Latkes for Thanksgiving? Why not!

How can we, as Jews, celebrate Thanksgiving in a Jewish way? There’s always the food; we could cook a turkey with dill or have latkes instead of mashed potatoes. We could incorporate some of the harvest prayers from Sukkot or a prayer for peace and togetherness. We could express our gratitude for what we have by helping others who have less by an act of tikkun olam.

These were some of my thoughts when I was asked to write about a Jewish Thanksgiving. These first thoughts formed after I finished my evening shift at a restaurant. My colleague, who has all kinds of European nationalities in his ancestry, mentioned that his favorite thing about Thanksgiving was the story we learn during our first years in school: the Native Americans and the Pilgrims broke bread together at one table. Then I started to think more broadly: What does Thanksgiving mean to anyone?

In addition to writing for this newspaper, I work at a restaurant and volunteer at an English as a Second Language center as a teacher’s aide, so I have a diverse group of contacts to whom I could pose this question. In addition to conducting in-person interviews, I posted a Facebook status and asked the ESL students for their thoughts. Overwhelmingly, the answer I got was that Thanksgiving means food and family – but differences arose when it came down to specific foods and family activities, which was at least partially due to the diversity of the respondents.

Americans, Canadians, British, French, Dominicans, Australians and others, along with friends living away from their home countries and with different religious backgrounds, all answered with different favorite Thanksgiving foods and different ways of spending the holiday with family. Turkey, pumpkin pie, rice, beef, salad … a long weekend with the family, cooking with the family, watching football with the family. These were all responses to the question, “What is your favorite thing about Thanksgiving?”

When I asked some of the ESL students if they had eaten turkey, one of them made a face as if I’d asked her to eat a slug. The staple of one of America’s most beloved holidays is, apparently, not for everyone.

By now I’d started to realize what the story should really be about: Newcomers’ ways of blending Thanksgiving into their own customs. I also realized that this holiday is absolutely in line with Jewish culture.

America invented a holiday that has been adapted to fit its people and surroundings for hundreds of years. From the Pilgrims’ first meal of venison and fowl to incorporating new foods into the “traditional” meal, we have turned Thanksgiving into a holiday that is designed to celebrate the newcomer. Considering the Jewish story of migration since ancient times, it seems we fit right in.

Of course, Thanksgiving is not often described as a celebration of newcomers. However, in this process of trying to connect Judaism and Thanksgiving, I’ve started to think that as Americans and as Jews, we could think of it as a holiday that celebrates both diversity and the newcomer – an identity that Jews and Americans have both held throughout our separate histories. And, at a time when the world is reevaluating how it welcomes newcomers – those in crisis and those seeking better lives for themselves elsewhere – perhaps now is the time to also reevaluate our own history and remember why it’s important to welcome the stranger.

Happy Thanksgiving!

ARIEL BROTHMAN is a freelance writer who lives in Wrentham, Mass. She was the summer intern at The Jewish Voice in 2012.