Temple Shalom in Wheeling is Celebrating Blessings and Community at Thanksgiving
Lief: Blessings Mean More When Shared With Others
WHEELING — Blessings — such as the Thanksgiving pies on tables this week — taste a little sweeter when they are shared with friends, family and even strangers, according to Rabbi Joshua Lief of the Temple Shalom.
“You can’t sit in your own bubble,” he said. “Your blessings don’t mean as much unless you share them with others.”
Everyone is invited to come share their blessings and celebrate community during an interfaith service scheduled to take place the night before Thanksgiving.
The event is set for 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Temple Shalom, 23 Bethany Pike, Wheeling.
Similar interfaith services at Thanksgiving took place in past decades, but haven’t been organized in recent years.
Lief said he isn’t certain what to expect Wednesday night.
“It is community-wide, interfaith Thanksgiving service. There will be clergy and congregants from across the Wheeling community, and it should be a diverse gathering,” Lief said. “We will hear how all our differing faith traditions direct us to the similar responsibility of being grateful for our many blessings.”
He said it is important that people do not lose the spiritual meaning of Thanksgiving as they eat turkey, watch football and prepare for Black Friday shopping.
“If Thanksgiving is only about gluttony — proving just how blessed we are by consuming all we can — then we lose the real meaning of the festival,” Lief said.
The Pilgrims were devout readers of the Bible, and they were familiar with the Jewish tradition of Sukkot, Lief said. The Sukkot, meaning “Feast of the Tabernacles,” is when those of the Jewish faith celebrate the blessings of a harvest that provides enough food for the people.
The Pilgrims based their first Thanksgiving on this festival, he said. The Jewish festival typically takes place in late October.
“It is where we give thanks for agricultural produce, and give thanks to God that we have enough food to eat, a roof over our heads and friends and family with whom to share,” Lief said. “That’s what Thanksgiving ought to be about — appreciating our gifts by sharing them with others.”
That is why everyone who attends the service is encouraged to bring canned or non-perishable items that will be donated to the needy, he said.
On the holiday of Sukkot, the Jewish people recite the Hallel Psalms.
These are Psalms 113 to 118, which state: “Give thanks to the Lord, for his love is everlasting.”
Also, the Thanksgiving symbol of the cornucopia, often called the horn of plenty, is actually a Sukkot symbol, according to Lief.
“I’m not saying you have to be a religious person to celebrate Thanksgiving,” he said. “All of us should find many reasons to be grateful, whether it’s your favorite football team winning, your grandmother’s recipe for stuffing or a sale. Whatever it is that is making you happy, it’s a great opportunity to give thanks.
“But the idea is sharing those blessings with others, and acknowledging we are not alone in the universe — that others make our lives better,” Lief said. “This could be God, our friends, our family, our neighbors … That sense of being larger than one’s self is something our faith demands.”
And the country today needs Thanksgiving, Lief said.
“American society is more bitterly divided and fractured than at any other time in recent memory,” he said.
“I think we as citizens ought to find ways to connect positively with our friends and our neighbors — and even more so with strangers — to bring our community together rather than allowing to slide away into isolation.”
In an age of social media and partisan messages, too often people only communicate with those who hold ideas similar to their own, Lief said.
“We want to hear at this service from the scriptures of those who do not think the way we do,” he said. “And when we do, we will discover we have more in common than we realized.”
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