"Modeh Ani - I Thank You"

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope that you and your families are blessed with happiness, good health, and feelings of deep gratitude on this holiday.

Judaism holds gratitude as one of the highest virtues and commands its expression in our daily liturgy. In fact, the very first thing a person should say upon waking – even before getting out of bed – is a personal prayer of thanks: “modeh ani l’fanecha melech chai v’kayam, sheh-hechezarta bi nishmati b'chemla rabba emunatecha – I gratefully thank you, O living and eternal God, for you have returned my soul to me with compassion, great is your faithfulness.”

Let’s cultivate our sense of gratitude by adopting some ideas and practices from the morning thanksgiving prayer:

1. Make gratitude a fixed practice in your day. Set aside five minutes each day to contemplate the things for which you are grateful.

2. Express your gratitude daily. Each day, tell at least one person that you are grateful and tell them why you are grateful to them.

3. Be thankful for the basics first. The prayer simply thanks God for the fact that we have woken up for another day. Don’t set the bar too high in your contemplation of things for which you are grateful.

4. Let your gratitude last forever. While we know that we will not live forever, the prayer acknowledges that God - thing to which we are grateful - is eternal.

5. Express gratitude to those who help you but whom you can not see.* Just as we should thank God even though we may not literally see God, so too should we thank the sanitary workers who clear our trash before even we’ve brewed our first cup of coffee, the members of our armed forces who defend us and fight for us thousands of miles away, and anyone whose efforts help us when we don’t see them.

6. Let the things for which you are grateful lead you to help others and treat them with kindness. Our tradition teaches, “mitzvah goreret mitzvah – one mitzvah leads to another mitzvah.” Live that teaching.

7. Acknowledge the good while you have it.* The daily prayer for thanksgiving is recited upon waking in order to teach us that a person should not wait for a more convenient time to express their gratitude but say thanks in the moment of appreciation.

Rabbi Joseph Telushkin offers this challenge at the end of a chapter he wrote about gratitude: "Right now, before you finish this chapter mark down the ways in which your life is blessed, and for which you can and should express gratitude to God." So, go ahead. Take his challenge and bring the results with you into this year’s Thanksgiving celebration.

I'll start: Todah Rabbah! Thank you, for the opportunity to learn and study with you every day, for the privilege of serving as rabbi of this community, and for the generous support you provide for me and my family.

*Quoted from Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, A Code of Jewish Ethics, Vol. 1: You Shall Be Holy (2006), Chapter 7 “Becoming a Grateful Person.” This book is a must-have for anyone interested in Jewish values and ethics.