Thanksgiving can be a difficult holiday for a person who sees addressing the oppression of Native Americans and celebrating the freedom and opportunity provided to immigrants and refugees as equally compelling social justice issues. In fact, it has been argued that the Native Americans were victims of an open immigration policy that resulted in death, destruction and subjugation — a story that was converted into the feel good myth of Thanksgiving by the victors. This reality exists notwithstanding the noble aspirations, courage and creativity of wave after wave of newcomers who came to the United States to find new homes and new hope. And so this paradox remains.
But with a clear understanding of the human suffering that resulted from the immigration of newcomers to America, I still find Thanksgiving to be a time to appreciate what this country has meant as a beacon to immigrants across the generations. I posted a longer piece looking at Thanksgiving, American identity, the Soviet Jewish refugee resettlement movement and our ongoing obligations to remain engaged in the immigration struggle on the the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) site – part of a series of letters reflecting on aspect of our organization’s work as the American Jewish community’s international migration agency.
For me, the most powerful statement of America’s core identity came from President George Washington when he wrote to the leaders of the Tuoro Synagogue in 1790: “The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent national gifts. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”
When looking around the world — with ethnic and religious violence, shadow societies of underemployed and alienated immigrants (and their children and grandchildren), and popular frustration at the seeming inability of newcomers to integrate into their new communities — I feel nothing but gratitude for the American identity that President Washington described. It doesn’t matter where you came from, what religion you follow, who you are. All are equal in rights and responsibilities. In America citizens are free to be themselves, not simply to be tolerated, but in their freedom to be part of the essential meaning of the country. All we need do is behave like good citizens, which is a political and civic identity not one based on blood or length of residence.
To me, this vision is something to be thankful for as a statement of “American Torah” — the core wisdom of this country — and it sustains me and allows me to face the paradoxes of my civic existence as an American on a quest to help repair the world.
Happy Thanksgiving.
