R. Micha'el Rosenberg: Is Thanksgiving a Jewish Holiday?

Ta Shma

What does it mean to celebrate Thanksgiving as a Jew? In some sense, the question is a cipher for a larger one: What does it mean to take our identities as American and as Jewish both seriously? We regularly speak of Moroccan Jews or Polish Jews, German Jews or Algerian Jews; we understand that each of these Jewish communities represents a meaningful expression of Judaism, reflecting both the enduring wisdom of Torah as well as specific cultural settings.
In my experience, we less often think of “American Judaism” in this sense. America might be where we find ourselves, but we tend not to relate to it as our “kind” of Judaism. What does it mean to take seriously our Judaism as a uniquely American variety?