SAY THANK YOU--IT'S GOOD FOR YOU

It’s official—gratitude is good for you. Don’t take my word for it, though, just check out the November 23, 2010 issue of the Wall Street Journal which featured an article entitled, “Thank You—No Thank You: Grateful People Are Happier, Healthier Long After the Leftovers Are Gobbled Up.” The article cited evidence by researchers who have determined that people who are grateful make more money, less prone to alcoholism, far more resistant to viral infection, exercise more and sleep better. OK—I’m sold, but as the infomercials would put it—Wait, there’s more.

Kids who are grateful also fare better. These kids suffer from fewer headaches or stomach aches, earn better grades, set goals higher than others, express greater satisfaction with family and friends, and my favorite—are less materialistic. Our mothers taught us to say “Thank you,” but who knew it was such great medicine?!

My answer is that Jews knew and we’ve known it for a long time. Although people tend to identify prayer with petition, a lot of prayer revolves around thanking God for what we have—and those prayers take place at least three times a day. The fundamental characteristic of the religious personality is gratitude. Religious people sense this gratitude and attribute the blessings in their lives to a power greater than they.

I had my high schoolers engage in an interesting exercise recently. I asked them what they were grateful for and I recorded their answers. I then told them that I would not stop recording until they could cite 100 things, people, circumstances for which they could be grateful. They did it—and I loved to watch them smile and laugh as they threw me their answers. Just thinking about all the blessings in our lives makes us more content.

This probably sounds like a Thanksgiving piece and to some extent it is. But it is also a Hanukkah meditation. Hanukkah, celebrating a military victory of the Jews over the Syrian Greeks, could have as easily been a holiday to focus on the people who lost their lives in that war. But we know that it is a celebration of the miracle of that time, and by extension, the miracles in our own lives. And who set the record straight on Hanukkah more than any other rabbi or sage? It was Eleanor Roosevelt. Mrs. Roosevelt said, “I’d rather light a candle than curse the darkness.” At this rather dark time of year—typically the darkest of any time during the year—what do we do as Jews? We light candles. What a powerful lesson and we have our tradition to thank for making us people who would rather focus on the light than the darkness.

If you will truly have a happy Thanksgiving or a happy Hanukkah, it will probably be because you live with a sense of gratitude in your heart. And to that I’ll say: Todah LaEl—thank God.

BLESS, MY SOUL

I like blessings. I like to give them and I like to get them. Who wouldn’t welcome a blessing now and then? There is a tradition to bless our children every Shabbat, a practice that my wife and I have followed since the birth of our three great kids. We don’t really hear of our ancestors blessing their children on such a regular basis, but this week, we do witness Isaac blessing his children, and of his timing for such a blessing, we might as well say—Finally!!

You see, when our father Isaac chooses to bless Esav, his first born, he does so at an advanced age and when his eye sight was already impaired. He tells Esav, lo yadati yom moti, I do not know the day of my death. Isaac—did you have to wait so long to bless your eldest? Ovadia Sforno, an Italian commentator of the 15th century, notes that a blessing that is delivered just before death is a blessing of superior quality. He reminds us that Jacob blessed his children just before death and Moses blessed the Children of Israel just before his death. Both choose propitious times to deliver a blessing, and Isaac seems to do the same. But why would a blessing before death be any better than a blessing recited with sincerity at any other time? Sforno teaches us that as one approaches death, the soul and the body begin to separate as the soul prepares for departure. And so a blessing that comes from the soul at the point of death is, in a sense, a blessing of deep spiritual quality, for it is already distanced from the constraints of the physical shell that contains it. It is no wonder that Isaac says to Esav, tevarekhekha nafshi b’terem amut, let my soul bless you before I die.

We don’t need to wait until the point of death before we bless our children. A blessing that comes from the heart is precious beyond gold no matter how often it is recited. But you know, there are souls that are in shape and there are souls in need of exercise. And a soul that has been given proper attention, via prayer and Torah study, will invariably be a soul more prepared to deliver a blessing of enduring worth. We need not wait until the time of death to have souls that are prepared to fully bless others. So let’s think about this… Are our souls in shape? Do we need to exercise them more? Are we delivering those blessings to our loved ones as regularly as we should?

I hope the answers to those questions are yes, and if not, I hope you will be able to answer yes to these questions, real soon.