KA CC Archive Nov 2023

When I was younger, my mother read to me (or we watched together) the story of Molly’s Pilgrim by Barbara Cohen.  In the story, Molly, a new Russian immigrant to America, is having a hard time at school.  Classmates make fun of her for the way she talks, the way she dresses, and what she eats for lunch at school, none of it like her American classmates.  As they study Thanksgiving in class, she is given the assignment to make a doll that looks like a pilgrim.  She doesn’t understand this word, so her mother reassures her saying that she’ll help with the project.  When she brings a doll dressed just like her mother to class, she is laughed at once again.  Her teacher takes this moment to educate the class on why Molly and her family came to America -- for religious freedom, just like the pilgrims.  In fact, the teacher explains, the holiday of Thanksgiving is even modeled after the holiday of Sukkot.

Each year, I come back to this story and find new meaning.  When we lived in Israel, it was no different.  That year, we stayed on a kibbutz for Thanksgiving. The people living there went out of their way to make as close to an American Thanksgiving feast as they could in Israel. Before we began our meal, I recalled my story of the meaning that I found in Molly’s Pilgrim, based on the learning we had done around religious freedom in Israel that year.  Soon after I finished speaking, some kibbutzniks came running up to me.  They introduced themselves as the daughter and grandsons of Barbara Cohen, the author of my book.  They, as it turned out, had eventually made aliyah, moving to Israel precisely to be able to live the way they never could in America.  It was a deeply touching moment and made that year’s Thanksgiving even more meaningful.

This year, I’m thinking about religious freedom again, but differently.  Most of us are not new to America and yet, we are sitting in an unfathomable time where we are being persecuted for our religion.  Jews have been one of the key pillars of American society, and America is the one place we would flee to if we needed to escape. But it is now also under attack.  I wonder, what is religious freedom for the Jewish people?  Where can we experience religious freedom  without being under attack from even other Jews, with in-fighting, debates about what “makes someone Jewish, or if we are practicing enough or too much, or performing mitzvot based on a different values system?  

The theme of Thanksgiving is that everyone is welcome at the table.  I hope that you are able to show up wearing whatever makes you authentically you, unafraid to wear a Jewish star necklace or a kippah.  I hope that this Thanksgiving, we are able to walk around our American homeland free to celebrate our Judaism, free to take pride in our Jewish community, and to support our homeland of Israel as she fights to remain free as well. Am Yisrael Chai!