I was unpacking a box the other day and found a small, laminated, tri-fold T’filat Todah, “Prayer of Thanks,” card.
“Thank you, God, for all the things that I do have, and thank you, God, for the things that I don’t have. Thank you for my periodic difficulties, my occasional setbacks, and for the times when I don’t feel happy…”
I placed it on my desk at home as a reminder to stop kvetching (complaining) about insignificant matters. I have so much for which to be grateful.
I see gratitude reflected in so many ways through the lives of those around me: family, friends, community members, and people I encounter each day.
A few of the many expressions of gratitude I’ve witnessed recently:
- My sister-in-law Marilyn’s recent celebration of becoming Bat Mitzvah at the age of 70;
- My friends’ celebration of achieving a 1,000+ mile walking goal with their non-verbal 36-year old autistic son. They began walking together during COVID, when his work-study program shut down. His newfound love of walking continues to this day;
- A wonderful recent visit here in Chattanooga with dear, longtime friends-who-are-like-family from Toronto whom I had not seen in almost four years;
- Warm and meaningful gatherings at congregants’ homes for Shabbat dinner, “meet and greets,” and more. I continue to be touched by the gracious hospitality and welcome extended to me and by the many ways people have opened their homes and their hearts;
- A mother’s beaming, loving smile as she introduces me to her daughter, who was born with many challenges and has worked hard to overcome them;
- Our school-age students who greet one another, and often me, with huge bear hugs, so grateful for the gifts of friendship and community;
- The beautiful smiles and joy-filled hearts of those who face health or other challenges and are simply thrilled to be present and to embrace each new day.
- Our Jewish tradition teaches that there is a difference between thankfulness and gratitude.
Rabbi Norman Lamm, the late prominent Modern Orthodox rabbi, author, and longtime president and chancellor of Yeshiva University, once described the distinction this way:
“Thankfulness can be understood as courtesy or social gesture in which I give thanks only for goods received. It is a kind of verbal receipt: you give me something, I thank you. It is the polite, socially expected way to behave, a social construct.
“Gratitude, on the other hand, can be viewed as a higher level, not based on construct but on consecration, the consecration of one’s whole character. It is a state of mind in which a person is so devoted to the Almighty, so dedicated to transcendent values, so elevated beyond petty, selfish concerns, that he feels himself grasped by a pervasive gratefulness even when he has not received some special favor in advance…. [Gratitude] is a reaction of the total personality; [it is] deeply personal, profoundly human.” (Paraphrased from Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm, “Gratitude Is Good for the Soul,” sermon delivered in the 1970s and republished in 2013.)
In this week’s Torah portion from Deuteronomy, Ki Tavo, we discover that gratitude is not merely something we feel. It is something we practice. In Deuteronomy 26, the Israelites are instructed that when they finally enter the Promised Land and reap its harvest, they are to bring the first fruits of the land as an offering to God. As they do so, they recount their story: where they came from, the suffering of slavery, their redemption from Egypt, and their arrival in a land of abundance.
In other words, before they can fully appreciate what they have, they are asked to remember how this all came to be theirs: how they came to achieve this milestone of an abundant harvest in their own land after hundreds of years in exile.
The Torah, however, does not allow gratitude to end there. Just a few verses later in the same chapter, the Israelites are commanded to set aside a portion of their produce for those who might otherwise go without: the Levite, the stranger, the orphan, and the widow.
This is what I find so powerful about the Torah’s understanding of gratitude. Gratitude cannot simply remain a feeling within us. It must move us beyond ourselves.
When we recognize the blessings in our own lives, we become more conscious of those who may not share those same blessings. When we understand that what we have is not ours alone, gratitude becomes generosity. Gratitude becomes responsibility. Gratitude becomes an act of k’dushah, holiness.
As we approach the upcoming Yamim Nora’im, the Days of Awe, perhaps this can become part of our own cheshbon hanefesh, our spiritual accounting.
What are the blessings we have stopped noticing because they have become so familiar?
Who are the people whose presence in our lives we may have begun to take for granted?
How might the challenges and setbacks in our lives help us recognize blessings we might otherwise overlook?
How might our gratitude for what we have received inspire us to give something of ourselves to someone else or do something to make a difference in our world?
Perhaps that little T’filat Todah card is a reminder to look at our lives more carefully and more fully: to notice what we too often take for granted, to cherish the people who sustain us, and to recognize the many blessings that fill our days.
As we enter this sacred season, may the gratitude within our hearts find expression in the way we live, the way we give, and the way we care for one another. May our lives reflect our gratitude by becoming a source of blessing to others.
Shabbat Shalom!
Rabbi Sharon L. Sobel