A few years ago I watched every episode of an excellent Israeli TV series about modern-Orthodox "30 - somethings" called S’rugim. S’rugim refers to the kippa s’ruga, the crocheted kippa that, for many, has grown to serve as a symbol for this community.
I thought it was a compelling show. The characters were appealing but also at times frustratingly self-absorbed.
Deanna stopped watching after season 2 and I continued. One night when I couldn’t sleep, I went downstairs and binge watched through to the end of the third and final season.
One of the main characters is named Hodaya.
She grew up in an observant home, daughter of a rabbi. Of all of the characters, she departs the most from her observant upbringing.
She is also probably the least satisfied of all of her friends. She is brilliant, creative - perhaps in some ways the most gifted of all of her friends - and yet she never seems to be satisfied.
It first occurred to me this past week - as I was preparing to speak - the irony of her character given her name.
Her name - Hodaya - means gratitude in Hebrew. Thanksgiving, actually.
And she appears almost constitutionally incapable of being thankful.
Many people will say that gratitude is a feeling.
To some degree it is. But I want to suggest - on this Shabbat immediately following the American holiday of Thanksgiving - that gratitude is primarily a choice. We choose to be grateful or not. We choose to what extent we focus on saying “thank you” for the good things in our lives and to what extent we focus on everything that is wrong or tense or problematic in our lives.
Why do I say that gratitude is a choice? Our tradition supports that claim, as does my own life experience.
Let’s go back to this morning’s Torah reading. Leah, Jacob’s wife, gives birth to several children and she names each of them. The first three names, given to her first three children, reflect Leah's unhappiness and her hope that her sad situation, being unloved and lonely, will change.
When the fourth child is born, she says הפעם אודה את ה׳ hapa’am o’deh et adonai. This time I will thank God.
Much of her situation hasn’t changed. Each child who preceded the fourth, presumably, was just as miraculous as the fourth. She still lives with the painful reality that her husband, Jacob, prefers her sister to her.
She chooses to express her gratitude when the fourth child is born. The word “hapa’am” - now, this time - reflects her awareness that she is a making a conscious choice to approach things differently.
I’m not the first one to say that we have more control over our attitude to life than we do over our actual life circumstances. Many people have pointed that out, probably because experience bears it out.
When our children were little, we were living near the Shelter Rock Jewish Center and my parents were both alive. As far as I knew at the time they were both well. They loved spending time with us. De’s parents were (and thankfully still are) well and we all spent time together.
At the time I realized that this was great and wondered how long it would last - with all of us together like this - and I made a conscious effort to note it and I said sheheheyanu. I didn’t consider at the time whether this situation fit the criteria for the recitation of that blessing as articulated in the Talmud and Maimonides' Mishnah Torah. It made sense to me to say it and I did.
I don’t always choose gratitude. I sometimes choose to wallow in the problems, the mishagos of my life. But in this moment I chose to look at my life and say, this is great. I said to myself, look at this. Realize it’s great. And say thank you.
There are numerous benefits to choosing gratitude.
Expressing gratitude is empowering for us. For me - in that moment - with uncertainty about my career and family and other things - it allowed me to feel that I have some influence over my story. Rather than feeling like a mere object of circumstance.
Apparently expressing gratitude increases your happiness. Two social psychologists did a little experiment with several hundred people. They divided them into 3 groups and asked them to do certain things at the end of each week, over the course of 10 weeks. One group wrote about things they were grateful for that had occurred during the week. A second group wrote about daily irritations or things that had displeased them, and the third wrote about events that had affected them (with no emphasis on them being positive or negative). After 10 weeks, those who wrote about gratitude were more optimistic and felt better about their lives. Surprisingly, they also exercised more and had fewer visits to physicians than those who focused on sources of aggravation.
Realizing and expressing gratitude sets the stage for us to be helpful to other people. Sometimes we are so preoccupied with what’s missing in our lives that we don’t have the emotional bandwidth to think about other people. How can I worry about someone else when I have so many challenges in my own life? we may wonder. It seems to me that recognizing the gifts that we have, notwithstanding the problems, opens us up to the possibility of helping other people.
This creates a positive cycle. When you devote yourself to helping other people, it can help you feel more grateful about your own life. I suspect that we’ve all had the experience of feeling additionally grateful for our blessings after we have offered support to someone going through profound challenges.
During one of the final episodes of S’rugim, after Hodaya complains to her best friend, her friend lets her have it.
Nothing is good enough for you. No one is good enough for you.
I think it’s easy to relate to Hodaya. The part of each of us that is never satisfied, perennially disappointed. We are annoyed by her, perhaps, because she reminds us of a certain part of ourselves. At the very end of the series, Hodaya reconnects with her "less than perfect" job and reunites with her "less than perfect" boyfriend. It seems that she is beginning to make some progress.
The Biblical Leah sets an inspirational example for us all. Notwithstanding circumstances that are far from perfect, painful even, she chooses gratitude and she chooses to give voice to her gratitude. In so doing, she names the child who will be the namesake of the Jewish people. She names Yehudah, Judah, who becomes the progenitor of Yehudim, Jews.
Yehudim. Jews. A people who say מודה אני Modeh ani every morning. I thank you for giving me another day. A people who say blessings over good news and also over bad news. A people who say מודים אנחנו לך Modim anahnu lakh. We thank you for the miracles that are with us every day.
We owe a debt of gratitude to Leah who said הפעם אודה את ה׳ ha’pa’am odeh et adonai - this time, I will thank God.
We can all do that. We can look at our lives, in this moment, and say, hapa’am - this time, I will give thanks.
Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck on November 25, 2017
I thought it was a compelling show. The characters were appealing but also at times frustratingly self-absorbed.
Deanna stopped watching after season 2 and I continued. One night when I couldn’t sleep, I went downstairs and binge watched through to the end of the third and final season.
One of the main characters is named Hodaya.
She grew up in an observant home, daughter of a rabbi. Of all of the characters, she departs the most from her observant upbringing.
She is also probably the least satisfied of all of her friends. She is brilliant, creative - perhaps in some ways the most gifted of all of her friends - and yet she never seems to be satisfied.
It first occurred to me this past week - as I was preparing to speak - the irony of her character given her name.
Her name - Hodaya - means gratitude in Hebrew. Thanksgiving, actually.
And she appears almost constitutionally incapable of being thankful.
Many people will say that gratitude is a feeling.
To some degree it is. But I want to suggest - on this Shabbat immediately following the American holiday of Thanksgiving - that gratitude is primarily a choice. We choose to be grateful or not. We choose to what extent we focus on saying “thank you” for the good things in our lives and to what extent we focus on everything that is wrong or tense or problematic in our lives.
Why do I say that gratitude is a choice? Our tradition supports that claim, as does my own life experience.
Let’s go back to this morning’s Torah reading. Leah, Jacob’s wife, gives birth to several children and she names each of them. The first three names, given to her first three children, reflect Leah's unhappiness and her hope that her sad situation, being unloved and lonely, will change.
When the fourth child is born, she says הפעם אודה את ה׳ hapa’am o’deh et adonai. This time I will thank God.
Much of her situation hasn’t changed. Each child who preceded the fourth, presumably, was just as miraculous as the fourth. She still lives with the painful reality that her husband, Jacob, prefers her sister to her.
She chooses to express her gratitude when the fourth child is born. The word “hapa’am” - now, this time - reflects her awareness that she is a making a conscious choice to approach things differently.
I’m not the first one to say that we have more control over our attitude to life than we do over our actual life circumstances. Many people have pointed that out, probably because experience bears it out.
When our children were little, we were living near the Shelter Rock Jewish Center and my parents were both alive. As far as I knew at the time they were both well. They loved spending time with us. De’s parents were (and thankfully still are) well and we all spent time together.
At the time I realized that this was great and wondered how long it would last - with all of us together like this - and I made a conscious effort to note it and I said sheheheyanu. I didn’t consider at the time whether this situation fit the criteria for the recitation of that blessing as articulated in the Talmud and Maimonides' Mishnah Torah. It made sense to me to say it and I did.
I don’t always choose gratitude. I sometimes choose to wallow in the problems, the mishagos of my life. But in this moment I chose to look at my life and say, this is great. I said to myself, look at this. Realize it’s great. And say thank you.
There are numerous benefits to choosing gratitude.
Expressing gratitude is empowering for us. For me - in that moment - with uncertainty about my career and family and other things - it allowed me to feel that I have some influence over my story. Rather than feeling like a mere object of circumstance.
Apparently expressing gratitude increases your happiness. Two social psychologists did a little experiment with several hundred people. They divided them into 3 groups and asked them to do certain things at the end of each week, over the course of 10 weeks. One group wrote about things they were grateful for that had occurred during the week. A second group wrote about daily irritations or things that had displeased them, and the third wrote about events that had affected them (with no emphasis on them being positive or negative). After 10 weeks, those who wrote about gratitude were more optimistic and felt better about their lives. Surprisingly, they also exercised more and had fewer visits to physicians than those who focused on sources of aggravation.
Realizing and expressing gratitude sets the stage for us to be helpful to other people. Sometimes we are so preoccupied with what’s missing in our lives that we don’t have the emotional bandwidth to think about other people. How can I worry about someone else when I have so many challenges in my own life? we may wonder. It seems to me that recognizing the gifts that we have, notwithstanding the problems, opens us up to the possibility of helping other people.
This creates a positive cycle. When you devote yourself to helping other people, it can help you feel more grateful about your own life. I suspect that we’ve all had the experience of feeling additionally grateful for our blessings after we have offered support to someone going through profound challenges.
During one of the final episodes of S’rugim, after Hodaya complains to her best friend, her friend lets her have it.
Nothing is good enough for you. No one is good enough for you.
I think it’s easy to relate to Hodaya. The part of each of us that is never satisfied, perennially disappointed. We are annoyed by her, perhaps, because she reminds us of a certain part of ourselves. At the very end of the series, Hodaya reconnects with her "less than perfect" job and reunites with her "less than perfect" boyfriend. It seems that she is beginning to make some progress.
The Biblical Leah sets an inspirational example for us all. Notwithstanding circumstances that are far from perfect, painful even, she chooses gratitude and she chooses to give voice to her gratitude. In so doing, she names the child who will be the namesake of the Jewish people. She names Yehudah, Judah, who becomes the progenitor of Yehudim, Jews.
Yehudim. Jews. A people who say מודה אני Modeh ani every morning. I thank you for giving me another day. A people who say blessings over good news and also over bad news. A people who say מודים אנחנו לך Modim anahnu lakh. We thank you for the miracles that are with us every day.
We owe a debt of gratitude to Leah who said הפעם אודה את ה׳ ha’pa’am odeh et adonai - this time, I will thank God.
We can all do that. We can look at our lives, in this moment, and say, hapa’am - this time, I will give thanks.
Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck on November 25, 2017
This is so well said. I am going to incorporate it into my daily ritual.
ReplyDeleteWonderful.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for such a well-written article. It’s full of insightful information. Your point of view is the best among many without fail.For certain, It is one of the best blogs in my opinion. a course in miracles free
ReplyDelete