Mary Maude Daniels

Posted -Beliefnet - November 28, 2004 10:37 p.m.

I went to the Beliefnet to look for Jewish gratitude prayers as a way of putting a Hebrew school twist on Thanksgiving. The Jewish prayers were quite similar to those from other faiths, which reinforced my impulse to view Thanksgiving as perfectly consistent with Judaism, even if it was invented by Puritan Christians.

Maybe this makes me an overly assimilated Jew. Or perhaps it grows from being in an interfaith marriage. When I near a holiday of basically Christian origins, my impulse is not to substitute an entirely Jewish version but rather find what's compatible with Judaism.

With Thanksgiving, that's easy. So much of Jewish ritual is about the giving of thanks, the generation of consciousness about what we are fortunate to have.
Our particular family Thanksgiving ritual was like that of millions of other Americans. We held hands and each declared what we were grateful for. Grownups cited health. Kids cited dogs and candy. (At first, I was annoyed by this but decided that the most important thing was for the kids to see the adults answering earnestly.)

The adults then each read one of these Thanksgiving quotes or prayers, gleaned from Beliefnet's ecards or prayer finder (and themselves found from all over the internet).

To our Friends who have become Family
And our Family who have become Friends
May you be blessed with the same
Love and care you've given us.

Mary Maude Daniels


Earth that gives us all they food,
Sun that makes it ripe and good
Dearest Earth and dearest sun,
We won't forget what you have done--

Beliefnet member: runningonfaith


For each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food,
For love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends.
Father in heaven,
We thank thee

Ralph Waldo Emerson

If the only prayer you say in your life is
"thank you",
that would suffice.

Meister Eckhert


"We gather today, Lord of abundant life, as grateful children. Delighted and humbled by our bounty, we celebrate gifts of food and shelter, of colors that dance ad dawn and dusk; we relish the scent of cooking foods, of burning leaves and summer's wet grass, of snowflake, of animal fur. We marvel at the intricacy of spiders' webs and fish bones, newborn babies and lines etched on faces of grandparents come for a visit today. All gifts from Your hand. When our meal is completed, leftovers stashed, and naps taken, we will leave replete, energized, and eager to go generously in the world and share our good fortune.:

Rev. Lynn James

A hundred times a day I remind myself
That my inner and outer life depends
On the labors of other men,
Living and dead,
And that I must exert myself in order
To give in the measure as I have received
And am still receiving.

Albert Einstein

Throughout all generations we will render thanks unto Thee
And declare Thy praise, Evening, morning and noon,
For our lives which are in Thy care,
For our souls which are in Thy keeping
For thy miracles which we witness daily,
And for Thy wondrous deeds and blessings toward us at all times.

Traditional Jewish Prayer


Steven Waldman is the Editor-in-Chief and co-founder of Beliefnet.
Before that he was the National Editor of US News & World Report and before that the National Correspondent for Newsweek.
He earlier served as editor of The Washington Monthly, an influential political magazine