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Its an American yontif (yomtov/holiday) is it mutar to celebrate it? We should have hakaras hatov but we shouldn’t get too close in galus also what about eating turkey and having a “Seder” on thanksgiving?
Rabbi miller says “every day is Thanksgiving.
Enjoy the 🦃 with an extra loud bracha.Once, our high school class made a joke and put our belts on our hats and sang and danced for Thanksgiving. The mashgiach came in to tell us we were going straight to gehennom for avodah zorah. He shook his head sadly at me, “Your grandparents and great-grandparents (whom he knew personally) are rolling in their grave”.
My grandparents came to the USA from Europe. They were from Rabbonus and pretty much everyone who wasn’t a rov in that side of the family was also a massive talmid chacham and lamdim. They celebrated Thanksgiving and so did most of their siblings that lived in America.
If someone wants to tell me that it’s assur, I would really like to see the source.
muter or not there is no reason for us to do it
Same reason as anyone else.
It’s for sure not a Jewish thing.
Jews eat meat on their yom tovThere was a famous gadol in NY who ended his shiur on Thanksgiving by sending talmidim home to eat turkey.
There is no chiyuv, but there are many rabbanim and communities that do celebrate. Shivim panim, no reason to make a macha’ah.
Rav Soloveichik had a seuda himself. For a general discussion see Thanksgiving:Harmless Holdiay or Chukos HaGoyim on the Oht Sameach website.
rav soliveitchik said mutar, rav hutner said assur.
Do we not read the Torah every Thanksgiving?
Case closed.
My family celebrated it. I celebrate it. My tradition is to pickle my own corned beef, make fresh chrain and sauerkraut. Some years we will also have a small turkey or stuffed turkey breast and thighs. There is nothing wrong with being grateful and there is nothing stopping any of us from making our own family traditions for this day.
Don’t be frummer than the gedolei Yisroel like rav Moshe, rav Yaakov, rav Ruderman, rav Ahron, etc. Non of them celebrated this non Jewish holiday. They had a better understanding of hakoras hatov than any of us.
Did you just turn eighteen and started waking up, or have youbeen asleep your whole life? This is an extremely old topic of discussion.
Living in America we didn’t celebrate thanksgiving. We celebrated the sales and day off from school 🙂
Muttar, Assur, it’s more about why are you celebrating? You should have hakaras hatov every day to everyone around you.Thanksgiving is a purely secular, American holiday. Funny, when it comes to money ( Medicaid, Section 8,food stamps etc ) we jump up and down and shout Give Me, I’m an American!! When it comes to Thanksgiving and July 4, suddenly we’re not Americans, its chukas goyim.
Anonymous- that would be a good point if it made sense but your bigotry seems to be clouding your vision. Getting benefits from a country where you are employed and pay taxes is not a parallel to celebrating a holiday.
If you work for a company that handed out bonuses to its employees and you didn’t get one you would cry out that you are also an employee, but when they offer everyone a ticket to a musical on a Friday night and you don’t accept, are you suddenly claiming not to be an employee anymore?I’m very grateful to be in America and love the day off. I love pumpkin pie and I am grateful for all the things I need that are on sale. I didn’t realize that having a meal was a Halacha of the day. I learned that it was the establishment of a moed that was the problem and not Chukas hagoyim. If there are people believing that by not eating turkey I have not been grateful, well then maybe those people have lost sight of who determines the “rules”.
It is an interesting play on words a turkey is called a תרנגול הודו a rooster of thanks.
Our Thanksgiving Day is Succos where we thank Hashem Yisborach for the harvest.
Reb Moshe ztz”l has teshuva in Igros Moshe.
Earlier in this chain, someone made a comparison to Halloween. Correct me if I’m wrong, but there’s a difference. The All Saints Day celebration was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas (from Middle English Alholowmesse meaning All Saints’ Day) and the night before it, the traditional night of Samhain in the Celtic religion, began to be called All-Hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween. Thanksgiving, while many have carried forward “religious” overtones, it was simply a meal to rejoice and give thanks for being alive and successful in the “new world”. Dunno… sounds like that applies to all people and religions equally and can be as religious or as secular as you choose to make it. Also, I’m 3rd generation american… what “seder” are you referring to? Best I know, there’s not even any kiddush to say at the table, but if you have one, please pass it along.
Black Friday is definitely a bigger Jewish holiday.
The origin and text of the (not legally binding) proclamation each year clearly suggest a religious order. The question needs to be asked that if goyim hold a yuntuf in order to (and to give thanks to) the Ribbono Shel Olam (and make a point of not mentioning any false gods, but clearly giving thanks to Ha-Shem) if the prohibition of avodah zarah applied.
If at some point the Americans elect an openly atheist President, who says the holiday is to celebrate prosperity by shopping, with no reference thanking anyone other than themselves, it would clearly no longer be Avodah Zarah. So perhaps by 2021 if the Democrat’s Blue Wave turns American into a socialist paradise, we won’t have a shailoh.
Syag, please put your own bigotry in check. Noone says you must observe Thanksgiving. However, this thread questions the halachic permissability of its observance.
All I’m pointing out is that these threads don’t come up when it comes to things we to which we claim entitlement i.e. is it muttar to accept Medicaid since it’s chukas goyim
Funny, when it comes to money ( Medicaid, Section 8,food stamps etc ) we jump up and down and shout Give Me, I’m an American!! When it comes to Thanksgiving and July 4, suddenly we’re not Americans, its chukas goyim.
What a horrible comparison
According to the Maarik there is no chukas hoakim when there is a reason for it. We give thanks to Hashem that we live in a land that does not discriminate and allows us to practice our religion peacefully.
Anonymous, do you have a specific reason why you would consider Medicaid to be chukas goyim?
Anonymous- that’s cute. I’ll work on figuring out exactly which of my responses to your comment connected to any race or culture.
Meanwhile though, it requires little effort to see the intentions of someone who puts government assistance and thanksgiving celebration on the same people. If you read your first post, and then my response, you will see I answered you very directly.Las.
I always wondered if celebrating Thanksgiving with a “turkey” was picked and invented by a Jew. They are indeed both הודו in Hebrew..The term “Chukas Hagoyim” is definatly an abused term.
Gaon: Nice one. Actually Hodu is supposed to be India in chumash . Some European countries call turkey “the Indian bird”
Gaon, I don’t think it was jewisih as history teaches us that Pilgrims were thoght by the indians farming and they thanked their GOD for helping them by eating turkey.
Yes….unless you side with those poskim who say it is assur.
by far the best answer, lol
As a matter of fact, the Pilgrims considered themselves the new Israel, the King of England Pharoah and America the Promised Land. They emphasized the Tanach over the NT and even gave their children Tanachic names although sometimes translated into English and sometimes not (e.g. Increase and Cotton Mather were Yosef and Katan). The also stressed the idea of covenant and the autonomy of local congregations.
Wow, this got a lot of responses, when it’s really a very simple answer:
It’s a machlokes. Everyone should ask their own Rav, and follow their own tradition. For example, Chaim Berlin students should NOT have a Thanksgiving dinner, while YU students may.The whole question doesn’t start. Those rabbonim who assered it started from the premise that it’s a goyisher holiday, but that is simply not true. It’s an America holiday, and from the very beginning Americans have included yidden. Since the first time President Washington proclaimed a day of thanksgiving to the Creator (carefully not specifying any identifying traits that would limit it to one religion) Jewish Americans celebrated it equally with non-Jewish ones. So it’s just as much a yiddisher holiday as a goyisher one.
As for setting up a “moed”, there’s a long Jewish tradition of doing exactly that. Each community has many days that they celebrate or fast every year to remember this or that thing that happened since the time of Chazal. OK, this one does not commemorate any specific event, it’s just to thank Hashem for the harvest; it’s a late Sukkos, adapted for a very different climate and agricultural cycle than Eretz Yisroel. Surely that makes it better, not worse.
Laskern, the pilgrims did NOT eat turkey. There is no connection between turkey and Thanksgiving. People cook a turkey on this day for the same reason they do at any large family gathering, because it’s a big bird and feeds a lot of people.
November 22, 2018 11:57 am at 11:57 am#1629087
zahavasdadParticipant
The term “Chukas Hagoyim” is definatly an abused term.
—————————————–
List of abused terms among yiddin:
Chukas hagoyimFrumkiet
Frum
Yeshivish
Chassidish
Post nisht
Avreich
Rabbi
Smicha
Mesora
Mesira
Kosher
Glatt
And a whole slew of other tetms
Feel free to add.t2tt
Great list!Chilul Hashem
Ayin Harah
Rabbi miller says “every day is Thanksgiving.”
Enjoy the 🦃 and all the trimmings with an extra loud bracha.
Preferably Get a minyan of men if u can and bentch on a kois.My mother tells me that non-Jewish Americans serve basically the same food,
including turkey, at all holiday meals (she used to have non-Jewish coworkers).Make a chesbon a nefesh can a night of thankfulness make you closer to G-d? Goyim drink coffee is it chukkos hagoyim ?
If the goyim do a nice deed does it become chillona hagoyim?
Is resting on Sunday chukkos hagoyim? That’s a realigious test day. It’s a beuteful thing for a nation to declare a holiday to thank God unlike Xmas it has nothing to do with jashka.
I might not only be mutar but with the right intentions a good deed too. ( shutfus by a goy is not assur and the fact that some take jashka shouldn’t affect the holiday as long as that is not what the day is supposed to be. That’s my psak
It would be a shame if the day they decide to thank we did notTraditional Thanksgiving foods are either in season or particularly American.
To those that hold that its mutar: what about Kidush? havdala?
Takes. what about “hagaon”? They say that a Gaon is someone who never heard of Rashi or Tosafot.
Knaidlach, do you make them on Purim or Chanukah?
FWIW, the first national Thanksgiving Day in the United States was proclaimed by George Washington and celebrated November 26, 1789. The holiday was enthusiastically embraced by the Jews of New York; the order of service has survived and included a lot of extra psalms, a new prayer for the government (in English!), and a sermon that has also survived which was an extended homily on psalm 100. No Tachanun. That is still the minhag to this day. This was more than a century before the rabbis mentioned by other commenters were born.
Syag, there is a prohibition of establishing a new yom tov. However, a yom tov involves a prohibition of melacha (thus being that Purim was not accepted as a yom tov for later years there is no prohibition of melacha – Megilla 5b). There is no prohibition of melacha on Thanksgiving, just a day off from most jobs.
Avi, while I agree there’s no Bal Tosef problem with Thanksgiving, it’s not limited to days on which there is no melachah. If people decided to not say tachanun on Thanksgiving and say Hallel, it would be an issue.
Are there any major groups that actually don’t celebrate Thanksgiving? I’ve always just assumed Chassidim don’t since they have a different approach to chukas hagoyim, but I’ve never asked.
I’m also having a trouble getting a reading on the OP. Is this someone at a point in his life where he wants to proclaim his own gezeiras, or someone who actually poskens like a Rav who assurs Thanksgiving, and he wants to spread his shittah to the masses?
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