email #53 — thoughts on thanksgiving
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Leon Kraiem
Nov 26, 2025, 2:25:08 AM11/26/25
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Hi friends,
My November trip to New York is drawing to a close, as we approach the holiday that is the nominal reason for my visit each year (though, let’s be real, the timing is as much about the crunch-crunch of walks through Central Park and the season of perfection for an apple cider donut.) I’ve also enjoyed listening to my playlist for this time of year, “a goyishe november,” which just doesn’t hit the same in Jerusalem.
A few years ago, my dad gave my sister and me a nice little speech about how much he likes Thanksgiving. He was born and raised it in Mexico, so he’s got that immigrant’s appreciation for all things uniquely American (I know Canada has a Thanksgiving too — probably other countries — I actually know very little about the holiday — but let’s just run with it, yeah?).
Specifically, my dad likes how straightforward the holiday is, the lack of pomp and circumstance, rules and regulations: let’s all get together, and be thankful, and eat. Good idea! No need to make it any more complicated than that.
—
But despite its being shorn of the more baroque qualities of properly-religious holidays— ‘You know how Passover begins? We’re in our kitchen with the lights off, holding a feather, a wooden spoon, and a candle, looking for a piece of bread that we hid’ —, I’ve never experienced the last Thursday of November as a “secular” festival, which I think is worth thinking-about-by-writing-about a little.
I was catching up earlier today with an old teacher of mine, about religion and education and how they intersect in prep-school New York City. We discussed how the two schools I went to growing up — one that was secular, but not unthinkingly secularist, and the other nominally Episcopalian, but with an allergy to imposing anything on its students — negotiated the tension of having nice-Jewish students singing Christ-y songs every morning.
Here’s a story about that, which I only just remembered when I sat down to write this:
We gather together to ask the Lord’s blessing/He chastens and hastens his will to make known/The wicked oppressing, now cease from distressing/Sing praises to his name, he forgets not his own!
This hymn always gets stuck in my head around November-time. One year, around the sixth grade, we sang it in music class, and the teacher asked: “What does that mean, ‘he forgets not his own’?” Not the theological significance of the idea, just the phraseology itself — ‘his own’ is not a construction you come across much when you’re 12.
I, a bright young boy who spent four hours a week at the B’nai Jeshurun Hebrew School, thought about it a moment, then raised my hand and, with big ‘eureka’ energy, proposed: ‘Sing praises to his name, he forgets not his own’ — meaning, his own name! I explained that the High Priest used to utter the four-letter name of God only once a year, upon emerging from the Holy of Holies, but that since the Temple’s destruction, we’ve lost the tradition of how to pronounce it. For an answer that’s not correct, I think it’s a pretty good one.
—
“Forgets not his own,” though, is a good example of some of the reasons I’m glad I grew up singing hymns. I have trouble explaining this to my friends, and I think it’s because they all either a) went to normal schools, where religion was kept out of the classroom, or b) to religious schools, where you were actually supposed to believe in it. The goldilocks zone in which I was educated doesn’t ring a bell for them.
What I usually tell my friends, in an attempt to explain that unstuck-in-time 98th Street pedagogy, is 1) the value of growing up with those words in your mouth, just getting acquainted with the shapes they make, even if your comprehension lags behind your phonics; and 2) the civilizational literacy: ‘When you read the Chronicles of Narnia, did your teachers leave you to believe it was about a lion, a witch, and a wardrobe?’ I’ll ask.
But still, while those are both good reasons for teaching kids hymns, they’re not the reason I’m glad that I grew up singing them. If I have to put that into words, I think it’s something like: the richness of growing up inside a canon, or even just the security and humility that comes with knowing that it’s there. To paraphrase a great American orator: You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.
There’s nothing wrong with “Turkey Day” (except the factory farming), but it’s a little like ‘taking the Christ out of Christmas,’ to borrow a culture-war bugaboo. With respect to all the mall store Santas, I wasn’t raised with that Jingle Bells drek, I was raised on Adeste Fideles in a big, cross-shaped church, with a little boy in a clip-on tie bringing good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people.
Likewise, I was raised on ‘Now thank we all our god, with hearts and hands and voices,’ that whole section of the New English Hymnal I was given in first grade, of vaguely-Protestant-but-I-couldn't-tell-you-more-than-that harvest-time gratitudes that make you want to put on a pilgrim hat and accuse somebody of witchcraft.
—
Which brings us back to November: unlike Dec. 25 — a context in which the profound is exclusionary, and the inclusive is no longer profound (Ed. N.: I don't actually believe that, upon second reading, but it's a good line and the email's already written, so I'm leaving it in) — on the last Thursday of Thanksgiving, the Venn Diagram of ‘explicitly Christian’ and ‘rich in the way that only religion is rich, that takes thousands of years and a lot of God-fearing savants to get going’ has enough daylight for a nice Jewish boy to bask in, even all the way from Jerusalem — though it’s certainly easier in the States.
As it should be, I think. Despite everything I said above, Thanksgiving isn’t really a universal holiday, I don’t think. Rather — and this is probably the big idea of this email, but (you know what I’m about to say, don’t you?) it’s 1:30 am and I have work in the morning — I think it’s a religiously American holiday, the only real one of its kind, as nonsectarian as the Constitution, but as metaphysically-humbled as the Declaration of Independence. It belongs to no Church, but it totally belongs in churches — and also in synagogues, community centers, living rooms, etc.
There’s been a lot of academic pilpul in recent years about Jewish peoplehood, about “Judaism isn’t really a religion” and “don’t appropriate my faith for your ethnostate,” and so on and so forth — Bari Weiss rehearsed a variation of this point the other day, the “Jews are older than these categories” thing. Which is true! And it’s useful, to explain that Judaism’s not a religion the way Christianity and Islam are, and Jews aren’t a nation in the way that the Poles or the Ukrainians are, and the Druze and the Alawites and the Yazidis are good examples of other Middle Eastern ethnoreligious groups, so I get why people bring them up, but: I do always want to point out (I’ve written this before, and I’m sure I’ll write it again) the example of the American people, of a people created not by blood or soil but by a covenant — but a covenant that, in turn, really does create a people, not just a political construct.
One of the things I’m thankful for, in keeping with the usual Israel/Diaspora theme of these emails, is to belong to two such peoples — probably the only ones quite like them in the world.
My November trip to New York is drawing to a close, as we approach the holiday that is the nominal reason for my visit each year (though, let’s be real, the timing is as much about the crunch-crunch of walks through Central Park and the season of perfection for an apple cider donut.) I’ve also enjoyed listening to my playlist for this time of year, “a goyishe november,” which just doesn’t hit the same in Jerusalem.
A few years ago, my dad gave my sister and me a nice little speech about how much he likes Thanksgiving. He was born and raised it in Mexico, so he’s got that immigrant’s appreciation for all things uniquely American (I know Canada has a Thanksgiving too — probably other countries — I actually know very little about the holiday — but let’s just run with it, yeah?).
Specifically, my dad likes how straightforward the holiday is, the lack of pomp and circumstance, rules and regulations: let’s all get together, and be thankful, and eat. Good idea! No need to make it any more complicated than that.
—
But despite its being shorn of the more baroque qualities of properly-religious holidays— ‘You know how Passover begins? We’re in our kitchen with the lights off, holding a feather, a wooden spoon, and a candle, looking for a piece of bread that we hid’ —, I’ve never experienced the last Thursday of November as a “secular” festival, which I think is worth thinking-about-by-writing-about a little.
I was catching up earlier today with an old teacher of mine, about religion and education and how they intersect in prep-school New York City. We discussed how the two schools I went to growing up — one that was secular, but not unthinkingly secularist, and the other nominally Episcopalian, but with an allergy to imposing anything on its students — negotiated the tension of having nice-Jewish students singing Christ-y songs every morning.
Here’s a story about that, which I only just remembered when I sat down to write this:
We gather together to ask the Lord’s blessing/He chastens and hastens his will to make known/The wicked oppressing, now cease from distressing/Sing praises to his name, he forgets not his own!
This hymn always gets stuck in my head around November-time. One year, around the sixth grade, we sang it in music class, and the teacher asked: “What does that mean, ‘he forgets not his own’?” Not the theological significance of the idea, just the phraseology itself — ‘his own’ is not a construction you come across much when you’re 12.
I, a bright young boy who spent four hours a week at the B’nai Jeshurun Hebrew School, thought about it a moment, then raised my hand and, with big ‘eureka’ energy, proposed: ‘Sing praises to his name, he forgets not his own’ — meaning, his own name! I explained that the High Priest used to utter the four-letter name of God only once a year, upon emerging from the Holy of Holies, but that since the Temple’s destruction, we’ve lost the tradition of how to pronounce it. For an answer that’s not correct, I think it’s a pretty good one.
—
“Forgets not his own,” though, is a good example of some of the reasons I’m glad I grew up singing hymns. I have trouble explaining this to my friends, and I think it’s because they all either a) went to normal schools, where religion was kept out of the classroom, or b) to religious schools, where you were actually supposed to believe in it. The goldilocks zone in which I was educated doesn’t ring a bell for them.
What I usually tell my friends, in an attempt to explain that unstuck-in-time 98th Street pedagogy, is 1) the value of growing up with those words in your mouth, just getting acquainted with the shapes they make, even if your comprehension lags behind your phonics; and 2) the civilizational literacy: ‘When you read the Chronicles of Narnia, did your teachers leave you to believe it was about a lion, a witch, and a wardrobe?’ I’ll ask.
But still, while those are both good reasons for teaching kids hymns, they’re not the reason I’m glad that I grew up singing them. If I have to put that into words, I think it’s something like: the richness of growing up inside a canon, or even just the security and humility that comes with knowing that it’s there. To paraphrase a great American orator: You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.
There’s nothing wrong with “Turkey Day” (except the factory farming), but it’s a little like ‘taking the Christ out of Christmas,’ to borrow a culture-war bugaboo. With respect to all the mall store Santas, I wasn’t raised with that Jingle Bells drek, I was raised on Adeste Fideles in a big, cross-shaped church, with a little boy in a clip-on tie bringing good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people.
Likewise, I was raised on ‘Now thank we all our god, with hearts and hands and voices,’ that whole section of the New English Hymnal I was given in first grade, of vaguely-Protestant-but-I-couldn't-tell-you-more-than-that harvest-time gratitudes that make you want to put on a pilgrim hat and accuse somebody of witchcraft.
—
Which brings us back to November: unlike Dec. 25 — a context in which the profound is exclusionary, and the inclusive is no longer profound (Ed. N.: I don't actually believe that, upon second reading, but it's a good line and the email's already written, so I'm leaving it in) — on the last Thursday of Thanksgiving, the Venn Diagram of ‘explicitly Christian’ and ‘rich in the way that only religion is rich, that takes thousands of years and a lot of God-fearing savants to get going’ has enough daylight for a nice Jewish boy to bask in, even all the way from Jerusalem — though it’s certainly easier in the States.
As it should be, I think. Despite everything I said above, Thanksgiving isn’t really a universal holiday, I don’t think. Rather — and this is probably the big idea of this email, but (you know what I’m about to say, don’t you?) it’s 1:30 am and I have work in the morning — I think it’s a religiously American holiday, the only real one of its kind, as nonsectarian as the Constitution, but as metaphysically-humbled as the Declaration of Independence. It belongs to no Church, but it totally belongs in churches — and also in synagogues, community centers, living rooms, etc.
There’s been a lot of academic pilpul in recent years about Jewish peoplehood, about “Judaism isn’t really a religion” and “don’t appropriate my faith for your ethnostate,” and so on and so forth — Bari Weiss rehearsed a variation of this point the other day, the “Jews are older than these categories” thing. Which is true! And it’s useful, to explain that Judaism’s not a religion the way Christianity and Islam are, and Jews aren’t a nation in the way that the Poles or the Ukrainians are, and the Druze and the Alawites and the Yazidis are good examples of other Middle Eastern ethnoreligious groups, so I get why people bring them up, but: I do always want to point out (I’ve written this before, and I’m sure I’ll write it again) the example of the American people, of a people created not by blood or soil but by a covenant — but a covenant that, in turn, really does create a people, not just a political construct.
One of the things I’m thankful for, in keeping with the usual Israel/Diaspora theme of these emails, is to belong to two such peoples — probably the only ones quite like them in the world.
Other things I’m thankful for: the hostages having returned; everyone who gave of themselves to return them; fast, safe air travel; air traffic controllers; vegan meat; my family, obviously; my friends, obviously; dogs; Vyvanse; having been taught to read, by people who were really good at it; the ability to forgive and be forgiven, including for not being forgiving enough; modern Hebrew; the doormen at 40 E 94 St; shelter; the peace that covers a lot of the world, including New York; lentil soup; really funny stand-up bits from decades ago, and friends whom I can reference them with and then burst out laughing in the middle of the street; Adraba; all the people who are neither family nor friends but rather really very much both; The Beatles; and the fact that I still get a kick out of songbird migration season despite not having properly gone birding in like three years.
And, of course, thankful to all of you for reading, or more to the point for being people whom it makes me thankful to know have read.
—
As always: I am alive, and I am well, thanks to others, not all of whom are.
And, of course, thankful to all of you for reading, or more to the point for being people whom it makes me thankful to know have read.
—
As always: I am alive, and I am well, thanks to others, not all of whom are.
Happy Thanksgiving.
LK
LK
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