Ovens
Thanksgiving has always been a peaceful, serene, secular holiday,
So free of the religiosity and commercialization of Christmas,
So replete with an unabashed lack of gravitas
And the expectations of dreamed-, wished-, prayed-for gifts from heaven,
If not from God, Dad and Mom, our newest, most cherished soul mate, pet;
It's the very most important of all festive occasions
Any of us Americans, especially us immigrants, could ever hope to celebrate,
If for no other subliminal reason
Than that contrition and expiation for moral trespasses and turpitude
Are as utterly and inexplicably absurd as the Immaculate Conception
And turning a Jewish carpenter into a martyred messiah
And the outrageous mean-spiritedness of original sin
And the hubristic simplicity of the Final Solution to the Jewish Question.
Indeed, when I've pondered, contemplated, meditated on giving thanks,
Its raison d'être has been clear to me,
And I've grasped its meaning, as an epiphany, a revelation,
A vision no less consequential than YHWH's call to our patriarch Abraham,
Beseeching him to leave his familiar Fertile Crescent world,
Wander into a terra-incognita Philistian wilderness,
Searching for the source of the Voice, beckoning him to become someone.
Since I arrived in America, in the late 1940s,
I've always appreciated why Thanksgiving is so inspiring, so satisfying:
It asks nothing less or more of us than obeisance to happiness
Undergirded with tolerance for all people's worship of deities, as they please,
A belief in saying yes to the requisite behests of gratefulness
For our being bequeathed the privileges of free existence,
Yes to the days and months and years and decades we're allotted,
When, instead, we could be ordered to go "to the left,"
After detraining from any of the endless processions of cattle-car freights
Arriving at Satan's Adolf Hitler Stations of the Iron Cross,
Along Europe's Via Dolorosa, leading to myriad smoke-choked Golgothas.
So why is it, on this Thursday which has always brought me tranquillity,
That the usually homey aromas of the turkey I'm roasting and basting
Smell more like concentration-camp odors seeping from oven doors,
Rising from stacks, which my nose still remembers, from so long ago?
Dare I ask YHWH if there's something I've said or done, this past year,
To displease Him, cause Him to reject my burnt offering?
Could it be that I've so totally assimilated into this country's customs
That I've completely forgotten to give thanks for being Jewish,
Forgotten that I was less than ten steps away from Auschwitz's ovens?
11/28/12
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