Finding Gratitude

Sermon Shabbat Sukkot 5785, Rabbi Sam Cohon

Congregation Beit Simcha, Tucson, AZ

Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sameiach!  Sukkot is our great holiday of thanksgiving and the week when we offer our prayers of gratitude to God.  But that’s not always such a Jewish way to approach the world.

You might remember the classic Jewish joke about a Jewish bubbie walking on the seashore with her grandson.  Suddenly a huge wave comes in and sweeps him out to sea.

“Please God, bring him back,” she cries, “I’ll do anything, pray three times a day, keep strictly kosher, give 10% of what I have to tzedakah, I’ll be nice to my son-in-law, anything, just bring him back!”

At that moment another wave crashes in to shore, depositing the boy, unharmed, at her feet. 

The bubbie looks up at heaven and says, sternly, “He had a hat.”

As the joke demonstrates, it’s easier to find chutzpah than gratitude in Jewish life—probably, in all life.  And so, to aid us in the process of finding our way towards gratitude, autumn is the season designated for thanksgiving in our society.  All three major thanksgiving festivals from October to December—Sukkot, American Thanksgiving, and Chanukah—are based on the original commandment establishing this holiday of gratitude, the “Feast of Tabernacles”, in the Torah.  But thanksgiving is much more than a holiday.  It is at the very core of what it means to be human.

Gratitude is the essential religious emotion.  When we give thanks for what we have, and for what we receive, we convey a profound message of connection, interdependence, and even holiness.  Saying “thank you” can be no more than an automatic gesture, but it can also be the key to unlocking our hearts and opening them to other human beings.  When we say “thank you” with all of our souls, we create a quality in ourselves that allows for real communication with others, for building respect and honor between people. 

That’s also true for the process of thanking God.  Traditionally we are to begin each day in Jewish tradition with the prayer Modeh Ani lefanecha, “I give thanks before You, my God”, thanking God for giving us life, a pure soul, and a new opportunity to begin each day.  Each Amidah in every service includes the beautiful prayer Modim anachnu lach, offering gratitude to God for the ordinary miracles that God does for us morning, noon, and night.  Opening that stream of gratitude is one of the keys to creating a life, and even a world, of mutual respect and goodness.

The Dalai Lama has said “Every day, think as you wake up, today I am fortunate to be alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it.”  And Sukkot is here to remind us to express that gratitude in meaningful, positive ways.

The rabbis thought this was certainly a very important holiday indeed.  In Biblical and Mishnaic times Sukkot—also called Succos—was referred to as HeChag, “The Holiday,” as though it were the only Jewish holiday—imagine that!—and likely it was the most observed of all the festivals ordained in the Torah. 

The reason Sukkot was the most observed of all ancient Jewish festivals was likely because it came at the right time of year.  While the Torah specifies three separate pilgrimage festivals in which the ancient Israelites were to travel to Jerusalem to make offerings to God, Passover in the spring, Shavu’ot, the feast of weeks, in the early summer, and Sukkot in the autumn, there must have been major challenges to farmers inherent on walking to Jerusalem for the first two of these.  Springtime, when Passover occurs, is a time of planting, weeding, fertilizing, and doing all the hard work that eventually results in a good crop.  Early summer, when Shavu’ot falls, is the time of the first fruits and the early barley crop, which must be harvested, but there are many other crops still growing that need to be tended in the diverse Mediterranean agriculture of Israel.  But Sukkot comes in the fall, when all the crop yields are complete, and the harvest is in.  It is a time of plenty and was an easier time to take a week to travel to the capital and celebrate.

Sukkot must have been when the greatest crowds arrived in Jerusalem, bringing their agricultural bounty, making sacrificial offerings but enjoying feasts each night of the festival.  The temporary huts they erected, the Sukkot they built, would have been much like the huts that they used when they stayed in the fields near the crops they were harvesting.  It was a time of great joy and celebration, of food and drink and conviviality.  Our ancestors feasted every night, and celebrated special days, extra holidays, that we don’t even really observe today, including something called Simcha Beit HaSho’eivah, a water festival of some kind that included parades, music and dancing in the streets.

Today, Sukkot is called zman simchateinu, the time of our joy, and it is filled with food, friends, and music as well as rituals that pay tribute to our reliance upon God for the many good things in our lives.  After the serious self-examination of the High Holy Days, it is time to rejoice.

Now, back to that idea of finding your own gratitude.  In Jewish tradition we are not supposed to offer thanks only on Sukkot.  In fact, if possible, we are ideally supposed to say 100 separate blessings every day—that is, we are to offer thanks pretty much constantly for all that we are, and have.

So won’t you take a few moments tonight to thank someone you would not normally thank, and to offer gratitude to God for what you have?  It can change your life—and surely, also the lives of the people all around you.

Now, from Sukkot this week, and its concluding festival of Shemini Atzeret on Thursday morning, we go immediately to Simchat Torah, which we celebrate Thursday night this week, the final holiday in this long fall cycle.  Simchat Torah is the great, fun festival when we complete the reading of the Torah and then, immediately, begin reading it all over again.  We sing and dance in 7 great hakafot, parading around the temple—and spilling out into the street—as we celebrate our greatest document, the Torah, the heart of all Jewish learning and ethics.

Simchat Torah always reminds me of when I started as a student at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, and they asked me to lead Simchat Torah services.  I sat through the first few Hakafot, the parades with the Torah, just listening to the dull, plodding songs they were doing there.  Finally I turned to the Dean of the College, Rabbi Ken Erlich, and asked him what was going on.  Like me, he is mostly descended from Eastern European Jews who do their Simchas Torah singing and dancing with great enthusiasm and energy--it's almost a wanton celebration, to be honest.  Ken explained that when he first came to the college the Torah hakafot for Simchat Torah were done in a slow, stately procession, accompanied by plodding organ music, and he himself had turned to a professor and asked "it's Simchas Torah—how come they are marching not dancing?"  And the professor answered "They are German Jews—they are dancing..."

No, we are not supposed to march, either on Sukkot or Simchat Torah: we are supposed to rejoice, fully, in this whole season.  And the best way to do this is to begin from gratitude, by thanking those people who make our lives good.  And by thanking our God, who gives us the strength to celebrate.

These z’man simchateinu, this time of our joy, has a greeting that captures the wonderful elements of both Sukkot and Simchat Torah: you say, mo’adim l’simcha, festivals of joy; and the other person answers, chagim u’zmanim l’sason holidays and times of celebration.

May you be blessed with festivals of joy and holidays of celebration; but even more, may you find your way to the feelings of gratitude and thanksgiving that make these days truly filled with simcha.