Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Thanksgiving- To celebrate or not! That is the question.....

The Jewish Week has a good article regarding the issues surrounding celebrating a non-Jewish holiday. The question is to celebrate or not. The article clearly states that the position of many Rabbis in the yeshiva world ( they name Rabbi Hutner zt'l, his talmidim such as Rabbi Fievel Cohen concur) is against the festivities. Conversely they claim that Rabbi Soleveitchik would reschedule his shiur for early in the day on Thanksgiving in order to allow time for the celebration of Thanksgiving.
What should you do? As they say: consult your local Rabbi....

Filed under:,,.

2 comments:

TechnoYid said...

We've been celebrating Thanksgiving for years. Since we're observant and *none* of our relatives are, we've used it as a means to get the various relatives together. We started about twelve years ago by having all of the relatives come to a meal at our local kosher chinese restaurant (Royal Dragon in Rockville, MD).

It also allows us to celebrate two birthdays that occur around that time.

The main advantage is that since we cannot eat at our relatives' homes, and they (in general) don't want to come to our homes during the Jewish holidays, it allows all of us to come together in a "parve" situation.

Jack Steiner said...

I think that Thanksgiving is a family holiday and that there is really no reason not to take advantage of it.