We Gather Together
KUR, CAROL
"Over the river and through the woods We Gather Together Carol Kur Pure nostalgia Visions of Mrs. Stout, the elementary school music teacher, emerge from the recesses of childhood memory: a...
...the taste of apples and honey had long since faded And so we came to the brief time of congruence in our calendar of annual celebration, of sweet and relieving merger of our secular (public school) lives, and our Jewish ones, a respite from the tugs and tensions of a separate agenda, temporanly at one with our non-Jewish classmates...
...assimilation was never even a temptation...
...Not that we should take credit for it Columbus may have been a Jew, but Miles Standish wasn't...
...November, and Thanksgiving, provide a resting place both comfortable and important...
...In his essay, "The Twelve Weeks of Christmas" (January 1963), Milton Himmelfarb says, "Thanksgiving seems made to order for Jews...
...We can engage in the same frenzy of preparation, of shopping and baking and cooking, as everyone else...
...For September marked not only the beginning of a new school year, but of our Jewish year, and, through most of October, we led double lives...
...Consider: * It is a four-and-a-half day weekend...
...Stout, the elementary school music teacher, emerge from the recesses of childhood memory: a cheerful round face that perfectly matched her name, and a tightly coiled black chignon that bobbed just a bit as she led the chorus through the double fortes The song evokes the memory because it was the one she always used to introduce Thanksgiving...
...Thanksgiving is the great point of intersection between Judaism and the sacral tradition of America...
...It is a family day...
...We were confronted by questions from our peers (and, not infrequently, from our teachers) such as: how come you stay out two days and Rochelle only stays out one...
...At home, the Simchat Torah flag was the last remnant of the holiday season...
...Although we were enmeshed with new books and teachers and classmates, we missed chunks of school time as Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Sukkot and Simchat Torah tumbled one upon the next...
...Just ahead, the discomfort of December, the time of greatest separation, loomed large, with Bing Crosby, Mother Nature, and the genius of American merchandising combining to remind us just how small a minority we are...
...As a fhend and colleague has noted, it is celebrated by eating, and Jews eat rather than drink...
...And what comes out of the mouth on Thanksgiving is equally Jewish—both the message and the tone...
...In preparation for the big day, schools release kids at noon on Wednesday, eiev Thanksgiving...
...In any case, its Jewish essence cannot be ignored...
...school class of more than 30, it was pleasant to be able to share a celebration of mutual significance, from the inside and at ease...
...By sundown, it's yomtov * It is a gastronomic field day, food centered, fattening, and strictly kosher, from the big bird through the cranberry relish and the pumpkin pie...
...We may not have to go over the river and through the woods, and we opt for wings or wheels rather than a sleigh...
...And the opportunity to offer thanks for the abundance of America, and for its freedoms, is especially meaningful for us...
...Still, grandmother's house is a more than likely destination...
...There's more Thanksgiving was not scheduled for Sunday, which would have made it, probably, much more church-oriented than family and home centered, and it never comes on Shabbat, therefore never excludes us...
...As a family, we delighted in our Jewishness We knew who we were...
...But if Bubbe is leaving for Florida right after the holiday, we'll have everybody at our house this year...
...We can even go and cheer for the local high school football team, which m every other week of the season plays on Friday night or Saturday morning...
...Meanwhile, we neatly folded away the Nma, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria that had anchored "October" on the bulletin board, not so neatly soaped and scraped away the black cats and witches' hats, orange jack o'lanterns and fingernail slices of midnight moon painted on the classroom windows, and began cutting out pilgrim's hats with big silver buckles...
...And so we feel richly blessed, and thankful, indeed, for our own great bounty, and for our marvelous good fortune that the Pilgrims spotted that wild turkey for their very first Thanksgiving feast, and not, heaven forfend, a wild boar Accordingly, from our house to yours, and without a trace of irony, chag sameach...
...We recite Shehecheyanu at our Thanksgiving table, and our non-Jewish neighbors are every bit as comfortable with that as we are with "We Gather Together" and "Bless This House...
...Examine it custom by custom, and you will see that we Jews could have packaged it, as is, no omissions or emendations, and presented it as our gift to America's heritage...
...Well, most likely wasn't...
...It is a day for—quite literally—giving thanks...
...But for a seven or eight or nme-year-old, growing up as one of two or three Jews in a public to Grandmother's house we go...
...In short, there is not a single feature, a single element, a single custom in the celebration of Thanksgiving that strikes a discordant note...
...Indeed, Thanksgiving is so Jewish that we could have invented it...
Vol. 3 • November 1977 • No. 1
