A.J. Jacobs

Why Thankfulness And Gratitude Are Jewish Emotions

For most of my life, I didn’t consider gratitude a particularly Jewish emotion. Quite the contrary. I grew up a secular Jew, my cultural knowledge filtered through Neil Simon and Philip Roth more than the Talmud or rabbis. So to me, anxiety, guilt, resentment, constant nervousness about diseases like sciatica and bursitis — those were…