Thanksgiving Day at the Anglican Church, Amsterdam, November 22, 2007

Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Marx, director Folkertsma Institute for Talmud, Hilversum, lecturer, Radboud University ,Nijmegen

Why I am Thankful for America

Honorable Consuls, Colleagues, Friends, fellow Americans:

Thanksgiving is not at all an unknown experience for Jews. Three times a day in the most important liturgy, the Prayer of the Eighteen Benedictions we recite in the 17^th: “modem anachnu lach…- We gratefully thank You.

Psalm 100 begins with the inscription “A psalm of thanksgiving- mizmor le’todah-, call out to God, everyone on earth….”

Even among the Dead Sea Scrolls, there is a group of writings designated the Thanksgiving Psalms (Hodayt),   one of the Dead Sea Scrolls brought to Jerusalem in 1947 and written in Hebrew. The majority of the poems begin with “I thank Thee, O Lord”

On the Sabbath and festival days, we invoke God’s blessings, “mi she’berach”- upon “those who are faithfully involved in the needs of the community..”

In gratitude we especially invoke God’s blessings upon the President and Vice President and the duly elected leaders of the USA to grant them wisdom and compassion. In this we follow the tradition that Jeremiah the prophet taught us to pray for the well being of our host country.

The earliest known Jewish settlers in North America were refugees from Brazil in 1654, who sought a home in New Amsterdam, later New York. After some difficulty they were allowed to remain. At the same time, some Jews reached Newport, Rhode Island. (see Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. 2, 1972, pp 807-16)

In this new land, where Old World prejudices had waned, they enjoyed a degree of social freedom and emancipation greater than in the mother countries. By the War of Independence 2000 Jews were resident in the 13 colonies. The famous Haym Solomon was active in that war and helped arrange financing for Washington. That is the origin of the song: “George Washington liked good roast beef, Haym Solomon liked fish, but when Uncle Sam said `will you help’  they all enjoyed the dish.”

Already by the time of the Civil War, there were 150,000 Jews in the USA.

Today there are more than 5 million Jews enjoying a measure of liberty and freedom of opportunity, of equality and dignity unequalled in the entire world outside of Israel.
We have ample reason to be thankful that in this society, these are not privileges but rights, shared by all Americans regardless of origins or religious or ethnic backgrounds.
In 1973, in the House of Representatives in Washington DC I had the opportunity to discuss with the honorable Hamilton Fish Jr., the representative of my Westchester district for many years, the relationship between the 10 Commandments of the Torah and the Ten Amendments to the constitution. We agreed that both were founded upon their sharing the deepest respect for the individual human being.

“Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” the fundamental right of every person that is inscribed in the prologue to the Constitution of 1781 resonates very much with the more ancient rabbinic teaching in the Talmud (2^nd C) that the biblical narrative depicts the human being as created alone, in order to teach that each person has the right to see himself worthy of having the world created for him.

I don’t know whether the founding fathers studied the Talmud, I know they knew the Bible, but their intuitions on this were definitely rabbinic.

We have much to be grateful for, “modem anachnu lach- We thank Thee…” for the existence of America.

What we like most of all about being in the American experience is that America is not ashamed to admit mistakes. The concept of 10 Amendments which have in the course of more than 200 years have reached 22 amendments, is about the legitimacy of  criticism, self-criticism and about improvement.

We are not a stubborn people, who insist on our rightness at all costs. We value humility and stand open to correction honestly offered. This too is very much in line with my tradition. The concept of repentance, teshuva is founded on the principle of self-criticism and being open to that by others.  This is indeed a biblical imperative: You shall surely admonish your fellow human being, the holy Scripture admonishes us (Lev. 19:16).
America today is caught up in a complex situation, at war to stand up in the vanguard of freedom. Cynics will question this and will try to denigrate America’s high calling by noting that there are also, or even primarily issues of self-interest at stake.

But I aver that human freedom is its highest motive, even if it misses and falls short of its own ideals at times. Freedom is our self-interest, even the freedom of other peoples and states.

Let us not because of our differences of opinion lose sight of the great reality that the USA is the bulwark of the free world, its leader in fact.
I am personally proud and humbled to be privileged to bear a US passport as a citizen and to be given the opportunity here today to express my gratitude so publicly.