Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Jewish Prayers For Thanksgiving? Yes, There’s A Long History

Are there Jewish prayers specifically for Thanksgiving? Absolutely, says Alan Brill, a professor of Jewish Studies Seton Hall University who writes about history and trends in Jewish spirituality and practice on his blog — it’s a tradition with a long history.

In a post this week, Brill ran through more than two century’s worth of Jewish prayers and sermons delivered around Thanksgiving.

Perhaps the earliest known American Jewish sermon on Thanksgiving comes from Gershom Mendes Seixas, who in 1789 penned a long 40-page sermon for the very first national Thanksgiving. In 1905, as a special commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the settlement of Jews in the United States, H. Pereira Mendes, of the Spanish-Portuguese synagogue of New York, wrote his own special prayer.

One particularly popular Thanksgiving prayer comes from Rabbi Joseph H. Lookstein of New York’s Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun. The 1940 prayer is organized in a series of verses thanking God for blessings and praying for guidance.

The prayer also evokes patriotic ideals.

“We pray sincerely for America and the ideals of democracy and freedom that are here enshrined. May she be strong to withstand all the currents that assail her and all the forces of evil that would invade her sacred precincts,” the prayer goes. “A tower of light to her own citizenry, may she cast a steady beam and light up all the dark areas of the world and show to a perplexed and straying humanity the path of freedom, of life and of peace.”

Email Sam Kestenbaum at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter at @skestenbaum

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.