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Editorial: Would Vegas take pilgrim odds?
Op-Ed · November 23, 2017


Back in October, Doug and Kristine Klein invited one of our reporters to their home to learn about a Jewish tradition they practice to further appreciate a metaphysical and omnipotent being.
This practice comes to mind as we approach Thanksgiving, and we find ourselves once again hoping to not only identify all of which we find ourselves grateful but, even moreso, to remember to thank those who made it possible.

The structure Doug Klein built near his house is a “sukkah” — pronounced soo-KAH — a hut roofed with branches. Large enough to host a family meal, the hut is a feature of the eight-day harvest festival known as “Sukkot,” (-kkot sounds like “coat”) which celebrates how God provided for the Israelites after escaping slavery in Egypt.

The big meal part of the celebration? We’ve got that down pretty good. Whether your family goes for turkey or ham or a potluck variety, Americans by and large understand Thanksgiving typically features a feast. Doug said tradition calls for “our finest food” at the table.

Yet sukkot takes that a couple steps further, calling on the Jews to believe that this food comes from God. And while someone had to plant the seeds and add the fertilizer or raise the cattle, someone else — something greater than just the forces of nature — provided the dirt, sent the rain and organized through natural design every worm and bug that helps put nutrients in and aerate the ground. Yes, science can explain quite a bit about how all these forces work together to benefit crops and cattle, but the Sukkot holiday tells the Jews why this multitude of forces work together: To the benefit of God’s creation.

That’s an incredible amount of effort to, in part, give us something to eat. How many books would it take to write down this recipe? Suddenly, cooking a turkey seems a lot easier.

The Kleins then told us about the gap in the roof of the sukkah, meant for them to peer out into the starry sky and remember “a higher presence above us.”

That’s quite the contrast from the harvest meal, which focuses on the ground below. Now the Jews are to look upward at what exists beyond our planet’s own atmosphere. We’ve gone from considering one planet to considering a universe so vast we can only imagine its boundaries.

The Kleins made a new addition to their sukkah this year when Doug replaced the walls with a wraparound curtain printed with a skyline view of Jerusalem, which they called “the center of Jewish life.” Kristine commented that the Sukkot is “like drawing a curtain around your life and taking a step back.”

Her comment and the Thanksgiving holiday remind us of author and theologian C.S. Lewis saying that “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probably explanation is that I was made for another world.”

Speaking of another world, when the pilgrims traveled in 1620 to America, history teaches that they benefitted from several circumstances outside of their control as well, getting us to what is now known as Thanksgiving.

They aimed their boat for Manhattan but winds and tides pushed them off course by a couple hundred miles and they ended up in Massachusetts. Their landing boat was pushed by waves to an Indian village emptied by disease, possibly smallpox, yet still storing grain and located near a fresh supply of water. Several months later, Squanto showed up. Squanto had been captured years earlier, sold into slavery in Spain, freed by a monk and returned to America. He tracked down his village, which was now occupied by the pilgrims. He had already accepted the Christian faith and learned English; now he offered to help the pilgrims learn better ways to survive on the land.

This level of Pilgrim Luck would impress Las Vegas.

One of the pilgrim leaders, William Bradford, called Squanto “a special instrument sent of God.”

And some believe that the three-day harvest festival event now known as the First Thanksgiving probably got its inspiration from the Jewish sukkot.

These two examples encourage us to take more time to consider all the forces at work that allow us to have what we have, regardless of how little or how much it may seem.

And to be deeply thankful.