For These We Give Thanks
Rabbi Gary Creditor
November 22, 2021
Richmond, Virginia
When Reverend Erol Rohr contacted me
with the invitation to speak here today, I mentioned to him that while in high
school in Belleville, New Jersey, I was in the Key Club, sponsored by the Kiwanis.
Over the decades and miles I proudly have my pin and bell. It makes this a very
special privileged and feel most honored to be here and share this thoughts and
reflections.
Introduction
Some prayers, perhaps being sung or
recited from youth, and maybe in rote-like manner, we miss the really very deep
and crucial insights they contain to help us travel the journey of life.
I turn to the daily Jewish liturgy,
originally and usually recited individually upon awakening. Perhaps due to
growing older, perhaps due to the weight of these times we live in, I share
these pieces with you to illustrate my theme “For these we give thanks,”
appropriate for this season and to uplift all our hearts.
I. Modeh Ani
“I gratefully thank You, O Living and
eternal King, for You have returned my soul within me with compassion –
abundant is Your faithfulness.”
A. Thank God I’m alive!
Maybe when I was young, younger, I took for granted that I would wake up in the
morning. Age and experience has taught me to be a lot more cautious. So the
first thing I do upon waking is to rejoice and give thanks, whether it’s
raining or sunny, despite any bodily aches and pains. Thank You God, I’m
alive!
B. I learned this piece as a youngster
with its lilting simple tune. I didn’t realize that embedded in it was a
tremendous faith. While my first stress was on “I’m alive,” now it is on “Thank
you God.” I feel and rejoice in God’s compassion. He/She cares for me
- always! In the world we live in,
weighed down with so many pressing issues and concerns, I/we have gratitude to
God for His loving care.
We are not alone.
We have hope!
We smile!
For all these qualities, we give thanks.
II. Asher Yatzar
I first discovered this next private
piece of liturgy in sixth grade. It was posted on the bathroom door at the
Jewish day school I attended. As all young boys, it elicited inappropriate
comments and snickers. But along the journey, I have recited it daily with
increasing fervor!
“Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of
the Universe, who fashioned man with wisdom and created within him many
openings and many cavities. It is obvious and known before Your Throne of glory
that if but one of them were to be ruptured or but one of them were to be
blocked it would be impossible to survive and to stand before You. Blessed are
You, Lord, Who heals all flesh and acts wondrously.”
Thanks God my body is working!
Regardless if its needs a little medical
inducement, I wake up and say: “Thanks God I can touch my toes! Thanks God my
body is working!”
As a youngster I was too oblivious and
nobody talked to us explicitly when they gave us a sugar cube in a little paper
cup. I really didn’t understand what polio could do to the body. Only later,
when learning about FDR did I “get it.” Now at age 73, after twenty months of
pandemic, I tremble when I recite privately and silently this prayer and humbly
say “thank you God” for wondrously allowing my body to work properly, and
pledge to Him to do all I can to keep it that way.
By reciting this prayer daily I remind
myself that this mortal body is a gift from the Eternal God, whatever its
shape, whatever its size. And I must protect it and do it no harm. It is “like”
a Christmas gift, a Hanukkah present, unwrapped every day, with a gift tag
reading “I love you,” signed “God.”
For the mundane and not so mundane
bodily acts, each morning I express my gratitude..
III. Asher natan la-sechvi
There is a string of fifteen or sixteen
simple one line blessings originally and still meant to be recited individually
after rising, but in some synagogues, as my home synagogue in my youth, they
were incorporated into public prayer. All of them really express gratitude and
thanks. One stands out and several can be grouped into a common theme, all
particularly relevant for now and these days.
A.
The
first blessing uses the language of the rural, agrarian setting.
“Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of
the universe, who gave the rooster understanding to distinguish between day and
night.”
While we use alarm clocks of one fashion
or another, the rooster crowing says that night is changing to day, the globe
is rotating properly, arise and see the majestic dawn. I confess to still
burning the candle from both ends, and I relish seeing the changing hues from
pitch black to shining light. For this Divine Gift, incomparable in all the
galaxies, I/we give thanks. This experience, this blessing sensitizes us to
the beauty of nature, the exquisiteness of the natural world. My mind always
“hyper texts” to the Rabbinic midrash, that after telling Adam and Eve to take
care of the “Garden” He says “And if you ruin it, there will be none to set it
aright.”
This first blessing in the string is a
daily and perpetual ecological wake up call! I can add our motto “reduce,
reuse, recycle” and take pride that my recycling bin is fuller than my supercan. The inner
compulsion to do all I can and support endeavors to deal with climate change,
clear water and clean it, preserve green open space and purchase foods and
goods wisely is impressed upon me every day through the recitation of this
blessing! For this blessed sphere that supports human life, I/we give
thanks.
B. I will conclude these remarks with
other blessings from this unit by joining several of them together. Long before
we had the language of “first responders,” these blessings sensitized the reciter to their strengths and others
weaknesses, and the need to fix, address, change their condition.
“Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of
the universe, Who gives sight to the blind.
Who clothes the naked.
Who releases the bound.
Who straightens the bent.”
Because of its condition, I only
occasionally pray from a prayerbook printed in Frankfurt, Germany in the late
19th or early 20th century. It includes a line that I
never saw elsewhere.
“Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of
the universe, Who raises up the lowly, the fallen.”
One can relate to these simple blessings
in multiple ways, personally, communally. For me, every morning I recite them,
I think of our middle daughter, Lt. Commander, Rabbi Yonina Creditor, chaplain
United States Navy. Previous to September 11th, 2001, while she was
in college, she enrolled and became a volunteer EMT in New York City, stationed
in Central Park, serving the Upper West Side. In the days, weeks and months
after 9/11 she missed school whenever her unit was mobilized to support those
excavating the ruins of the Twin Towers and surrounding area. When I read this
obscure and single blessing, I give thanks that our daughter joined her
selflessness to that of so many others, to raise the fallen, elevate those
lowered. To her, for her and all the others, I daily and humbly give thanks.
And they have been joined in particular
these past twenty months with those in hospitals, clinics, the RIR and other
places giving vaccines, the store workers and bus drivers and others. As much
as we have a proclivity to complain, to kvetch, let us set it all aside and lift
up our eyes to our world, to our fellow human beings of every color, race,
creed and origin, to the sun, moon, sky and earth, to our bodies, to life
itself, and not take for one moment, not take one scintilla of it for granted.
Ever. For all these, I/we most humbly, most sincerely, daily and forever give
thanks.
Conclusion
So let me conclude with a memory. In the
later years of his life, as the family gathered for Thanksgiving meal, my
father would briefly reflect on family events, give thanks and hope for the
future. This Thursday, around your tables, with family, friends, or alone, with
or without glass in hand, let us lift up our eyes, our hearts and in your own
words, let us give thanks.
Again, I thank you for this opportunity
and wish you and your families, a happy, healthy and blessed day of Giving
Thanks.
Shalom.
