Thanksgiving’s Jewish Roots Highlight a Lesson in Gratitude
November 28, 2025 — Thanksgiving in the United States is deeply connected to Jewish history and serves as a reminder of the importance of gratitude, officials and commentators said. The holiday’s origins link the story of the Pilgrims with the biblical Exodus narrative, which shaped the moral foundation of the nation.
Early Puritans identified with the Israelites, viewing themselves as a new Israel guided by the Hebrew Bible. They likened England to Egypt, the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea, and America to the Promised Land of Canaan. This fusion of Jewish biblical themes and American destiny influenced the country’s founding principles. Benjamin Franklin even proposed that the Great Seal depict Moses parting the Red Sea, symbolizing America as a continuation of the Israelite story.
The concept of chosenness, often misunderstood and misrepresented, originally signified moral responsibility rather than superiority. The Pilgrims and the founders believed America was chosen not for privilege but for a higher purpose. When the Pilgrims arrived, Governor William Bradford wrote in “Of Plymouth Plantation” that they “fell upon their knees and blessed the God of Heaven who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean,” echoing the gratitude expressed in Deuteronomy.
Thanksgiving emerged as a collective act of thanks for liberty received, grounded in faith and humility. Jewish leaders have recognized this spiritual kinship, with the Rebbe referring to Thanksgiving as a Yom Tov, or day of joy. The Hebrew word for gratitude, hodaa, also means acknowledgment, reflecting the humility to see beyond oneself.
However, the original meaning of Thanksgiving and the shared American-Jewish narrative face distortion from various political perspectives. Some Christian nationalists reinterpret the idea of a “chosen nation” as a racial or exclusionary myth, while some activists on the far left recast the American and Israeli stories as colonialist. Both perspectives, officials said, miss the core lesson that freedom must be grounded in faith, gratitude, and justice.
The Thanksgiving story, rooted in survival and thankfulness rather than comfort or entitlement, continues to offer a moral lesson amid contemporary divisions. Gratitude, officials emphasized, remains an antidote to hate and a unifying value for the nation.
Leave a Reply