What are you grateful for?

Hey there, my name is Rabbi Jen Gubitz and I'm pumped to be joined by Rabbi Jodi Gordon as we welcome you to the OMFG podcast, Jewish wisdom for unprecedented times.

Hey, Jodi. Hey, Gubitz. OMFG, what a fabulous 4-letter word. These letters express so much in so little time. From absurdity to aspiration, fury to folly, as rabbis we have come to know that when the stories of our lives meet the stories of Jewish tradition, transformation, growth, and sometimes something just plain awesome occurs.

Jodi and I are experts in the letters J and G, Saved by the Bell and funerals, as well as Torah and Lucky Charms, and we want to bring to you our conversations that express our love for Judaism and make it relevant in the world as we mine Jewish wisdom for strength and resilience in these unprecedented times, with a dose of humor, because as Dr. Seuss says, "From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere." So this week we're talking about gratitude, which feels appropriate because Thanksgiving.

So why not talk about being thankful? I'm thinking about the, I think, very common tradition on Thanksgiving of going around and saying what you're thankful for. And some people take it really seriously and some people just want to get it done with so we can start passing the mashed potatoes.

What are you thankful for today? Share with me the blessings that have come your way. What are you thankful for today?

Jen, what are you thankful for?

I am thankful for FaceTime, dairy-free butter, boxed cold brew, sunlight, COVID tests, my parents' health, and crunchy peanut butter. What about you?

Okay, this is not the most elevated list, but my first pass, what am I thankful for? I am thankful for curbside pickup. I am thankful for a Spotify family account, which lets me listen to music all day long. I am really thankful for my older daughter's elementary school, which has been open and had first graders there in person 4 days a week for the past 2 months. So a big shout out to Muddy Brook Elementary School in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. And as long as we're talking about humor, I'm thankful for TikTok. Which is just proof that you're never too old to fall down another social media rabbit hole.

What are you thankful for today? Share with me the blessings that have come your way.

As we anticipate the great American holiday of Thanksgiving, is there something particularly Jewish about Thanksgiving? Is there something particularly Jewish about this idea of gratitude?

In Jewish tradition, we're invited, commanded, required to say at least 100 blessings a day. The Talmud asks of us to do that, which feels like a lot. And then when you think about how many things you do in one day, perhaps 100 is not even enough to aim for. And so our liturgy has a lot of places where we say thank you. That's one of the main themes of prayer is thanks. Thank you, God. Thank you, source of creation. Or I feel thankful for my health. I feel thankful when my body works in the way that it should. And that feels like an inherent aspect of being Jewish is really that it's incumbent upon us to find ways to feel grateful. So during a Torah portion, Vayetzey, which often coincides with Thanksgiving, You may recall the story of Leah and Rachel and Jacob. Jacob falls in love with Rachel, but their father tricks him into marrying Leah first. And it's hard to be Leah. And the way that we know that is how she names her children. Sometimes names in Torah express a person's life situation. And that's exactly what happens with Leah. So she has a lot of kids. First, she has Reuben, then Simeon, and then Levi. And Reuben's name could mean, "God has seen my affliction." And it could also mean, as the Torah text teaches, "Now my husband will love me," which is pretty sad. Then Simeon's name means, "This is because Adonai heard that I was unloved and has given me this one also." Also sad. And Levi's name, according to the Torah, meant, "This time my husband will become attached to me, for I have borne him 3 sons." So if we want to know how Leah is feeling in the world, she's saying, "God has seen my affliction. I hope my husband will love me. Maybe now my husband will love me. Maybe now that God has heard that I was unloved, things will change." And so finally she has Judah, and something in her life has changed. And I imagine that was her contentment with what she had, not focusing on what she didn't have. She found a way to be grateful with her 3 children. And when her 4th one arrives, his name is Judah or Yehuda, which means I am grateful. And so she moves through this major life transition from real darkness to gratitude. So how do we say thank you in Hebrew? Toda. That word toda is actually a connection to the word Judaism, which I love because it means that inherent in the building blocks of Judaism is this imperative to be grateful. And Judah is where we get the name Judaism from, and Yehudim, that's where we find the word Todah rooted right in it. And so what's Jewish about Thanksgiving is that Thanksgiving is also called Hodu, and Hodu shares that same root as Judaism and Todah and Judah. And so it is wrapped up together. In one big bundle of gratitude. And so if you're dreading gathering around whatever your Thanksgiving table will look like this year, or even if you're looking forward to this change in the year, the Hebrew word for gratitude is actually hakarat hatov, which means recognizing the good. And so we can connect to Leah in her recognition of what was good in her life, as she was able to find gratitude and offer thanks. It can be so hard to feel grateful. It can be much easier to look around and see the darkness of winter, seeing what we don't have, knowing that for many of us we can't gather in person with our loved ones and friends and family this Thanksgiving. And so how do we cultivate gratitude in times of darkness? How do we find ways to feel thanks and genuinely express our gratitude when life is really tough?

Jen, I feel like I always, I always learn from you. And so before I respond to your excellent, excellent question, I also want to say you just made me realize something about myself here with your great reminder about that word lechodot or chodu in the Jewish tradition and Yehudim. So I'm a Thanksgiving baby. I consider it like my star sign. Last week you told us you're a Scorpio? Libra? Libra.

Libra. Shout out to Scorpios, but I'm a Libra.

Great. So I'm Thanksgiving. I was born on Thanksgiving Day. This year I'll celebrate my birthday again on Thanksgiving Day. And my Hebrew name is Yehudit, which also comes from that same root, to be thankful. So I'm realizing on this eve of a big birthday that maybe there is something about gratitude also embedded into my whole being. So I love this question about how do we access gratitude in what are— I don't know, let's just say it, like these are kind of crappy times. These are hard times. In the past 24 hours, I have heard from two close friends who even with all of the planning and isolating and structures and COVID tests that were scheduled have made the decision to cancel even a very small gathering that they were meant to have with family. Family. And I think it's hard. It's hard and sad for people. I take some comfort, or at least I think, you know, we have some experience in this now at this point of the year. This isn't our first holiday spent apart at all. And so I'm thinking about this idea of gratitude as a habit. And as somebody who often enjoys shopping at Marshalls or TJ Maxx or HomeGoods, I'm well acquainted with this sort of the commercialization of gratitude, right, that you can, you could buy a mug or a notebook or a journal or a magnet or a t-shirt, right? And they say things like #blessed or thankful or grateful. And I think about that a lot because I wonder, it's like, do we put the, you know, if we drink our morning coffee out of a mug that says, you know, an attitude of gratitude, like, does that do the trick? And maybe I'm cynical here, but it just doesn't for me. In fact, it If anything, it makes me roll my eyes. And I think that this whole idea that I've heard a lot, right, you know, an attitude of gratitude, maybe that works for people. It doesn't quite land for me. And so I'm thinking about gratitude as a habit, as like something you have to do. And to me, that feels sturdier. So, you know, some people have what they call like a gratitude journal, a book that they, every single night, they write down, you know, 5 things that they're grateful for. And I like that because it's a practice, right? It ritualizes the noticing, right? If you have to, every single night before you go to bed, you have to stop and do a review of your day and think about it. And then you write it down. To me, that it feels like there's more potential there than just saying like, oh, I have an attitude of gratitude because I don't know, my attitudes can shift with the wind. So I would imagine that's true for others. As well. And you know, earlier this year, Jen, you and I were at an amazing retreat together at Kripalu here in the Berkshires where we had the chance to learn from Maria Surwa, who's an incredible teacher, and she teaches a lot about gratitude, optimism, and resilience in challenging times, specifically usually following loss. The irony here, if you remember, is that we actually went on that retreat and did this learning on something like March 3rd, March 3rd, 4th, and 5th, which was, it turned out a week before our worlds shifted down tremendously. And so I've gone back to a lot of things at that retreat, but the thing that I keep thinking about gratitude is, so what happens when you do it? So say you do this daily review and whether you have a journal and you write it down or, you know, whatever, or an app, I'm sure there's an app for that. Right. And you, and you go through your day and you say, you know what, I am so grateful for the way the air smelled this morning when I left my house and I stood out in my backyard for a minute. So then what do you do? And so Maria taught us this amazing thing about 5% better. And I, first of all, I love the idea of 5% better. And I will, if Maria listens to this, Maria, I may have already like messed up your teaching or just changed it for my own purposes. But when I think about gratitude, it's like, so now what do you do with it? So great. Today I was grateful that when I stepped out of my house this morning, the smell of the air in my driveway was just, you know, a total delight. So how to make my life 5% better with that knowing? What do I do with that gratitude? Well, I think if I use that teaching to inform the answer, right, then I use that gratitude as fuel. I go outside for longer tomorrow. I leave my house 5 minutes earlier than I actually need in order to get where I'm going so I can stand outside and take a few more deep breaths than I did today. [FOREIGN] So I think thinking about Thanksgiving, thinking about how do we make gratitude a habit, I'm just, I'm thinking a lot about how we can take the noticing and then do something with it. And how if gratitude can be more than an attitude, it might actually help us make our lives feel a little bit better right now.

I love 5% Better too. I remember learning that from her and thinking, oh, 5%, I can do that. If you ask me to do an 80 to 90% turnaround on an attitude or a way of living my life, you know, basically cold turkey. But that's not possible, right? People don't succeed succeed very often in going cold turkey on breaking habits or trying to build habits. Um, but 5% better is really doable. I remember that bringing me a sense of peace that weekend, that time that we were together, because it made attitude adjustments and finding goodness in life more attainable and less overwhelming. That was a great time that we had great food at Kripalu. Grateful we did not get sick. Can't believe we had no idea. But I'm— that was our last hurrah, our last hurrah. So gratitude as a practice, that is why some people turn to prayer. In the morning blessings in Shacharit, we have so many warm-up blessings about the miracles of daily life. These ways of acknowledging that we can open our eyes if we can, these ways of planting our feet firmly on the ground and saying amen. We bless even removing sleep from the eyes and slumber from the eyelids, which is so gross but so beautiful that we have a blessing for that.

Listen, our Jewish tradition has a blessing for eye crusties. Don't say Judaism never gave you anything.

Yeah, Judaism has a blessing for eye crusties. So we have So much to be grateful for. And we also know when things don't work. The blessing for our bodies is a reminder that when the pipes are not opening and closing as they should, you know it. You know it.

I'm wondering what the difference is between, you know, when we say we're thankful and gratitude. You know, is gratitude sort of like grown-up thankfulness, or is there some bigger difference between the two? Jen, what do you think?

It makes me think of when I was growing up and after someone did something nice for me or after I had a playdate or got a gift, my parents would say, "Say thank you, Jennifer," to inculcate into me the habit of saying thank you. And I was never so snarky then to say, "Thank you, Jennifer," just to repeat them. But I was also deeply uncomfortable with expressing it. So I would say thanks or just be stone cold silent, which I think we see kids do today. And it was hard for me to understand the purpose of saying thank you and why I needed to do that. And there's something interesting about a grownup who understands gratitude and a kid who knows how to say thanks, about them saying to me, you gotta do this thing. You gotta say thank you. There's another way of offering gratitude. First, we offer it to people first and foremost. That is the way to go. And Alan Marinis from the Mussar Institute teaches about how Mussar suggests gratitude can occur. And he tells a story about Rabbi Menachem Mendel, the Kotzker Rabbi, who was replacing a pair of worn-out shoes. And Rav Menachem Mendel would neatly wrap up the old ones in newspaper before placing them in the trash. And he would declare, "How can I simply toss away such a fine pair of shoes that have served me so well these past years?" And I imagine that there are things in our lives that don't serve us anymore that we can say thank you and then discard them or recycle them or pass them on. And we talked about that actually with spiritual mantras last week. Sometimes they work for you in a moment and then eventually they don't. You know, I still have my teddy bear, never saying thank you and getting rid of that bear. I love that bear. But there are things in our lives that we grow out of literally like a pair of shoes or even friendships and relationships, we grow out of them. And at our best, we can say, thank you for holding me or for being part of my life at this moment in my life. And also, I wish you blessing.

You know, I'm thinking about what you just said, this idea of like saying no thank you, right? Or what happens when the time has come to sort of to thank your shoes for their service, so to speak. And in this week leading up to Thanksgiving, we did a very, very scientific survey of people we know by asking on Facebook and Twitter, you know, what are you saying thanks but no thanks to this year? And I thought the responses were fascinating, not necessarily surprising, but actually fascinating in their consistency and in the way in which to me it just proves, you know, it's hard to be a human being. And being human is a pretty universal experience. And the things that stood out to me about Finding gratitude in this incredibly challenging time, saying thank you but no thank you, right, is it like sort of another side of the coin of gratitude, is that a lot of people are also looking at this unusual Thanksgiving, right, this time that is, is usually so ritualized and so full of expectation because we do it in a certain way year after year after year, and now we're going to break that that pattern and we're going to do something different. And there's, I think, gratitude to be found there too. You know, friends of ours, people we know sharing things like, you know what, this feels like a year to stop perpetuating the myth around American Thanksgiving that some of us learned in first grade when we wore those terrible Indian headdresses to our first grade Thanksgiving lunch while half the class wore pilgrim hats, right? That We have the chance to talk about this differently now, to reframe the holiday, that people are saying, you know what, we're doing Thanksgiving totally differently this year. And for me, I'm going to offer gratitude for the opportunity to sit at a table filled with food, either by myself or with a smaller number of loved ones. And I'm saying thanks but no thanks to weird body shaming and food shaming that comes up around holidays that take place at a kitchen or dining room table. And I think there's something really powerful about that.

Yeah. Someone said to me that they're saying thanks, but no thanks to diet culture, which I think weighs in. You have that sense of eating so much that you're full and almost wishing you hadn't, which I think also there's something connected there too around food in general and our access to food. Um, we gorge ourselves sometimes during Thanksgiving and maybe it's time for a thanks, but no thanks, because this is a moment when we need to remember that if we have food, we're grateful for it. And also we don't need to gorge ourselves because there are so many people who don't have food, they're food insecure. So thanks, but no thanks to overdoing it.

I started thinking about the food that my family will eat on Thanksgiving. And I thought about something you said last episode, right? The teaching, um, no more than my space, no less than my place, but thinking about You know, what is the amount of food that 4 people need to eat? How do we make something feel festive and freilach and joyous and celebratory without exactly as you just described, going to a point where your gratitude turns into gluttony? So here is my thanks but no thanks list. Tofurkey.

Thanks but no thanks. Expectations of women in the kitchen.

Mm, thanks but no thanks. Ideas of perfection, of a perfectly set table and a perfectly clean house.

Thanks but no thanks. I'm definitely gonna spill wine on your white tablecloth. Turkeys, leave them alone.

Yeah, thanks but no thanks. Traditions that we never enjoyed in the first place.

Thanks but no thanks. This is gonna be complex for some people, but football.

Yeah, I'm a big thanks but no thanks on that one. And if anybody wants to talk about it, I'll just say concussions. Moving on. Canceling the whole day because it can't be what I originally wanted it to be.

Thanks but no thanks. What if this is what Thanksgiving could be about in the future? What if it means that it's a time to sit quietly and reflect? A time to really take an accounting for your life. Sounds a little bit like the High Holy Days.

I know there is a little, there's a touch of Yom Kippur here for the fasting, which is an interesting, you know, juxtaposition.

Yeah. But what if, what if also our relationships with our loved ones are strong enough that we can miss a year and not miss out on our relationships nonetheless? What if there's too much pressure on everyone traveling and being together What if we spread it out through the year and that that's enough?

There's this great account I follow on Instagram who I think she's a psychologist and her expertise is in boundary setting. And she had this amazing post of sort of a stoplight version of how to communicate your boundaries around Thanksgiving in a time of COVID Green being like sort of the the least fraught way of saying what you need of like, oh, well, you know, I think we're just not gonna be able to make it, but we love you. Let's FaceTime at 3:00 to a yellow light of I'm not very comfortable with this plan and I'm going to have to say no to red light of like, we're not coming to Thanksgiving. Right. And, and I think one of the things that a lot— I'm noticing a lot of people saying thanks, but no thanks to is making decisions that they're not comfortable with in order to please others, because now the stakes really are high. I mean, the stakes quite literally are life and death. And so now that this pandemic has shaped our response and decision-making to this, you know, one day of the year, I think what you've just said, you know, could be a beautiful outcome of what it means to practice those boundaries this year because of our health and safety.

Yes, please. Thank you. Aren't you glad you're not a turkey on this Thanksgiving Day, I think is the wisest, the wisest proverb by the great Debbie Friedman. It could be worse is what it reminds me of too. It's actually pretty bad right now, but it could still be worse. You could be a turkey or you could be a tofurkey.

A tofurkey is a particularly sad thing to be. And just in the interest of full disclosure for our listeners, both Jen and I are married to for Jen, a very strict vegetarian, and on my part, a vegan who is so vegan, we call it being glot-josher because that's how vegan he is. And still a tofurkey is an abomination. We want to acknowledge that this podcast was recorded as we are gathered on the traditional lands of the Mohican people, the Massaachusett and Pawtucket people.

And we want to honor with gratitude the land itself and the people who have stewarded it throughout the generations. Today's podcast was edited by Leslie Gubitz, with special music by Ilana Jagoda, and brought to you by The Letter F. What's your favorite F word?

Frosting!