Jewish Pilgrims and Thanksgiving

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Thanksgiving1Notes from the Lampert Library

Psalm 100
A Psalm of Praise (excerpts)

Acclaim Adonai, all people on earth.
Worship Adonai in gladness;
Enter God’s gates with thanksgiving, His courts with praise.

On November 9, 1620, when the Pilgrims landed on what we now call Cape Cod, they recited Psalm 100. They were indeed thankful after their rough journey from Holland to England and then across the stormy Atlantic.

This group of men, women, children and their servants had not intended to settle in New England but were headed to the Hudson River area. However, the fates had a different spot in mind. Plymouth became the second successful English settlement after Jamestown (1607) and the oldest continuously inhabited English settlement in The New World, which we, of course, know was not really new at all. The Wampanoags, a native people, had lived in the area for 10,000 years.

The English dissenters who had gone to Holland, a province in the Netherlands, to escape persecution in their native England, feared losing their cultural identity in that country. Consequently, they set out to find a safe place to live where they could worship in their own way.

They became known as Pilgrims, travelers on a journey to a holy place.

We Jews have a strong tradition of pilgrimages with the three pilgrimage holidays when people traveled to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices at the Temple. Today, the term has been broadened. While people make pilgrimages to holy sites like Mecca or Lourdes, they also make pilgrimages to secular places including cultural centers or centers of personal interest such as Cooperstown for baseball lovers.

thanksgiving2Barbara Cohen in her touching book, Molly’s Pilgrim set in the early 1900s, tells the story of a family who traveled from Russia and settled in a small town in New Jersey .(The story is based on Cohen’s own family history). Molly, the central character, and her narrow minded classmates find that Thanksgiving is based on Sukkot, a holiday well known to the Bible reading Pilgrims, A wise and understanding teacher points out that there are still Pilgrims coming to America. The book was made into an award winning film set during the contemporary Russian Jewish immigration of the 1970s and 80s.

The definition of a pilgrim is an interesting thought to keep in mind as we ponder the affects of President Obama’s executive action on immigration reform.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Remember, Thanksgiving Day is more than just turkey, football and shopping.

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