Rabbi Weitzman: The Season of Gratitude

This article first appeared in our Nov/Dec '26 edition of The Bulletin

Before we say anything else in the morning, before coffee, before the news, before the list of what the day will demand of us, Jewish tradition asks us to say two words: Modeh ani. I am grateful.

Rabbi Reuven Hammer observed that the first word of prayer may be the most important one, because the essence of prayer is acknowledging the gifts we have been given. To wake up at all is to be reborn. Nothing is to be taken for granted, least of all life itself.

Our national holiday invites us to pause once a year, around a table, and name what we are thankful for. Judaism asks us to do it every morning, before every meal, and after every meal too.

How many blessings are showered on us each day of our lives? We eat food we did not grow, use products we did not make, exercise natural talents we did not earn. The intelligent person takes pride in intelligence, the beautiful one in beauty, though both intelligence and beauty are gifts.

Our tradition continually reminds us that gratitude is the proper disposition of a soul. The rabbis taught that in the time to come, every offering will cease except the offering of thanksgiving, and every prayer will cease except the prayer of thanks (Vayikra Rabbah 9:7). Even when the whole world has been redeemed, we will still say thank you. Gratitude is not a step toward something else. It is where a faithful life arrives.

Some among us stagger beneath great burdens of sadness, and this season can make an empty chair feel emptier. But for most of us, how can we be alive, feeling the plenitude of favors we have been given, and not be grateful? What God gives us hour by hour generously exceeds what any of us deserves. A life lived in gratitude is the only reasonable response to such astonishing benevolence.

The Talmud makes a startling claim. Rabbi Hanina bar Papa taught that anyone who enjoys something from this world without first saying a blessing is like someone who has stolen from God and from the community of Israel (Brakhot 35b). The Tosefta grounds the idea in the words of the Psalmist: “The earth, and all it contains, is God’s.”

Stolen is a strong word, but it fits. When we bite into an apple without acknowledging where it came from, we act as though it belongs to us by right. The blessing corrects the record. We are recipients before we are owners.

Ben Zoma once stood on the Temple Mount looking out at an enormous crowd and blessed God for creating all these people to serve him (Brakhot 58a). That sounds arrogant until you hear his explanation.

Think, he said, of how much work the first human being had to do before he could eat a piece of bread. He plowed, planted, and harvested. He threshed, winnowed, ground, and sifted. He kneaded and baked, and only then did he eat. The same went for clothing: shearing, combing, spinning, weaving. “And I wake up,” Ben Zoma said, “and find all of this already done for me.”

Food we did not grow. Clothing we did not make. Ben Zoma’s gratitude points in two directions at once. He thanks God, and he sees people. This Thanksgiving, try his practice. When the food comes to the table, trace it back. Who grew it? Who drove the truck? Who stood at the stove? Gratitude that never reaches the people around us is incomplete. Gratitude that never reaches God misses the source of it all.

After we eat, Birkat Hamazon thanks God for the land, for freedom, for Torah, for life and for the food before us, and then for the nourishment God provides “all of our days, whatever the season, whatever the time.” Not only in years of plenty. Not only when the table is full.

That is my blessing for each of you this Thanksgiving. May you find something to name with gratitude, whatever this season holds. May you notice the many hands that sustain you, and thank them. And when you wake the next morning, may your first words be the oldest and simplest ones we have: Modeh ani. I am grateful.

Ashley, Eden, Jonny, and I wish you a wonderful thanksgiving season of gratitude.