Convergence

One hundred and fifty years ago this week, President Abraham Lincoln delivered a short, two-minute address that has become one of the best-known speeches in American history. The President wasn’t the featured speaker on the program (that honor was held by Edward Everett, revered as a great orator), and his two minutes of remarks could reasonably have been forgotten after the two-hour address that immediately preceded them. Yet they were not. Instead they have become immortal and integrated into the curricula of many schools throughout the country.

The Gettysburg Address resonates through history, even if Lincoln’s remarks were not particularly well received at the time. Perhaps one of the lessons here is that nothing the President of the United States says or does is insignificant, even as the perception of those actions may change over time. Or perhaps there is a lesson here that editorial biases and politics never change, as the papers with an editorial bias against Lincoln were harsh while those biased to towards him were more complimentary. I will suggest an alternate lesson here: The victors are not the only ones who write history. We also choose what lessons to take from our past. The further from the present an event is, the easier it is to impart it with significance far greater than it had in its own time.

And so we have another act of President Lincoln—the creation of the holiday of Thanksgiving. In 1863, the President created a day of “Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens” as a public and federal holiday. While one can link the three-day celebration of the “First Thanksgiving” to this new holiday, the former was a three-day celebration that included the members of the Wampanoag Nation who helped the Pilgrims survive as well as the settlers themselves, while the latter was about healing a nation. In the proclamation signed by the President, we read that the President sought to “fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.” The First Thanksgiving was a sign of singular gratitude that the settlers were able to sustain their lives, while the national Thanksgiving proclaimed by President Lincoln sought to create a lasting observance that would lead to peace and harmony as the nation was restored.

Just as with the Gettysburg Address, Thanksgiving has endured. It is one of my favorite national observances, and this year it is linked to another enduring tradition, the festival of Hanukkah (often spelled a variety of other ways including Chanukah and multiple N’s and K’s). Contrary to popular belief, Hanukkah is an exceptionally minor holiday in the Jewish calendar, and it has largely rocketed to prominence due to its proximity to Christmas—a far more significant holiday to those of the Christian faith. That Hanukkah and Thanksgiving converge this year is highly unusual and something that is not going to occur again for tens of thousands of years, until the year 79,811 on November 28. Both Hanukkah and Thanksgiving have their roots in the Biblical holiday of Sukkot, the Feast of Booths or Tabernacles, an autumnal holiday tied to the harvest, and both give thanks for the ability to be able to offer thanks to God—due to having a bountiful harvest to sustain life.

We have a chance this year to enjoy the converged celebration of holidays that are similar in origin, scope and impact. May everyone enjoy the celebration of their fall holidays of significance, and if that happens to involve latkes and turkey combined—let’s exchange some recipes, I have some great ones.

Jeremy Yoskowitz is the campus rabbi and assistant director for Jewish life. His column runs every other Thursday. Send Rabbi Jeremy a message on Twitter @TheDukeRav.