Reflection for November 25

Thanksgiving tells us a lot about America, about our yearning for community and connection, about loneliness and about God.

Loneliness destroys us in the same way that bullets and poverty destroy us. It eats away at our spiritual wellbeing. It eviscerates our sense of wholeness.

In fact, loneliness kills. "O chevruta, o mituta," it says in the Talmud (Taanit 23a): Either companionship or death. And the other great religious traditions agree.

No human being is capable of living an atomized life. We live by community; otherwise, we live badly, or not at all.

Religion at its best affirms the ties of family and community, investing family celebrations with meaning and structuring family life with ritual and rules of conduct. Communities can exist without religion and God; but the most satisfying communities are those that draw on the traditions and ceremonies that religion provide. And religion at its best is not about bricks, budgets, or numbers, but about fostering sacred community among vulnerable human beings who yearn for connection.

Thanksgiving has a special hold on us, and we should rejoice in its blessings. And we should remember what it teaches us: our deep and profound need for intimacy and belonging.

(Rabbi Eric H. Yoffle, “What Thanksgiving Tells Us About America Community, Loneliness and God,” Huffington Post, November 23, 2012)