Are Jews permitted to celebrate Thanksgiving? While nowadays the question seems anachronistic or even borderline absurd, there was a time in recent memory when the answer was not so simple. For one, Thanksgiving could lead to the dreaded ‘mixed dancing’ threatening millennia of Jewish propriety. But in another, slightly more serious way the concern exists that adopting another culture’s holidays waters down a distinct Jewish identity.
This ‘Turkey Trouble’ came before the desk of the Lower East Side’s Rav Moshe Feinstein zt”l, his generation’s decisor of Jewish law. To distill dozens of pages of legal analysis, Rav Moshe’s primary concern centered around the Biblical injunction “Do not follow in the ways of (o)the(r) nations”. Strangely enough, in a nod to American exceptionalism, the question really hadn’t come up much before in Jewish history since Jews had never really been invited to celebrate the holidays of the cultures where they resided. If anything, those holidays filled Jews with dread since, as far as they knew, a central part of the revelry seemed to revolve around persecuting the local Jewish Community.
Nevertheless, Rav Moshe twice embarked on his scrupulous scrutiny of both Jewish law and Thanksgiving. While his 1953 responsum on Thanksgiving implies a hesitant permissiveness, in 1980, after living in America for many more years, Rav Moshe writes a not-quite-but-almost encouragement of the Jewish community to, on the third Thursday of November, express thanks for the gift of living in a country that, perhaps more than any other in history, guaranteed the right of religious practice.
While the Ashekenazi Shtetl Jews of the Lower East Side furiously debated the merits of pumpkin pie and cranberry sauce, the more refined Upper West Side ‘Spanish and Portuguese’ congregation of Shearith Israel established 1654, could not help but laugh. The uptown Sephardim had been celebrating Thanksgiving for centuries with nary a problem and yet, nobody bothered to ask them. Chalk it up to the self-perception of Ashkenazi hegemony but it was as if Jewish community did not exist in the New World until ships filled with Jews from the Pale of Settlement landed on American shores in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And so in sum, whether you celebrated on Thursday, pushed it to the weekend or you have no nexus to America and in which case I apologize for wasting your time with the above, feel empowered to follow the example of our Sephardic brethren and enjoy your Thanksgiving with all the fix-in’s.
Services
Kabbalat Shabbat
Friday, November 25th
Services: 6:00pm
Dinner with reservation: 7:00pm
Family Shabbat
Friday, December 2nd
Services: 6:00pm
Dinner with reservation: 7:00pm
Shabbat Parshat Vayetze
Kiddush sponsored by the Semaya Family in honor of his parents’ upcoming 63rd wedding anniversary.
Saturday, December 3rd
Services: 10:00am
Kiddush: 12:00pm
Kabbalat Shabbat
Friday, December 9th
Services: 6:00pm
Dinner with reservation: 7:00pm
Shabbat Parshat Vayeshev
Kiddush Sponsored by the Bass Family in honor of David’s arrival back on Japanese shores
Saturday, December 17th
Services: 10:00am
Kiddush: 12:00pm
Kabbalat Shabbat
Friday, December 23rd
Services: 6:00pm
Dinner with reservation: 7:00pm
Kabbalat Shabbat
Friday, December 30th
Services: 6:00pm
Dinner with reservation: 7:00pm
Events
Speaker Series: Ambassador Rahm Emanuel
Anonymously Sponsored by the Midwest’s Finest
Thursday, December 1st
6:45pm at the JCJ
Registration Details
Annual Family Tzedaka Project
Sunday, December 4th
11:30am at the JCJ
Community Hanukkah Celebration
Sponsored by Doctors Arron Besant and Hotaka Matsui
Sunday, December 18th
3:30pm – 7:00pm at the JCJ
If you have an idea for an event or a topic you would like to share with others, please visit our website. https://jccjapan.jp/event-committee-inquiry/
Announcements
We send our deepest condolences to the family of Aryeh Schupak who was murdered in Wednesday’s bus bombings in Jerusalem. May there be healing for the 22 Israelis injured in the attack and a return to peace.
Thank you to the families who have agreed to host visitors for Shabbat. Word must be getting out on the warmth of our community because we receive more inquiries every week with no signs of abating. If you would like to follow the example of Abraham and Sarah by inviting weary travelers into your home, please reply to this e-mail.
Yiddish Club with Jack Halpern: Meetings have started monthly in-person at the JCJ. Please contact Jack at jack@cjki.org if you are interested to join. All levels are welcome, from beginner to advanced. Much more than just language, the club enjoys exploring Yiddish culture as well.
Shabbat Parshat Toldot
Candle Lighting: 4:11pm
Havdala: 5:10pm