An Israeli Thanksgiving

Last night, for the first time, I had a taste of American Thanksgiving. Being Canadian-born, and having spent two thirds of my life in Israel, I have very little feeling for the American Thanksgiving. No, sorry, I shouldn’t have said that, I have NO feeling at all for the American thanksgiving, other than the fact that I’m thankful I’m Canadian.

I’m also very thankful that at least one of my prime ministers is a man of principles, and stands by his word. Go Stephen Harper, my new superhero.

Whenever I officially think of giving thanks, the first thing that comes to mind is this book I read a long time ago, but stayed in my head, called the Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom. Corrie was a Christian Dutch woman, who was sent to Ravensbruck Concentration Camp with her sister for hiding Jews in her home in a small town in Holland. After the war, she wrote a book about her experiences, and was honored by Yad VaShem as a righteous gentile.

In her book, she describes her time in the camps. She and her sister would lead prayer groups with the other prisoners, where they would give thanks for whatever they could. One day, her sister, leading the group, gave thanks for the friends they had made, for being together with her sister, and then thanked G-d for the fleas they were infested with. The fleas, of course, were a source of typhus and other diseases. Corrie protested this inclusion. “How can you thank G-d for fleas!!” she asked. But her sister insisted, “Yes, we must thank G-d for everything He gives us.”

Later on, Corrie discovered that the reason they were able to carry on with their prayer meetings was that the German guards didn’t want to come near them because the place was infested with fleas.

In this week’s Parsha VaYeshev, we read the story of how the 10 sons of Yaakov decide to sell their brother Yosef and he is taken as a slave to Egypt.

It’s written “And they (the 10 sons) sat down to eat bread, (after throwing Yosef in a deep pit with the thought of leaving him there to die) and they lifted up their eyes and looked, and behold, a company of Yishme'alim came from Gilad with their camels carrying aromatic gum, balm, and ladanum, going to carry it down to Egypt".

It is to this caravan of Yishmaelim that the brothers sell Yosef instead of leaving him in the pit.

Now, we know that the Torah never wastes words. It doesn’t believe in descriptions to make more interesting reading. There is a reason that the Torah tells us what the camels that are going to take Yosef to Egypt are carrying. They are carrying aromatic gum, balm, and ladanum. (I looked up what ladanum is in the dictionary – in case anyone was wondering. It’s the juice extracted from certain rose plants and used to make perfume.)

We know that Yosef’s sale to the Yishmaelim is the first part of a divine plan. We know that he goes to Egypt so that he can eventually attain a position in which he is able to save his family from famine. We know that G-d wants the sons of Yaakov to come to Egypt. G-d’s plan is for Bnei Yisrael to become slaves, leave Egypt as a nation, and receive His Torah and be brought to the Land as a nation. We know this, but Yosef doesn’t.

So the Torah tells us that the caravans were full of aromatic gum, balm, and perfume. This is a hint to Yosef that he is not alone in his troubles. The caravans could have been full of chickens, or fertilizer, or old boots. But they were full of perfume, making his dark journey into slavery just a little easier, a little brighter. It’s a message to Yosef, and to us, that G‑d is with us even when we don’t understand or see the good, there is always some good to be thankful for. Sometimes, we need to look for the good and recognize it, even in the toughest situations.

And sometimes, like Yosef, or like the Pilgrims in 16whatever, we have to go through some difficult times to be able to really appreciate the good in life.

It’s something to keep in mind.

Like my (Canadian-born) friend Bracha said last night at our Thanksgiving soiree, just like every day should be Mother’s Day, every day should be Thanksgiving.

Wishing all my American friends happy Thanksgiving, and all my non-American friends happy giving thanks!

The Three Fs: Family, Friends, and Facebook

I have several friends, acquaintances, and family members who refuse to join Facebook (or any other social networking site). Others are on, but seldom sign in. They all say that they don’t have time to waste on such nonsense. One person said that she doesn’t have enough time to stay in touch with the people in the real world, never mind in cyberspace. Another told me that she does not want her private life and thoughts splashed all over the net.

I say hooey!

I love Facebook. I don’t play the millions of games it offers. I seldom take any of their quizzes (though I did take “which Canadian city suits you best—and ended up with Toronto even though I deliberately answered so the results would come out to Winnipeg—I think these quizzes are rigged).

What I do do on FB is look up old friends and relatives with whom I have lost touch, and in some cases were never in touch. I’ve had much success. I have found old classmates from high school I haven’t seen or heard from in 30 years. I’ve rediscovered college mates from Bar Ilan University who left Israel and lost touch. I’m now in contact with relatives, close and more distant, and we share news and pictures of our families, though, geographically, we are all so far apart. In addition, Facebook has allowed me to get to know some cousins who were either not yet born or were too young when I left Winnipeg, or who lived in a different city and I had never met.

The first high-school mate I found on Facebook, several years ago, told me that I had ‘set a record’ for being out of touch the longest and being the furthest away. I protested that I wasn’t out of touch – they were! I have since found several others, and they all seemed genuinely happy to hear from me, though our lives have taken such different paths. We’ve exchanged gossip, caught up with families, sent pictures.

I have one schoolmate friend who recently joined FB. I had actually been in touch with her off and on over the years. More off than on, to be honest. She gave me the names and emails of other friends, and now I’m in email touch with them too!

A college friend of mine whom I found, and lives in the US, invited me to his son’s Bar Mitzvah last summer at the Kotel. He had married another college friend. We had lost touch shortly after I moved to Beer Sheva 25 years ago. I traveled to Jerusalem that day with some trepidation, I must admit. I had aged, gained weight, and looked a bit older than my 21 years. What would they think of me? But I was excited to see them. At the Bar Mitzvah was yet another friend; – also on FB – who lives in Ra’anana. I hadn’t seen him since his wedding 23 years before.

I made two discoveries that day. The first was that – surprise!! – all these other people had aged too. The second was that it didn’t matter how much time had passed. The 27 years since we were last together faded away. We joked, we shared info on other college friends, we talked. There was no awkwardness, no embarrassment, no lack of what to say to each other. And my friends, I am happy to report, felt just as comfortable making fun of my height – or more precisely, lack of it – as they did 27 years ago.

And more. This year, those friends’ daughter is spending a year in Israel. We’ve just hosted her for Shabbat. I told her that I and her parents had been family, when none of us had family in Israel, and that by extension she could feel that she was now family, too. I was delighted and grateful to pay forward to the next generation a little of what I received back then.

So I say to all those who denigrate Facebook: Like most things in life, it is what you make out of it. I believe that no one can have too many friends or too much family (unless you have to wash their dishes or do their laundry – fortunately FB doesn’t have that technology yet).

I’m happy that the word friend has become a verb. (“Hey, you know who friended me today? My old roommate’s second cousin. Now I have 675 friends.”) You can’t say friend enough times.

I’m glad that the opposite of the word like is no longer dislike, but unlike. You no longer actively dislike something; you simply have stopped liking it. Much more positive.

And Toronto is a nicer city than Winnipeg.