Should Jews Celebrate Thanksgiving? Thoughts from Both Sides of the Aisle

But it’s not only in our prayers that we are prompted to be grateful, we also have specially designated days for Yom Tov (holidays), commemorating significant events in our historic journey. These days, with their narratives, help remind us of who we are, where we came from and to Whom we belong.  

The traditional foods and various customs associated with each holiday give us a sense of belonging, being a small part of a greater whole. And most of all, they inspire us to give thanks for all the blessings we have as a result. While Shabbat serves as a weekly opportunity to slow down and focus on what we have to be grateful for, we have eight (depending on how you count them) holidays spread throughout the Jewish calendar year to re-center us and help us focus on what is really important in our lives.

For Jews in the diaspora, with all the complexities involved in trying to celebrate the Jewish holidays in a non-Jewish world, there is also the dilemma of whether or not to acknowledge a custom or holiday of their birth/host country. In the case of Thanksgiving, it’s not merely a question of whether or not to eat turkey. Rather, it is important to understand what the original American holiday of Thanksgiving is commemorating, before deciding whether or not to celebrate it. 

Facts About Thanksgiving

Very little is really known about the holiday, due to there being only two firsthand accounts of the feast ever written. Most of the stories of the celebrations are actually myths.

The first account is William Bradford’s journal titled Of Plymouth Plantation and the other is a publication written by Edward Winslow titled Mourt’s Relations. 

Most of the information we have comes from Bradford’s notes.

The first Thanksgiving was a harvest celebration held by the Pilgrims of Plymouth colony in the 17th century. They celebrated the successful fall harvest which was an English tradition at the time and the Pilgrims had much to celebrate.

There were 53 Pilgrims at the first Thanksgiving who were the only colonists to survive the long journey on the Mayflower and the first winter in the New World. Disease and starvation struck down nearly half of the original 102 colonists.

These Pilgrims made it through that first winter and, with the help of the local Wampanoag people, they had a hearty supply of food to sustain them through the next winter. No exact date exists but was most likely between September and November of 1621.

The celebration took place for three days and included recreational activities. Guests included 90 Wampanoag Indians from a nearby village, including their leader Massasoit. One of these Indians, a young man named Squanto, spoke fluent English and had been appointed by Massasoit to serve as the Pilgrims’ translator and guide. He learned English while serving as a slave

to English explorers. 

Many dishes served during modern Thanksgiving meals were not present at the first Thanksgiving. The colonists didn’t have potatoes, nor did they have butter or flour necessary for making pies. The Pilgrims hadn’t even built their first oven by the time of the first Thanksgiving. Cranberries might have been served but only for color or tartness, instead of as a sweet sauce.

Neither Bradford nor Winslow’s writing reveals what was actually served at the first Thanksgiving meal, besides fowl and deer, but guesses can be made based on the types of food they often wrote about, such as mussels, lobsters, grapes, plums, corn and herbs.

There is no actual proof that the colonists ate turkey at the feast either. Turkey wasn’t even associated with the Thanksgiving holiday until an editor of a magazine called Godey’s Lady’s Book came across Edward Winslow’s writings about the feast in the 1840s.

When this editor, Sarah Josepha Hale, read Winslow’s writings, she decided to bring this historic celebration back to life. Up until then, Thanksgiving was only a regional New England holiday and wasn’t celebrated across the country like it is today. Hale began publishing recipes and articles about the feast. 

Hale focused her attention on the brief sentence about the colonists’ hunt for wild turkeys that fall: “And besides waterfowl there was a great store of wild turkeys, of which they took many, besides venison, etc,” Bradford wrote.

Despite the fact that Bradford never stated they ate turkey at the Thanksgiving feast, Hale started publishing articles about Thanksgiving dinners with roasted turkey and the two became synonymous.

Many people believe Thanksgiving became a recurring celebration for the Pilgrims. Whether this is true or not is unclear. There are no other accounts of the Pilgrims holding any more harvest celebrations after 1621. It is possible that the feasts happened, but it wasn’t recorded.

Who Were the Pilgrims?
The Pilgrims were English settlers who came to North America on the Mayflower and established the Plymouth Colony in what is today Plymouth, Massachusetts. Plymouth was named after the Mayflower’s final departure port of Plymouth, England. The Pilgrims were Puritans who had fled religious persecution in England for the tolerance of 17th-century Holland in the Netherlands. After several years living in exile in Holland, they eventually decided to establish a settlement in the New World and arranged funding. They established Plymouth Colony in 1620, and their story became a central theme in the history and culture of the United States.

Why Is it Called Thanksgiving?

The original feast celebrated by the Pilgrims in 1621 was never actually called “Thanksgiving” by the colonists. It was simply a harvest celebration. A few years later, in July of 1623, the Pilgrims did