Sukkoth and Thanksgiving

A Thanksgiving festival is one in which grateful people thank G-d for the harvest and for other bounties which pious people do not take for granted. This is true for the ancient Israelites and, later, the Jewish people as they celebrated the festival of Sukkoth. It is also true for the Pilgrims and, later, the American people as the November holiday of Thanksgiving took shape over the centuries.

The Israelites were commanded by G-d in the Torah to observe a week-long feast in the seventh month welcoming the fall harvest in the Land of Israel. They were commanded to take up the four species and to dwell in booths. Accordingly, Jews celebrate Sukkoth beginning on the 15th day of Tishri for 7 days (or 8 days), take up the Lulav (palm, myrtle, and willow) and the Etrog (citron), and take their meals in sukkoth (booths). There are blessings, prayers, and rituals — the purpose of which is to recognize the Creator as the source of all our blessings and as Sovereign of the Universe, as well as to reflect on the unity of humankind.

The Pilgrims who fled England to Holland, and then sailed to the New World on the Mayflower, wished to live a life strictly based on Scripture. As part of the Puritan movement in England they strongly felt that the Church of England, like the Roman Catholic Church from which it broke away, was not sufficiently based on Scripture. Rather, they thought that G-d’s word was mediated by layers of Church tradition controlled by a complex hierarchy of clergy.

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As is well known, the Pilgrims’ first winter at Plymouth (in what would become Massachusetts) was a tragic disaster — almost half the settlers died. With the help of the Wampanoag people the second winter went much better, and so the English colonists invited the Wampanoag to a Thanksgiving Feast in 1621. What is not common knowledge is that the idea for the first Thanksgiving was based on what the Pilgrims called, “Tabernacles,” the festival described in Leviticus Chapter 23.

The Pilgrims had been living in Leiden in the Netherlands for about 10 years before sailing for the New World. Leiden, famous for its university, is in the southern part of Holland on the Rhine River.

It is an old city, established during medieval times. It is known that the biblical languages of Hebrew and Aramaic were taught at Leiden University when the Pilgrims resided there. There may have been a few Jewish students there, though a fully established Jewish community, as existed in Amsterdam, had yet to develop. But it is clear that the Pilgrims were well aware of Jews and Judaism, so that years later they naturally drew on the Festival of Tabernacles — the means of giving thanks to the Almighty for the successful second harvest in Plymouth. The Pilgrims also identified with the Hebrews, and later the Jews, as refugees from religious oppression, in search of a new home—their “Promised Land.”

The Calvinist traditions of the Pilgrims at Plymouth colony, and one decade later, the much larger Puritan colony at Boston, informed the culture of what would become the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and, later, the region of New England. One aspect of this is the importance of the Old Testament text, which corresponds basically to the Hebrew Scriptures, albeit arranged differently and translated at times with a Trinitarian emphasis. Given this theological frame of reference, it would be no surprise that these Protestant Reformers would be inspired by the very ancient Hebrew feast day of Sukkoth when they wished to formally express their gratitude to Providence for the successful harvest with an autumnal feast. It is within this cultural environment that Thanksgiving eventually took root in the United States, becoming such an important day in the American collective psyche.

The Hebraic Biblical contribution to American civilization is mostly indirect, but nonetheless is very substantial. So, this Thanksgiving remember its roots in Sukkoth.