Every year someone asks me whether Thanksgiving is a Jewish holiday.

There are two completely opposite answers to this question, both of which are true.

The first answer is no. Thanksgiving is a national holiday, first declared by President George Washington in 1789. But long before Washington formalized it, the Pilgrims had already created a Thanksgiving celebration.

The Pilgrims knew their Bible well, and they modeled Thanksgiving on the fall festival of Sukkot—a harvest holiday filled with joy, gratitude, and celebration of the earth’s bounty.

They also saw themselves echoing the Exodus story: escaping persecution, crossing a vast sea, and arriving in what they believed to be their own Promised Land. For them, the British king was Pharaoh, the Atlantic Ocean the Reed Sea, and the shores of this continent the land where they hoped to build a new life.

And even though the first answer is true, so is the second: Yes—Thanksgiving is profoundly Jewish, because it centers on gratitude. And Judaism is, at its core, a tradition of gratitude.

Gratitude for our blessings permeates Jewish prayer and practice. We begin expressing thanks the moment we wake each morning with the prayer:

מוֹדָה אֲנִי לְפָנֶֽיךָ, רוּחַ חַי וְקַיָּם

Modah ani l’fanecha, ruach chai v’kayam—

“I give thanks before You, living and enduring God.”

The prayer continues: “You have restored my soul to me. Great is Your faithfulness.” At the moment of waking, we acknowledge the simple, enormous gift of being alive. Jewish tradition teaches us to notice and appreciate blessings large and small—and the chance to wake up to a new day is certainly meaningful.

We are surrounded by miracles daily, and every day can be a kind of thanksgiving—a moment to recognize and respond to God’s abundant blessings.

And then there is the Thanksgiving meal—the essential ritual of the holiday, alongside football games and parades. This joyous communal feast reminds us that every meal can become an opportunity for gratitude. At every meal, we can pause to thank God for food, for companionship, for life, for laughter, and for love.

But if gratitude is all we bring to Thanksgiving, we miss an essential invitation. Not everyone in our community is in a position to give thanks. Many are suffering—people experiencing homelessness, living in poverty, wondering where tomorrow’s meal will come from, or choosing between food and needed medications.

Thanksgiving reminds us that gratitude alone is not enough.

We are called to become blessings—to offer support, sustenance, and dignity to others. True thanksgiving pairs gratefulness with responsibility: the responsibility to partner with God, to become God’s hands in the world.

In this way, Thanksgiving lifts up values that resonate far beyond this one day. Its deeper meaning—the spiritual invitation of this secular holiday—is to awaken us to lives of blessing. Every day.