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November 12, 2022
Author(s): Rav Hazzan Aliza Berger,
Parshat Vayera
November 12, 2022 — 18 Cheshvan 5783
More Than Turkey and Cranberry Sauce
Temple Emanuel, Newton, MA
I love Thanksgiving. It’s a little early, I know. But every year, November comes, and all I can think about is Thanksgiving. I’m going to see my family soon. We’re going to eat turkey and cranberry sauce green beans and sweet potatoes and pies…there was the year I almost got stopped by TSA for bringing too many pies back…I didn’t know they’re considered a liquid. I love all the sweet memories I have of Thanksgivings from my childhood, when we used to gather in my Aunt Vanessa and Uncle Allan’s restaurant, the River Sage, in Evergreen, Colorado or at my grandparents table with the giant mirror. Four years ago, I loved Thanksgiving even more when Solomon proposed to me, and we got to celebrate our engagement with my whole family in Colorado. I loved Thanksgiving three years ago because we were just married and reveling in the blessing of getting to celebrate with everyone we love. This year, every time I think of Thanksgiving I want to cry. After so many months of infertility purgatory, this year we get to go home to Colorado with our little PB—that’s what we’re calling our little one before they make their appearance this spring. Thanksgiving has never felt sweeter.
And then, the other day, while scrolling through Hulu, I came across Padma Lakshmi’s new show, Taste the Nation. In the spirit of Thanksgiving, Hulu suggested I watch an episode filmed right here in Martha’s Vineyard called “Truth and the Turkey Tale.”
The show was incredibly powerful. Padma meets with Native American Wampanoag historians, chefs, and community members who speak about their people’s history, about the daily struggle they endure to access basic resources and the rights that have been granted to them by law, and about how they experience Thanksgiving—a holiday in which millions of Americans gather to eat what turns out to be traditional Wampanoag foods without acknowledging that the food we eat and the land we are eating upon belonged to another people not so long ago.
It turns out the original Thanksgiving meal didn’t happen the way we learned it in school. The Pilgrims arrived just after the Wampanoag people, who lived here in Massachusetts, had been decimated by diseases brought over by white colonizers. In 1619, more than two thirds of the nearly 100,000 Wampanoag had died, and the tribe was trying to figure out how to survive. They strategized that maybe, if they helped the Pilgrims, the Pilgrims would in turn help protect them against neighboring tribes who wanted to take their lands.
In the fall of 1621, when the Pilgrims sat down for their meal of Thanksgiving, they didn’t think to invite the Wampanoag teachers who had made their harvest possible. They didn’t even consider that muskets fired in celebration might alarm the nearby tribe. A hundred Wampanoag warriors raced over, worried they were heading into battle. Instead, they found the Pilgrims feasting and joined in. That original meal wasn’t a celebration of togetherness, it wasn’t a kumbaya moment the way we like to think, and it certainly wasn’t a holiday that was repeated right away.
It wasn’t until about 15 years later, that the holiday of Thanksgiving first took shape. Massachusetts Governor John Winthrop established a day of Thanksgiving after white colonizers returned safely from massacring 600 Pequots in Connecticut. In 1789, President George Washington tried to resurrect it to bolster military morale during his first year as president, but it didn’t really catch on. It wasn’t until 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln issued his Thanksgiving Proclamation that people began to really celebrate. This was a holiday designed to unite the nation in gratitude after a brutal civil war.
Watching the show, I felt a little embarrassed. I knew this history, at least roughly. I knew the Thanksgiving story was a myth invented to cover up the pain of colonization, to disguise the brokenness of our country’s start. On some level, I knew that this story, and the idea that Native Americans welcomed us and taught us how to survive, was designed to justify our presence here and to perpetuate the idea that no matter what happened then, we can all just sit down and have a happy meal together now.
But something shifted for me hearing Wampanoag testimony. On the show and in various articles I read afterwards, Wampanoag people shared about the compound pain they experience—it wasn’t just that their lands were stolen, that their people were massacred, that their children were taken away and sent to boarding schools where they were robbed of their language and culture and torn from their families. Today, they feel the pain for that loss, but they also feel the pain of being unseen. Too few acknowledge the violence that was done to them then, the violence that continues today. Too few acknowledge that our nation was built on stolen land, that in the aftermath of civil war, our nation was united through the creation of a holiday that actively subverts the truth of colonization. Too few acknowledge their pain or the discrimination they face.
I know how painful it is for me when I hear of someone who denies the Holocaust or says that Antisemitism isn’t real. Those lies cause me pain even though we have Israel, and we have the ADL, and we have the concept of Antisemitism and a world which largely stands by our side. And yet somehow, I never thought to connect my own experiences with what Native Americans must feel every year around this time. Somehow, I chose to prioritize my love of a secular holiday over the feelings of an entire people.
And yet, to be honest, I’m not ready to give up on Thanksgiving. I know that I should probably boycott this holiday, I should go instead to participate in the Day of Mourning which is held here in Massachusetts every year on Thanksgiving. Instead, I’m hoping that there might be a way to strike a balance—to both celebrate Thanksgiving and honor the story of the Native American’s who made that first meal possible. This year, before we sit down for Thanksgiving, Solomon and I are going to donate to the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe to support their efforts to revive their language, teach their culture, and protect their sacred lands.
But that’s not enough. We belong to a tradition that believes in embracing complexity. Our sacred texts don’t shy away from pointing out the missteps and failures of our ancestors. We learn about Abraham’s incredible penchant for justice and righteousness even as we watch him ignore the plight of his own child and partner. We learn about the greatness of Joseph, about how he saved all of Egypt from famine, even as we learn about how he used the famine as an opportunity to seize lands and redistribute wealth—impoverishing Egyptians while filling Israelite coffers. Thanksgiving isn’t only possible when we cling to a sugar-coated story of saccharin togetherness. Instead, true Thanksgiving becomes possible when we honor the challenge of what has been and use our energies to make sure that the future will tell a very different story. And so, this year, when I sit down for dinner with my family, I’m planning to bring the story of the Wampanoag people so that we can discuss how we can transform the energy of what we’re eating into fuel that will help us to be agents of positive change in the world.
At the end of the episode of Taste the Nation, Padma gathers for a big Thanksgiving feast with Wampanoag chefs, teachers, and advocates who have been shared their wisdom during the episode. They start with a prayer: “Creator, we thank you for all things, ancestors we thank you for all gifts given us, we thank you for this beautiful food, for our wonderful family and friends who have come here…” and then, together, they dig in. Padma says, “For Thanksgiving to be an all-American holiday, Thanksgiving needs to consider all Americans especially indigenous Americans”
We didn’t make this holiday. We didn’t colonize this nation or subjugate Native Americans. We didn’t consciously ignore their story, their truth, their history, or their plight. But this year, we have a chance to do something difference. We can celebrate in a new way. We can empathize, we can give resources, we can lift up the stories of indigenous Americans, we can honor their truth, and we can begin to tell the story of how we transformed pain and brokenness into the kind of world for which everyone can give thanks.