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Thanksgiving Reaffirms the Unique US-Israel Kinship
By: Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger
Thanksgiving was initially celebrated in November 1621 by William Bradford, the leader of the “Mayflower” and the 1621-1657 Governor of the Plymouth Colony (Massachusetts), who played a key role in establishing the civic foundation of the first permanent colony in New England. Bradford compiled a first hand 580-page-manuscript of the Mayflower’s 66-day-voyage, which arrived in Cape Cod on November 11, 1620. The manuscript is exhibited at the Massachusetts State Library.
Governor Bradford acquired his appreciation of the Bible – and especially the Five Books of Moses – in Leiden, Holland (known then for its religious tolerance), where he heavily interacted with the Jewish community, and found refuge from religious persecution carried out by the British King James I.
Bradford and the other 102 “Mayflower” passengers perceived the voyage in the Atlantic Ocean as a reenactment of the Biblical Exodus, the departure from “the Modern Day Egypt,” the perilous “Modern Day Parting of the Sea” and the arrival in “the Modern Day Promised Land” and “the New Israel.”
Governor Bradford announced the celebration of Thanksgiving – proclaiming appreciation for the first harvest in “the New Israel” – by citing Psalm 107, which constitutes the foundation of the Jewish concept of Thanksgiving, thanking God for one’s food, one’s being, and for ancient and modern time deliverance from perilous challenges and threats. For example, on Thanksgiving day in 1781, following George Washington’s defeat of British General Charles Cornwallis, Reverand Israel Evans, Washington’s favorite military chaplain, delivered a Thanksgiving sermon in the spirit of “the modern day Chosen People,” which included the following: “To him who led in ancient days the Hebrew tribes, your anthems raise. The God who spoke from Sinai’s Hill protects his chosen people still.”
Bradford was, also, inspired by the Jewish holidays of Pentecost (Sha’vou’ot in Hebrew) and Tabernacles (Sukkot in Hebrew), when Jewish pilgrims brought offerings of their harvest to the Jerusalem Temple, highlighting gratitude/Thanksgiving for the harvest, the legacy of Moses (e.g., the Ten Commandments), the centrality of family and charity, and the deliverance from persecution (in Egypt) to liberty (in the Land of Israel).
The epitaph on the tombstone of Bradford in the old cemetery in Plymouth, Massachusetts begins with a Biblical phrase – “God is the succor of my life” engraved in Hebrew: יהוה עזר חיי – as befits the person who delivered Hebrew to America. Bradford aimed to make Hebrew an official language, suggesting that reading the Bible in the original language yields enhanced significance.
The Hebrew word for Thanksgiving’s central dish, turkey, is Tarnegol Hodoo (תרנגול הודו), which means “a chicken from India,” but also “a chicken of gratitude/Thanksgiving.”
Thanksgiving was proclaimed a national holiday in 1863 – on November’s final Thursday – by President Abraham Lincoln, as a means to heal the wounds of the Civil War, and express thankfulness for American unity and solidarity.
The 400-year-old roots of the unique US-Israel nexus are highlighted in the following videos: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4 (of a 9-part series) and in these Amazon and Smashwords booklets.
