[Avodah] Thanksgiving

[T613K at aol.com]

From: rabbirichwolpoe at gmail.com

>> OK we have  identified
Two opposing Positions

Chareidi: 
If society does it, it  is or probably is "treif."

Liberal or M.O.
Thanksgiving is Kosher and  let's embrace it.

Question:
How would R SR Hirsch have viewed  it?  
Personally I'm guessing that his relationship with secular  culture
was selective and that he would embrace anything inspiring,  positive,
or uplifting as long there was no specific Halachic  barrier.

I was wondering What do the "Hirschians" on Avodah  think?






>>>>>
 
 
I think it is neither a chiyuv nor an issur.  I personally don't  celebrate 
Thanksgiving but I don't think it's a problem if you have family  members 
who do, and who want you to join them.  I would not say Merry  Chr*stmas but 
I will say Happy Thanksgiving with no qualms.  T
 
his is not a religious holiday, it is a national holiday.  I also see  no 
problem with hanging a flag on my porch for July 4 or having a barbecue on  
Labor Day.  The fact that the founders of this nation believed in G-d and  
wished to thank Him does not mean that Thanksgiving is a Christian  holiday.  
Some of the Founding Fathers were Deists, Theists or whatever --  they were 
not all Christians.  
 
The Constitution forbids the establishment of a religion but we  
nevertheless have a national day to thank G-d -- which, until just a few decades  ago, 
was considered perfectly normal and in no way "the establishment of  
religion."  Thanksgiving is the rite of no church, not Catholic nor  Protestant, 
not British nor French.  It is a non-religious national day of  thanking G-d 
for the blessings He bestows upon us, and the fact that America has  such a 
day is one of the things that makes this country so exceptional and so  
admirable.  
 
Of course nowadays many if not most Americans leave G-d out of  
Thanksgiving altogether, and many textbooks, in the spirit of Political  Correctness, 
teach that it was originally a day for the Pilgrims to thank  the Indians.  
To the extent that it not only is not a religious holiday,  but has even 
become an atheist holiday, there is even less reason for a Jew to  worry about 
it, but, hm, personally I think that leaving G-d out of it lessens  its 
importance and mars the greatness of America.  
 
In my natal home we did not make a big deal out of Thanksgiving and did not 
 eat turkey but we did eat pumpkin pie and made some passing reference to 
the  fact that it was Thanksgiving.  My father zt'l did celebrate July 4 --  
for some years, our family and the family of R' Shlomo Danziger amu'sh used 
to  get together on the Fourth for a picnic.  My father did not consider it  
obligatory to celebrate the Fourth but he did see it as having an element 
of  hakaras hatov to a malchus shel chessed that allows us Jews to build our 
Torah  mosdos and to live in peace.  
 
The mainstream charedi position is to reject any type of interaction on a  
national level with anything non-Jews do but there are pockets of  
exceptions within the chareidi community. We -- the exceptions, the Hirschians  -- 
regard patriotism as a form of hakaras hatov to the country we live in,  and 
certainly not as a betrayal of our loyalty to Eretz Yisrael and to our  own 
people.  Thanking G-d for His blessings to America (and to us  personally) is 
a form of patriotism, and can be subsumed under the category of  "Hevei 
mispallel beshloma shel malchus."  Certainly we would encourage the  goyim to 
celebrate Thanksgiving, and to be sure and remember Who should be  thanked.
 

--Toby Katz
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