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🇺🇸 Thanksgiving Day Readings

🇺🇸 Thanksgiving Day Readings

This is an archive of public readings prepared for Thanksgiving Day in the United States.

Click here to contribute a special reading you have prepared for Thanksgiving Day.

PrayersReadings

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💬 מְגִלַּת וָשִׁעְתּוֹן | Megillat Washiŋton — a Purim Sheni scroll for 🇺🇸 Thanksgiving Day by Isaac Gantwerk Mayer (1790, 2018)

In many Jewish communities around the world, there have been traditional scrolls read for “local Purims,” celebrating redemptions for a specific community. Here in America, we don’t really have an equivalent to that. But we do have Thanksgiving, a day heavily inspired by Biblical traditions of celebration, and one long associated with all that is good about America. Some Jewish communities have a tradition on Thanksgiving of reading Washington’s letter to the Jews of Newport, where he vows to support freedom of religion, famously writing that the United States “gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance” – thus rephrasing words originally written in a prior letter by Moses Seixas (say-shas), the sexton of the Touro Synagogue in Newport. This text includes the original English of both Moses Seixas’ letter to Washington and Washington’s return, as well as a somewhat simplified version of the story of Washington’s visit to Newport. Inspired largely by the style of the Book of Esther, it could be read on Thanksgiving morning during the service, using Esther melodies (or going on detours as per personal choice).

Categories:

🇺🇸 George Washington's Birthday Readings, Extracanonical Megillot, Modern Miscellany, 🇺🇸 Thanksgiving Day Readings, Purim Sheni Readings

Tags:

18th century C.E., 56th century A.M., American Jewry of the United States, George Washington, Newport, Revolutionary War, Spanish-Portuguese, State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Western Sefaradim

Contributor(s):

Isaac Gantwerk Mayer

Stable Link: https://opensiddur.org/index.php?cat=3208

Associated Image:

Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, 2009. (credit: Swampyank, license: CC BY-SA)

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ויהי נעם אדני אלהינו עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננה עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננהו׃ (תהלים צ:יז) · "May the pleasantness of אדֹני our elo’ah be upon us; may our handiwork be established for us — our handiwork, may it be established." (Psalms 90:17)

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