Dear TBZ community:
“Gratitude has to be at the center of a healthy spiritual life,” says Kent French, Senior Pastor of United Parish in Brookline and Convener of the Brookline Interfaith Clergy in the video the group created this year to celebrate Thanksgiving.
Our tradition invites us to develop a practice of gratitude. The first prayer we are to utter when we wake is Modah Ani, “I am grateful.”
On this Thanksgiving weekend, a very different one in a very different year, expressing gratitude even in the midst of pain and loneliness, even in the midst of sadness and fear, can lift us up and can lift up others.
Coming together, sharing a meal, watching football or movies and recognizing what is good in our lives - this is what, for many of us, Thanksgiving is. As someone who was not born in this country, I have come to enjoy and love this day, a holiday (one without long services to lead), with great food and company.
Thanksgiving was first established as a day of gratitude after the victory at Gettysburg by President Lincoln in 1863. The storybook origin story, the one that many of us learned as children, imagines the newly arrived Pilgrims and the Wampanoag gathering in peace at Plymouth for an autumn harvest celebration. This myth leaves out the truth of what happened then and what continues to happen to American Indigenous peoples today.
“In this year when we’re examining ways to fight White Supremacy, it’s essential that we examine the viewpoint of those who founded Plymouth. Namely, that Europe was an advanced civilization, with its patriarchy, inequalities and sectarian violence and the Original People of this land were so-called ‘savage and wild’ people living in a wilderness. It’s quite clear that the US creation myth of the arrival of the Pilgrims as our ‘founding fathers’ and the ‘First Thanksgiving’ between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoags is a critical piece of White Supremacy ideology, which must be examined and debunked.”
Yesterday, in honor of Thanksgiving and for the sake of truth-telling and embracing honesty, my older daughter and I watched the Emmy award-winning documentary Dawnland, produced by The Upstander Project, for which TBZ Member Mishy Lesser is the Learning Director.
Dawnland reveals the untold story of Indigenous child removal in the US and the devastating impact of Maine's Child Welfare removal practices on Maine’s Wabanaki people. The truth is brought into the open through our nation's first-ever government-endorsed Truth and Reconciliation Commission which faced immense challenges as they worked toward truth, healing, and the survival of all Indigenous peoples.
This week's parasha, Vayetze, continues the story of Jacob. Jacob has left his home to escape the wrath of his brother. Here we encounter the famous story of Jacob’s ladder and his dream of angels ascending and descending the ladder. Rashi teaches us (on Genesis 28:9) that Jacob did not proceed directly to Haran, but went to study at the Beit Midrash of Shem and Ever. Shem and Ever were Noah’s son and grandson. Noah’s son had experienced the evils of the generation of the flood and shared the lessons he learned from that time with his son, who was able to teach that to others. According to the author Yael Shahar, “The “Beit Midrash of Shem and Ever” can be read as alluding to the continuity of cultural memory over many generations: just as Shem was the physical ancestor of the Jewish Patriarchs and (at least most of) the Matriarchs, so was he the progenitor of their moral and spiritual identity.” Our forefather Jacob, as soon as he realizes that he does not know, goes off to learn all that he does not know.
Throughout Dawnland, parents and children tell their stories of forced separation, loneliness, and pain. They cry. And ultimately the tissues, holding countless tears, are gathered together and burned, offered in a sacred fire to lift up their tears to their ancestors.
We need to hear and tell truths; we need to lift up pain and tears. We need to be like Jacob and learn what we do not know.
Rev. Lisa Perry-Wood, offers in the Thanksgiving video of the Brookline Clergy a land acknowledgement written by Ann Gilmore, member of her Parish for their Thanksgiving Service and I share it with you this Shabbat with gratitude to Ann and Rev. Lisa:
“We acknowledge the Wampanoag, also known as the People of the First Light, as the custodians of the traditional lands invaded by the English aboard the Mayflower 400 years ago this month. They have inhabited and continue to live in Southeastern Massachusetts and Eastern Rhode Island for more than 12,000 years, along with their traditional neighbors to the North, the Massachusett, to the West, the Nipmuc, and to the South, the Narragansett, the Pequot and the Mohegan.
We acknowledge that across the United States, we are all living on Indigenous lands.
These lands were stolen from millions of Indigenous people, initially through violent conquest and forcible removal, and later through broken treaties, congressional legislation, and court orders. This theft continues in the 21st century. Millions of Indigenous people and hundreds of Indigenous nations are still here and their lands are still occupied.
It is not enough to simply acknowledge the Indigenous people whose lands we occupy. Our faith calls us through our shared principles to affirm and promote ‘justice, equity and compassion in human relations’ and ‘respect for the interdependent web of all existence.’
We must not only reckon with our collective past, but move forward in right relationship with our Indigenous siblings who have an historical, cultural and spiritual connection with the land. We aspire to find ways to restore to them what is rightfully theirs. Together with them and with their leadership, we must care for the land we live upon and for our living Earth, to whom we all belong.
This relationship between the land and the people was beautifully expressed by Wampanoag leader and ancestor Russell Peters, Sr who wrote:
‘We are the four directions
We are the East, West, North, and South
We are Punkhorn Point, Popponesset Bay
We are the Mashpee River
We are the Flume that separates the pond from the ocean
We are the herring and the scup
And the venison and the rabbit
We are the scrub pine and scrub oak
We are the protectors of the land
We are the Mashpee Wampanoag.’
May we honor these relationships and seek to restore our kinship
with the first people on our lands”.
May we continue our deep search for truth, lifting up the stories of those who were here before us and carve a path for reconciliation and justice.
May this Shabbat bring renewal and blessings to all of you and your loved ones..
May we learn to find in darkness the possibility of blessing and new beginnings.
May we find strength, courage, and patience, and open our hearts with generosity.
May all those who are ill find healing.
May we have a joyful and restful Shabbat!
Shabbat Shalom,
