Our diverse clergy singing Somos El Barco.

This past Sunday, the Coalition of Elgin Religious Leaders and Congregation Kneseth Israel hosted Elgin’s annual Interfaith Thanksgiving Service. It was a wonderful coming together. A great night for our synagogue and the whole Elgin community. More on that later. I wanted to share with you my words delivered that evening.

We gather together to ask the Lord’s blessing. To express our thanksgiving. My task is to explain gratitude from a Jewish perspective but as I stand here, batting clean up as it were, I realize that we share much in common. The holiday of Thanksgiving, that we heard “William Bradford” pronounce, was based on the Biblical holiday of Sukkot, the Feast of Booths or Tabernacles. We are all human beings. In the Muslim tradition, and in the Jewish midrash we learn that God created humanity through only one human being so no one can say “My lineage is better than yours.” We share another verse in common. “To save a single life is to save the whole world.” As human beings share so much. We thirst for love, for security, for community, for God. We want to put our children to bed without fear. Did you hear, really hear Hamid’s call to prayer? He referred to rachama, the Compassionate One. Same word in Hebrew.

I love to be at the lakeshore, or the ocean, especially at dawn. It is an auspicious time, a time filled with the promise that comes with a new day. It is quiet, except for the soothing sound of the surf. I never cease to be awed by the beauty, the power, the simplicity. Nothing can go wrong here. The innate power of the water astounds me, yet it is in gentle water that we were cradled in the womb. It brings me peace.

I remember sitting on a beach at Plum Island, Massachusetts at Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, at dawn and thinking. It was a hard year. There were tensions in the Middle East, a rabbi in Frankfurt Germany had just been stabbed on his way home from the synagogue, a terrorist plot had just been foiled in Heidelburg and I was leaving the next day for Germany. That sunrise, I sat there thinking. It could all be so simple. We don’t have to kill each other for our beliefs. In a Rodney King kind of moment I wondered, Can’t we all just get along?

I sat there and I prayed one of the prayers in our morning service on that beach:
If my mouth was filled with song
Like the ocean tide is strong
If my tongue could but give praise
Like the roaring of the waves
Chorus:
It would never, ever be enough
There could never, ever be enough
We will never ever say enough
To thank You, amen..
Lyrics by Anita Diamant and Peri Smilow

My colleague, Rabbi Melody Davis loves this prayer as well. Partly because her name is melody and it talks about song. Partly because she too loves being at the water’s edge. She teaches: “It serves as a reminder of the miraculous nature of the world. There are just too many things for which to thank the Holy Blessed One, therefore we gratefully acknowledge that abundance – by singing of the impossibility of completely expressing our thanks!” It’s like Love.” She continues it is like the drops of rain that fall gently, each drop of rain is a favor, symbol of God’s grace.

The rabbis of the Talmud, writing two thousand years ago agreed, teaching us that we should say 100 blessings a day. Sounds simple, no? The children of our religious school have been building just such a list of things we are thankful for. I think they have made it up to 60 and we started weeks ago. Some times it is not so simple to find things to be thankful for. Sometimes when I pray the prayer we just did after collecting the food I say to myself while saying the words out loud, “Just find one thing you are thankful for.”

The rabbis had this problem covered too. They created a blessing for hearing bad news, “Praised are You, The True Judge.” We have a prayer that talks about the beauty of Creation that says, Praised are You, Adonai, Our God who rules the universe, creating light and fashioning darkness, making peace and creating all things.” Really? Sometimes I want to scream. Creating all things? Hunger? Homelessness? Disease? Unemployment? Domestic Violence? Hitler? Then I am reminded, maybe not while I am sitting there, that God gave us free will, God gave us a choice, how to respond to these kinds of terrible things. When Harold Kushner wrote his book When Bad Things Happen to Good People the title is when, not why. It is about how we as people respond to these kinds of events. Don’t hand that book to someone in the middle of a tragedy. It might make them angry rather than bringing them comfort. And the ability to bring comfort is something I am thankful for.

When we were putting this service together the committee talked about things we share in common. One of those is grace. Exodus teaches us that God is a God who is gracious and compassionate, patient, abounding in kindness and faithfulness, assuring love for a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin. We are told that we should be like God. Just as God is gracious and compassionate, we too should be gracious and compassionate. As God is faithful, we too should be faithful. As the Holy One is loving, we too should be loving. How do we walk in God’s ways? God clothed Adam and Eve, we too should clothe the naked. God visited Abraham when he was sick. We too should visit the sick and take care of the widow, the orphan, the stranger, the margilanized. God buried Moses, we too should comfort the bereaved and bury the dead. That is what we mean by grace and lovingkindness. This is what we do when we collect money for the Community Crisis Center and PADs. When we commit to growing a garden for Food for Greater Elgin. This very service has been an example of G-d’s grace and our grace.

I am grateful to CERL for having the vision to have just such a service, that we can model that there is another way—a way of peace, a way of kindness, of love, of coming together in good times and bad. I am grateful for the leadership of Congregation Kneseth Israel who jumped at the opportunity to host this kind of event as part of our celebration of 120 years in Elgin. I am grateful to Rochelle Fosco and Lynn Glaser and Robin Seigle and countless others who made this evening possible. I am grateful to be in Elgin where more unites us than divides us, even if we are on Division Street. And I am grateful to God for providing all of these gifts.

The Bible tells us, and one of the very verses we read today. When you have eaten and are satisfied, you shall give thanks. We have eaten, at least metaphorically, and are very satisfied. We have much to be thankful for.