guide to the jewplexed


On Thanksgiving, who will occupy my tent?

With Thanksgiving just a few weeks away, it's time to shop around the idea of hospitality. It's that time of year when we ask each other: "How many guests are you having over?" while remembering if we have enough chairs.

This year, weeks before we get to turkey day, when Jews read the weekly Torah portion Va'Yera, we are presented with the story of the ultimate host. It's the story of Abraham sitting in his tent and welcoming in three very special strangers: Prophetic angels who bring the news that he and Sarah will have a son.

Upon seeing the three strangers, Abraham quickly greets them, brings them water, bathes their feet, and fetches them a morsel of bread. We can only imagine that somewhere in the back the turkey is basting.

Reading this passage, I asked: Are we that quick to welcome guests in, especially, "strangers" to our way of thinking?

Some of us like to fill the tent, inviting in relatives and friends of differing political and social views. (One year I sat next to a vegan who wouldn't even pass the turkey.) Others like a smaller, more peaceful feed, where seldom is heard a discouraging word. Hey, more time to enjoy the pumpkin pie.

Who would you have at your table?thanks

This year, at your Thanksgiving meal would you pass the cranberries to a Tea Partier? And more importantly, would they pass them back? I am still wondering if many of them
prefer a table where self-reliance is the main course and the rest of us by default become the turkeys.

And if this isn't too personal a question: Has your tent size grown larger since last year? Or, out of necessity, has it shrunk to the size of those tiny Occupy Movement pop tents we see in the news and in our downtowns?

Thinking of those tents, at your Thanksgiving table, would you consider breaking break bread with an Occupy Movement person? Like Abraham's guests, they may have something to say.

Recently, on a snowy night in New Haven, Connecticut, I walked, (slipped and slid actually) by an Occupy encampment in a downtown park. It was a freak fall storm, very cold for a California boy; I was zipped up and so were the tents. At that moment, with the sleet blowing sideways, I stopped doubting their commitment, and saw them as pilgrims.

I even started thinking about inviting them over for Thanksgiving. It was a dinner of giving thanks, and suddenly I was thankful for the commitment and sacrifice many of these young men and women were making. It reminded me of my own twenties; a time of marches, protests and sit-ins.

I realized then the time had come to invite them into the tent to consider their ideas: More equal distribution of our nation's wealth, more jobs, and financial industry reform. I was 99% sure.

In a time of continuing financial upheaval, and joblessness, it just seemed a good time to change the menu and the guest list.

After all, aren't they the prophets bringing us the news?

 

Edmon J. Rodman has written about making his own matzah for JTA, Jewish love music for the Jerusalem Post, yiddisheh legerdemain for the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, a Bernie Madoff Halloween mask for the Forward, and what really gets stuck in the La Brea Tar Pits for the Los Angeles Times. He has edited several Jewish population studies, and is one of the founders of the Movable Minyan, an over twenty-year-old chavura-size, independent congregation. He once designed a pop-up seder plate. In 2011 Rodman received a First Place Simon Rockower Award for "Excellence in Feature Writing" from the American Jewish Press Association."