You know that Thanksgiving is just around the bend when Fairway on the Upper West Side of Manhattan starts to pile heaps of plastic bags of cranberries on one of its outdoor stands. That, and the twinkle of little blue lights on the trees that line Wisconsin Avenue in the Washington neighborhood of Chevy Chase, gaily announce the advent of the holiday season.
Another source of comfort, all the more pertinent this year, is Gershom Mendes Seixas’s A Religious Discourse: Thanksgiving Day Sermon, a reproduction of which was recently offered for sale by Dan Wyman Books. (“A very important document, and increasingly difficult to find.”)
Delivered at a special Thanksgiving Day service held on November 26, 1789 at Congregation Shearith Israel in New York by the self-styled “Minister to the Jewish Congregation in this City,” and, like so many important sermons of its time, subsequently published in the form of a pamphlet, Seixas’s address encouraged its listeners to be good citizens, to support the Constitution, “to live as Jews ought to do in brotherhood and amity, to seek peace and pursue it.”
I had first encountered Seixas’s stirring words many years ago, probably when studying for my oral comprehensives. But in the years since, I had forgotten all about them until I came across the announcement of the pamphlet’s sale, prompting me to renew my acquaintance with the text.
Although the language of, and context for, Seixas’s sermon is that of the 18th century, the sentiments it expresses are well worth contemplating. Placed against the uncertainties, both meteorological and political, of our time, they continue to ring true this Thanksgiving, November 22, 2012.
