Thousands of years ago, the rabbis suggested that the first words out of our mouths upon awakening should be “I offer thanks to You, ever-living Ruler, that You have restored my soul to me in mercy: How great is Your trust.״ When our eyes open and our minds return to consciousness, we ought to express our thanks to the Holy One for blessing us with another peaceful night and another day of life.
Being grateful is core to who we are as a people; in fact, it is expressed in our namesake. Judaism, the word, is rooted in our biblical ancestor Judah, from whom we descend. Yehudah, as he is known in Hebrew, was given his name by his parents Jacob and Leah, the name that means “thanksgiving.”
As our day begins with gratitude, so ought it continue, as we are invited to offer prayers of gratefulness throughout our morning service, through blessings like the Motzi, expressions of thanks for our sustenance, and perhaps most importantly, by carrying ourselves with the demeanor of seeking out, recognizing, and acclaiming all that we have to be grateful for.
In our tradition we call this Hakarat HaTov, recognizing the good. As we make our way through our days, through our years, it suggests that one of the things we ought to be doing is keeping an eye out for those experiences, those benefits, those expected and unexpected joys that we happen upon. It’s not always easy to see the things that benefit us; the joys and benefits that bless us. Gratitude can escape us, just like we might wish for more patience, a greater sense of trust, or a deeper sense of humility. These ethical values, along with gratitude, make up the core of our Mussar tradition.
Mussar dates back a millennium, but in the last few generations has been revitalized as a way for Jews to orient themselves to these ethical virtues by intentionally focusing on developing them one at a time with deliberate study, reflection and intentional observation of our everyday experiences. The Mussar teachers wrote beautifully about the various ways that gratitude, responsibility, or loving kindness can manifest in our lives, and earlier this week I was privileged to learn some of those gratitude teachings with our weekly Lunch and Learn group as part of our Elul learning in preparation for the coming New Year.
As our learning began, someone in the group posed a beautiful question: Why are we learning about gratitude for the New Year – should we be focusing on it all the year round?
Of course, the answer is yes. As we made our way through our learning, exploring how true gratitude comes from a disposition of being a giver and not a taker, how gratitude and joy are the antidote to boredom and despair, we kept returning to a theme: living a life infused with gratitude lifts our spirits and enhances the aesthetic quality of our experience. Put another way, if we intentionally strive to express gratitude, we will be happier with our lives, and that increased happiness is contagious.
Our Mussar tradition expresses similar notions to the idea of a growth mindset. This newer phrase suggests that we can, with intention and deliberate practice, improve ourselves. The opposing idea, the fixed mindset, is that we have a full developed, immutable character, incapable of improvement. Nothing could be farther from the Jewish mindset.
Each year at this time, as we make our way though Elul and towards the New Year, we go on a journey of self-improvement. We resolve to repair the mistakes of the past and live a life with deeper expressions of joy, of love, of peace, and yes, of gratitude.
With these teachings in our mind, as we near the dawn of 5785, may we in this coming New Year live up to our namesake of being a nation of thanksgiving, and begin the year with gratitude.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Greg Weisman
