The People Named for Thank You

There were four dishes of sweet potatoes on the counter yesterday. One was dairy, one was pareve, one was gluten-free, and one was — as far as anyone could tell — an act of love by someone who had never heard the word fleishig and was doing their best.

Thanksgiving in the Southern California hills, in an Airbnb large enough to absorb three generations of family and every dietary restriction they'd brought with them.

My husband's mother is Jewish. She's also celiac. The broader family, her husband's side, are not Jewish. They don't quite understand kashrut, or why some of us need separate plates, or why the cranberry sauce has to be checked for gelatin. But they made room. They always make room. Even if they still don't get what dairy means or what gluten is.

Here is a thing I have noticed about Thanksgiving. Americans do it once a year and it nearly breaks them. The logistics alone — the travel, the cooking, the seating chart, the question of who brings what and whether Aunt Somebody will start an argument about politics over the turkey. An entire nation in a state of low-grade panic for a week, all to sit at one table and say thank you.

Jews do this over fifty times a year. Every Friday night. Candles, wine, bread, a table, a pause. We don't call it Thanksgiving. We call it Shabbat. And by Wednesday most weeks I'm already thinking about the menu.

Tonight, the table will be set again. My mother-in-law has a gluten-free challah recipe (kosher to orthodox standards) which is genuinely good — soft, sweet, with a golden crust that holds together when you tear it.

She knows dietary restrictions the way some people know sports statistics: fluently, precisely, and with the quiet confidence of someone who has been managing them her entire adult life.

Tonight she will cover her hair with a piece of lace that belonged to her grandmother and light Shabbat candles. The rest of the family will be somewhere nearby. Nobody will announce what is happening. She will just light them, say the blessing, and stand there for a moment with her hands over her eyes.

I'm writing this from the passenger seat as we drive from the Airbnb back to her house in Yorba Linda — the house my husband grew up in — where tonight's table is already waiting. Yesterday was about gratitude performed once. Tonight is about gratitude practiced always.

In Parashat Vayetzei, Jacob leaves home. The Torah gives it exactly one verse:

וַיֵּצֵ֥א יַעֲקֹ֖ב מִבְּאֵ֣ר שָׁ֑בַע וַיֵּ֖לֶךְ חָרָֽנָה׃

Jacob left Beer-sheba, and set out for Haran.

 Bereishit 28:10

No packing scene. No goodbye. He is running from Esau, heading toward an uncle he has never met, with nothing but the road. He stops when the sun goes down, puts a rock under his head, and sleeps. And while he sleeps, he dreams — a ladder set on the ground with its top reaching the sky, angels going up and coming down.

God speaks. God promises. And when Jacob wakes, he says something startling:

וַיִּיקַ֣ץ יַעֲקֹב֮ מִשְּׁנָתוֹ֒ וַיֹּ֕אמֶר אָכֵן֙ יֵ֣שׁ יְהֹוָ֔ה בַּמָּק֖וֹם הַזֶּ֑ה וְאָנֹכִ֖י לֹ֥א יָדָֽעְתִּי׃

Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely GOD is present in this place, and I did not know it!”

— Bereishit 28:16

God was in this place, and I did not know it. He wasn't in the Temple — there was no Temple yet. He wasn't at an altar or a sanctuary. He was on the side of the road, alone, with a rock for a pillow, in a place he had not planned to be. And God was there.

Jacob goes on to Haran. He falls in love with Rachel, works seven years for her, gets married in the dark to the wrong woman, and wakes up next to Leah. The great deception — midda k'negged midda, measure for measure, say the rabbis.

The man who wore his brother's clothes to fool his blind father is now himself fooled in the dark. He works another seven years for Rachel. He builds a life in a land that is not his.

And Leah — unloved, unchosen, given to a man who wanted her sister — begins to have children. She names each one as a prayer.

Reuben. God has seen my suffering.

Shimon. God has heard.

Levi. Maybe now my husband will be close to me.

Three sons, three names, three pleas for love or acknowledgment. And then the fourth:

וַתַּ֨הַר ע֜וֹד וַתֵּ֣לֶד בֵּ֗ן וַתֹּ֙אמֶר֙ הַפַּ֙עַם֙ אוֹדֶ֣ה אֶת־יְהֹוָ֔ה עַל־כֵּ֛ן קָרְאָ֥ה שְׁמ֖וֹ יְהוּדָ֑ה וַֽתַּעֲמֹ֖ד מִלֶּֽדֶת׃

She conceived again and bore a son, and declared, “This time I will praise GOD.” Therefore she named him Judah. Then she stopped bearing.

— Bereishit 29:35

Hapaam odeh et Hashem. This time — I will give thanks.

Not "see me" or "hear me" or "love me." Just thanks.

The name Yehuda comes from the root hodaya — gratitude, praise, thanksgiving.

And Yehuda is the son whose name becomes the name of the people. Yehudi. Jew.

We are, literally, the people named for thank you.

My father's mother was named Leah. Her father — Yaakov — was Jewish, married a Christian, raised the family outside the faith. Leah wasn't halachically Jewish, which meant her sons weren't either. None of them would have had reason to know. But every spring she fed the boys matzah for a week and never told them why. They just thought it was odd crackers. I did not learn any of this until I was deep into my conversion, studying the matriarchs, and my own father mentioned it in passing — as if it were nothing. A man named Yaakov. A daughter named Leah. In a parsha about both of them. As if a name doesn't carry weight.

There is a line I keep coming back to — God was in this place, and I did not know it. Jacob said it about a roadside in the dark. I have said it about a kitchen in Yorba Linda, watching a woman who has kept her grandmother's lace for decades cover her hair and light two candles in the house where she raised her children. I have said it about four kinds of sweet potatoes lined up on a counter. I have said it about matzah served without explanation every spring to boys who would never know why.

Tonight the candles get lit again. Fifty-two times a year we set a table and say the blessing. We are the people named for it.

Shabbat shalom.

— Uriel ben Avraham