Why Thanksgiving Still Matters
Thanksgiving is easy to dismiss. Nowadays, it sits awkwardly as a day to eat lots of turkey and watch lots of football before the opening bell of Black Friday. For most Americans, it has become a prelude to consumption more than a meditation on gratitude.
But buried under the kitsch and the sale flyers is something enduring:
a civic ritual devoted to gratitude – a day on which the nation, however briefly, acknowledges the blessings of freedom, stability, and collective life.
For the Orthodox Jew, Thanksgiving presents a rare opportunity. It is not a religious holiday. It does not ask us to compromise halacha or identity. Instead, it calls us to practice something Jews know almost intuitively: gratitude (hakarat ha-tov).
The question is not whether we may observe Thanksgiving. It is how a thinking Jew might observe it with meaning and values.
A Civic Holiday, Not a Religious One
Thanksgiving belongs to what sociologist Robert Bellah famously called American civil religion – a shared moral vocabulary through which citizens affirm their commitments to the ideals of the republic. Civil religion is not theology, but it is not nihilistic secularism either. It is the glue that binds a diverse nation around gratitude, sacrifice, and shared good.
This distinction is central for halacha. Thanksgiving:
- has no religious creed,
- has no worship service,
- commemorates no deity beyond a nonsectarian “Almighty,”
- and does not imitate Christian ritual or liturgy.
Jewish law cares deeply about avoiding imitating practices of other faiths (chukot ha’goyim), never mind forms of worship that resemble pagan worship (avizrayhu d’avodah zarah). But Thanksgiving triggers none of these categories. Rabbi Yisroel Belsky, a”h, put it crisply in Shulchan Halevi:
“Since Thanksgiving has no religious origin or observance, but is simply a day designated for expressing gratitude to [G-d], there is no prohibition in celebrating it with a meal.”
For the overwhelming majority of poskim, the question is not issur, but attitude.
Rav Soloveitchik: A Halachic Giant Who Celebrated Thanksgiving
Few insights better illuminate the halachic and philosophical space for Thanksgiving than the testimony of Rabbi Aharon Rakeffet-Rothkoff, a devoted student of Rav Joseph B. Soloveitchik, a”h.
Rakeffet has recounted multiple times – including in his Reminiscences lectures on YUTorah and in print – that he once asked the Rav directly about Thanksgiving observance. The Rav did not hedge, theorize, or qualify. He answered plainly, “I see no problem with it. On the contrary – I celebrate Thanksgiving.”
The Rav, born in Eastern Europe and sharpened in Berlin, understood gratitude on a national scale. To live freely as a Jew in America – without fear, constraint, or humiliation – demanded acknowledgment. Thanksgiving, he believed, was an appropriate expression of that gratitude.
This was not the Rav authorizing a quasi-Jewish holiday. It was the Rav modeling what it means for a Jew to live as a full citizen of a just society.
Rabbi Norman Lamm, a”h, channeled this idea so well in a sermon he gave at the Spanish-Portuguese Synagogue in New York in 1962.
The Thanksgiving Day Services at the Spanish-Portuguese Synagogue are not only a fine patriotic gesture as loyal American citizens; they are also an authentic expression of Judaism…. It is this thoroughly Jewish idea – the dual nature of hodayah and the inexorable failure and mortal danger of human ways without G-d that should be our specific Jewish contribution to the American experience of Thanksgiving. It is for this reason that, to my mind, Thanksgiving Day is so much more precious than other national holidays. Other patriotic occasions, such as Independence Day, valuable though they are, can easily degenerate into national self-idolatry and collective self-glorification. In order to reestablish the proper harmony we need the kind of corrective of humility inspired by Thanksgiving Day…. For all this we thank You, O L-rd. And even as during the rest of the year we pray “G-d, bless America,” today we turn to our own hearts and to the soul of our country and declare, “America, bless G-d.”
For those of you who are more traditional, let me suggest that what I am proposing is what Rabbi Belsky really wanted. He writes: “Regarding the Thanksgiving holiday: if such parties were made as a sign of patriotism to the United States, it would be acceptable for Jews to make them as well as a sign of loyalty to their host country. This does not seem to be the case, however, and there is no reason that a Jew should make them.” (Emphasis added.)
I propose that we should celebrate Thanksgiving patriotically. Between the ideas of gratitude, loyalty, patriotism and community, we should celebrate Thanksgiving to share our public American values with our family. This is even more so true in 2025, when we see antisemitism resurging on the left and the right, we must double down on the idea that the United States of America is our home and we celebrate that. We are not visitors or guests; we belong here and celebrate the freedoms America gives us with our heads held up high.
Patriotism as a Jewish Virtue
For most of Jewish history, patriotism was a dangerous indulgence. Jews were tolerated only conditionally, always suspect, often persecuted. Loyalty to the state was either futile or used against us.
America changed that.
From Washington’s letter to the Jews of Newport – “to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance” – to the unprecedented freedoms Jews enjoy today, the United States has been, in Rav Moshe Feinstein’s words, a malchut shel chesed, a kingdom of kindness.
Thanksgiving is a moment to articulate exactly that: gratitude not only for personal blessings, but for political blessings.
Orthodox Jews understand better than most that gratitude is not spontaneous; it is cultivated. It requires reflection, speech, and ritual structures. Thanksgiving offers a rare civic framework for that religious work in our secular society. Furthermore, coming from a family that has always observed Thanksgiving, it is also fun.
The Real Threat: Not Idolatry, but Emptiness
If Thanksgiving is endangered today, it is not because it is too Christian, but because it has become too trivial. People should want Thanksgiving to be about more than screen time, shopping and football. Gratitude has been smothered by entertainment. Civic reflection has been replaced with food, football and Black Friday anticipation. Ritual has become habit without intention.
Judaism has a name for this danger: mitzvat anashim melumadah (Is 29:13) – rote religious behavior stripped of spirit. Thanksgiving’s problem is not excessive meaning but insufficient meaning.
If we want Thanksgiving to matter – as Jews and as Americans – we must bring intention back into the day.
Toward a Jewishly Serious Thanksgiving
Here is what a thoughtful, halachically grounded, spiritually serious Thanksgiving might look like for the Orthodox Jew. Over the turkey meal one should focus on five ideas and watch out for one issue.
- Articulating gratitude aloud. Hakarat ha-tov is more than a feeling. It is a declaration. Share what you are grateful for – safety, prosperity, family, Torah, democracy. Speak about what is good in America.
- Teaching American Jewish history.Tell your children about Washington’s letters, immigration stories, and the transformation of Jewish life in America. Memory is a civic virtue as much as a Jewish one.
- Practice hospitality. Invite someone who would otherwise be alone. Thanksgiving is a natural extension of hachnasat orchim, particularly for the group that would not be present on Jewish holidays. Invite your non-Jewish neighbors for the meal.
- Resist hyper-consumerism.Thanksgiving collapses when it becomes Black Friday Eve. Draw boundaries: no shopping, minimal screens, real presence and lovely conversation with family and guests on important matters.
- Talk about the America we love – and the America we hope for. Patriotism is not blindness. It can hold gratitude and critique simultaneously. Frame Thanksgiving as both acknowledgment and aspiration. We live in hard times with antisemitism on the left and right. Between all that is going on now, do not hesitate to speak about problems – part of loving something is working to fix it. Do not be afraid to speak about issues we confront in America.
- Keep it civic, not religious. No invented rituals. No Thanksgiving liturgy. No Hodu lahashem ki tov (without a doubt the best Hebrew pun of American Jewry; hodu means “thanks” in the rabbinic tradition and “turkey” in modern Hebrew).
On Thanksgiving, we should be Jews engaging thoughtfully with a shared American moment.
A Day Worth Elevating
Thanksgiving will remain shallow if left to the culture around us. But it can become meaningful – rich, grounded, and even transformative – if approached with Jewish intentionality. Maybe we can even change the tone of our secular community to be more patriotic and uplifting as well. We can be a light to the nations on how to celebrate passionately.
- Not as a new holiday.
- Not as an imitation of Christian practice.
- Not as a culinary warm-up for the shopping season or the NFL playoffs.
Rather as a moment of civic gratitude worthy of a people whose very liturgy begins with thanks.
Rabbi Soloveitchik lived this truth. Rabbi Belsky affirmed it halachically and wanted this to be. And American Jewish history demands nothing less of us.
Thanksgiving is not a religious obligation. But it may be a civic “mitzvah.” It can be a patriotic invitation and a chance for American Jews to exemplify what gratitude, dignity, and moral citizenship look like.
This Thanksgiving, perhaps more than any in recent memory, the country could use our example.