A Jewish Thanksgiving

This week, homes across America will look very familiar: relatives crowded around a table, kids sneaking bites before the meal officially begins, a turkey that took longer than planned, and at least one heartfelt toast that dissolves into laughter. Thanksgiving is America’s national holiday of gratitude, a day the entire country pauses and collectively says, “Look at all we have.”

Thanksgiving may be American, but gratitude is Jewish at its core. Long before gratitude became a national tradition, Jews built it into the opening moments of every day. We thank G-d each morning with the Modeh Ani prayer, appreciating the simple miracle of waking up, before checking the weather, the news, or our notifications.

There is also a uniquely Jewish layer to gratitude. We don’t only express thanks for what we’ve already received, we express thanks for what we will receive too. Jewish gratitude is memory, but it’s also confidence. It lives in the past, but it also lives in the future. We thank the source of the blessing before the blessing fully unfolds, because life is not a coincidence, it is a gift; and the future holds more gifts to come.

This idea becomes even more real when we look at the life of our patriarch Jacob.

When Jacob leaves home and arrives in Charan, he walks into a world far different from the one we might imagine for a spiritual giant. Charan is hectic commerce, shifting values, long hours, intense competition, and nonstop movement. It is not a quiet corner for introspection. It is loud, fast, morally confusing, and constantly demanding. And it is there, in Charan, not back home in the tents of study from his youth, that the Torah tells us:

“The man prospered exceedingly; he had abundant flocks… camels and donkeys.”

Why does the Torah list these details? Not to tell us about his assets, but to tell us about his surroundings. Jacob didn’t just succeed, he succeeded inside a marketplace filled with moral ambiguity, psychological pressure, and cultural admiration for strategic shortcuts. It was a world where cleverness often mattered more than conscience, where power influenced decisions more than purity of motive, where ambition could easily blur truth, and where parenting advice started sounding a lot like business strategy.

Many Jews today know this Charan well. Our modern Charan looks like the workplace, the business world, the professional ladder, the brand building mindset that moves quickly and demands quick adjustments. It can also sound like the internal voice that says, “You’re busy. Survive first, ask questions later. If everyone stretches the rules a bit, it’s not betrayal, it’s reality.”

It feels current. It is actually timeless, just wearing modern clothing.

That voice even makes reasonable arguments: if it’s legal, it’s fine. The law of the land is law. Everyone operates this way, so you can too. The problem isn’t that the argument sounds evil. The problem is that it sounds logical. Small compromises, casually justified, slowly become something larger. A tiny bend can subtly become identity, until clarity gives way to convenience.

Jacob refuses this path. He encountered manipulation, but he did not adopt manipulation as a lifestyle. He negotiated hard, but he never negotiated away his soul. He built prosperity, but did not let prosperity redefine truth.

And the Torah says he prospered exceedingly. Not in opposition to his values, but in alignment with them.

Then came the bigger test, his family. Laban told him, “The daughters are mine, the sons are mine, the flocks are mine.” Laban was really proposing a worldview; let younger generations adapt to the surrounding culture, let their identity bend toward their environment, let business be played by the fastest rules available. But Jacob didn’t cave. He built a family grounded in Jacob-values, not Charan-values. He worked with ambition but carried honesty, dignity, and moral direction. His spiritual and ethical compass stayed steady even as he built wealth, managed a large household, handled career pressure, and raised the next generation.

Jacob teaches us the paradox we still need: ambition doesn’t have to destroy integrity. Success doesn’t require surrendering conscience. Winning in life doesn’t require losing who you are. Prosperity doesn’t contradict holiness when prosperity becomes fuel for meaning rather than a replacement for it.

So this Thanksgiving, somewhere between the pumpkin pie and family banter, add one more toast that touches something higher:

“Thank You, G-d, for what we’ve received, and thank You in advance for what we will receive in the future. Help us build successful lives that stay true, lives we can be proud of, without losing our soul, our honesty, or our children to the speed of life.”

Because thriving like Jacob is not about escaping the world. It is about showing up in the world with gratitude, confidence, honesty, moral clarity, ambition, and purpose, all working together.

And may we all merit Jacob’s blessing, not only to build lives filled with accomplishment, but to look at what we’ve built and say with a peaceful, full heart:

“This came from You, G-d. And we used it well.”