.
However, an interesting contrast to Thanksgiving is about to arrive in the form of Chanukah. Chanukah, too, makes expressing gratitude its most central point. We say extra prayers of thanks throughout its eight days and light the menorah as a way of broadcasting to the world the incredible miracles G-d performed for us 2,200 years ago.
What’s striking, though, is the contrast between the gratitude we express on Thanksgiving and the gratitude we express on Chanukah – just a few days later this year. On Chanukah, we thank G-d for helping us defeat the Greeks who tried to make us give up our Jewish identity and way of life. They wanted to Hellenize us; they wanted physicality to be our focus, in stark contrast to Judaism, which emphasizes spiritual goals.
What are we grateful for on Thanksgiving? This great and free country. But America isn’t just a free country. It’s a country that, perhaps due to its freedoms, loves materialism. America is regarded throughout the world as a country of luxury and prosperity. The “American Dream” involves coming here with nothing and become wealthy. Most people in the United States chase materialist ideals, and it rubs off on all of American society – including the Jews in it.
How ironic, then, that on Chanukah we thank G-d for helping us defeat those who wanted to replace our spiritual values with material ones, yet just a few days earlier we thank G-d for America, which, in its own way, causes us to neglect those very same spiritual Jewish values in favor of material ones!
How do we reconcile these two opportunities to say thank you? I believe the answer lies in understanding how to approach the material world. In the days of the Maccabees, the Greeks wanted the Jews to give up their spiritual pursuits and focus purely on Hellenistic ideals. There was no room for compromise, no way to mesh the Jewish spiritual world with the Hellenistic physical world.
In the United States, though, we have a unique opportunity to blend two worlds. America is not forcing anyone to abandon spirituality; it’s just that America’s materialistic culture makes it difficult to focus on holier goals. But the two worlds need not be in opposition. The material world is G-d’s creation, and we can – and are obligated to – use it to connect with Him.
In America, we can, in addition to pursuing spirituality, channel material wealth and goods toward G-d. For the ultimate way to serve G-d is not to denounce materialism altogether, but to understand its purpose and find ways to utilize it in coming closer to Him. Elevating the physical to such a degree that it can be used to connect us with G-d is arguably even the best way to serve Him.
So this Thanksgiving, let us give thanks not only for the freedoms the United States affords, but for the opportunity we have to channel the material in better connecting with our Creator.