Dear Members of Or Chadash:
THE BIBLICAL ORIGINS OF THANKSGIVING
I am writing this before I head out to Cuba with the Central Conference of American Rabbis for our Humanitarian visit to aid the Jewish communities there. There is MUCH we in America have to be thankful for -- our Freedom and so much more.
The holiday of Thanksgiving was created by the Pilgrims, religious individuals who saw themselves as "new Israelites" in a "promised land". They likely drew upon the Biblical holiday of Sukkot for inspiration.
Rabbi Elias Lieberman offers great insight into this in his article: "Thanksgiving: A Harvest Festival with Roots in Sukkot".
He writes:
"While we cannot be certain about what motivated those Pilgrim settlers to initiate a feast of thanksgiving, it is likely that they consciously drew on a model well-known to them from the Bible they cherish. Seeing themselves as new Israelites in a new "promised land," the Pilgrims surely found inspiration in the Bible, in the Books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, in which God commands the ancient Israelites to observe the Feast of Booths - in Hebrew, Sukkot, "to rejoice before Adonai your God" at the time of the fall harvest [Lev. 23:40]."
Happy Thanksgiving.
