Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By richards on November 21, 2014

Published on November 20th, 2014 | by Chris Bonito

By Sydney Perry

As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them -John F. Kennedy, Jr.

On Thanksgiving my extended family usually gathers at my sisters home. We look forward to a day of feasting; of watching the grandchildren play with their cousins; of family unity; of physical satiety and spiritual recognition of our many blessings. A veritable cornucopia of gratitude. And then we head home, each in our own direction, in time for the football games.

But there is something missing. We depart without leftovers for the next day. No leftovers from the enormous golden brown bird, no cornbread stuffing with sausage and chestnuts, or mashed potatoes, rich gravy, veggies or slices of the countless pies. Its almost a crying shame.

Because I love leftover turkey, because Shabbat inevitably follows the fourth Thursday in the month of November, we make a second Thanksgiving. My immediate family can enjoy our own sideboard, groaning with its burden of enormous quantities of food, in order that we can have sliced turkey sandwiches on challah rolls the next day, and turkey tacos on Sunday, turkey hash on Monday, curried turkey salad on Tuesday, shredded turkey moo shu on Wednesday and turkey gumbo soup from the carcas on Thursday.

Leftovers. Who, after all, were the men and women who celebrated that first Thanksgiving in 1621, a pilgrim re-creation of Sukkot done by leftovers of England? Look at American history. Who came to Georgia? To Virginia? The off-scourings of debtors prisons. Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maryland? Those who couldnt conform to the religious norms in England? Who made up the waves of migration from Germany, Italy or Ireland? And later from Poland and Russia? Were they the prosperous? Far from it. They were the poverty-stricken, the downtrodden, the desperate outcasts.

The leftovers came to Americas shores as they still do today with nothing but hope. Hope for a better life, for religious freedom, for security from intolerance, for advancement for their children.

On the base of the Statue of Liberty is a quote from the Sephardic poet Emma Lazarus: Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of our teeming shore, send these, the tempest-tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

The test of a great nation is what it does with the leftovers. Unless you are a Native American, every one of us is an immigrant whose family made the decision to risk the voyage in order to start a new life. As Jews, we have much to be grateful for in our lives in this great country as we sit down to our Thanksgiving meal.

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On Thanksgiving: Celebrating the leftovers

Category: Sephardic
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