Thanksgiving: Knowing We Have Enough

Rabbi Joel Fleekop

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Lured by promises of sales, discounts, and special offers, 90 million Americans will go shopping this weekend. As if magnetically pulled by the official start of the holiday shopping season, a season which of course unofficially began in July, our friends, neighbors, and many of us, will wake up early on Friday and fight for parking spaces at the mall. We will search for the perfect gifts for our loved ones and keep an eye out for that sweater, shirt, or c.d. that we simply can’t live without. We will wait in line to contribute our portion of the estimated 25 billion dollars Americans will spend shopping this weekend, and then trek back to our cars.

Of course the walk around the mall and back to the car, which is inevitably parked in the furthest outskirts of the lot, isn’t such a bad thing. After all the day before was spent consuming incredibly large amounts of food, diet friendly foods like turkey, stuffing, and pumpkin pie, while watching what, at least my wife considers, an obscene amount of football.

Ironically lost in the modern celebration of Thanksgiving, a weekend that is in many ways filled with excess, is one of the holiday’s most important messages. Offering thanksgiving, saying thank you, is a way of acknowledging that that we have enough. That we have what we need to be secure and satisfied.

This was the message the Pilgrims offered in 1621. Inviting their Native American neighbors to join them for a feast of Thanksgiving, a custom common to both the Puritan and Algonquin cultures, the Pilgrims thanked the Algonquin’s for their support, support that helped them build houses, grow their corn high, and fill their store rooms with enough supplies to make it through the winter. Thanking the Algonquins for their help, and God for the many blessings they received, the Pilgrims acknowledged that they had enough.

Similarly, when we sit around the Thanksgiving table and thank our friends and family, what we are really saying to them is that they have provided us with the love, care, and support that we needed. In expressing our appreciation to those around the table we remind ourselves how much love we have in our lives and that while there is always room for more, we are blessed to have enough.

Our prayers convey the same message. For most Thanksgiving is not a time for petitionary prayer but rather prayers of appreciation and gratitude. On Thanksgiving we thank the God of our Understanding for the many blessings that fill our life, showing our appreciation for these blessings by resisting the urge to ask for more.

Resisting the urge to ask for more, truly recognizing that we don’t need more, can be both a powerful and empowering experience.

It is powerful because when we stop looking for more, we can truly appreciate what we already have. It is not a coincidence that on Thanksgiving, a day when offices are closed and stores shut, a day when we are literally forced to live with what we already have, that we are best able to express how much what we do have, our physical possessions but also our loved ones and the love of God, really means to us.

In addition to being powerful, acknowledging we have enough is empowering because it frees us to use the time, energy, and resources we would have otherwise spent acquiring more: more money, more toys, more whatever, on things that are of greater importance, including helping others so that they too can have enough.

One of this evening’s scriptural readings was taken from the 19th chapter of Leviticus. There we read,

When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap all the way to the edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not pick your vineyard bare; you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger. I the Eternal am your God.

These verses command us to leave the corners of our fields for those in need but no where in scripture are we told how large those corners must be.

Rabbinic literature offers some direction. The Mishnah explains that the corners left for the poor must equal at least one sixtieth of the field and that the owner should consider the size and yield of the field, as well as the number of people in need.

The Mishnah and Talmud offer guidance but ultimately how much of the field was left for the poor, how many people could find the food that they needed, depended on the owner’s discretion. The field’s produce stopped adding to the property of one person and started providing the provisions needed by others when its owner recognized that he or she had enough.

Recognizing when we have enough is a difficult task, especially this weekend with so many things there to tempt us. But even if we aren’t able to keep ourselves from having that extra slice of pie or resist the draw of steep discounts at the mall, I hope the message of Thanksgiving will not be lost on us.

The message that while we may not have everything we want, we have everything that we need to be secure, safe, and happy. This Thanksgiving season let us acknowledge and appreciate all the blessings that fill our lives. And may the recognition of our blessings free us and empower us to work towards the creation of a better world, a world in which all live with the sense of gratitude and well-being that we are fortunate to know.

Happy Thanksgiving.