Thanksgiving has a way of showing up even when you swear it was just Labor Day.

Still, this year I have been thinking more seriously about what it means to be grateful, and why it matters when the world feels upside down.

Here is the truth.
This industry gave me a life I never imagined.
It made me successful very young. It gave me freedom to build companies, take risks, crash into a wall, rebuild, and come out stronger. It is chaotic and brilliant and occasionally ridiculous.

It is full of flawed people, and yet somehow, also full of people whose goodness catches you off guard.

Those people matter.

(Mussar is an ancient Jewish practice of self-improvement focused on developing ethical and spiritual character traits, known as middos, to live a more conscientious and meaningful life)

Brian O’Kelley reminded me of something important this week.

He is annoyingly good at seeing the good in people.

He challenges me to learn from others, even the ones I would prefer to ignore.

He pushes me toward something I do not always want to hear.

That is real mussar.

You grow by finding what is true inside people you disagree with.
You grow by refusing to give in to cynicism.
You grow by choosing curiosity instead of contempt.

It is not easy. It is not comfortable. But it is necessary.

Most people in this country have never met someone who lives like I do as an ultra Orthodox Jew. For many Americans, people like me feel like a photograph from the past, or a walking symbol instead of a living human being. Even people of Jewish “heritage” often treat me with such distaste.

Here is the reality.
We are not the past.
We are the same people who walked out of Mitzrayim. (Egypt)
We are the same people who survived Rome, Inquisition, Crusades, Poland, Russia, and everything in between.
We are the continuation of a story that refuses to die.

America is one of the only countries where Jews like me could remain fully ourselves and still participate in public life.

This country has a painful and complicated history of racism, hatred, and bigotry, yet it has also given Jews unprecedented freedom.

That is not something I take lightly.

If you want to understand resilience, look at Rabbi Chaim Fischel Epstein of St. Louis.
He was born in Lithuania in the 1800s. He learned in the greatest yeshivas of Eastern Europe. He came to a young America that was not friendly to religious Jews and still managed to build a community, uphold Torah, and create institutions that outlived him.

He did not just survive.
He rebuilt.
He did not just hold on to what he knew.
He planted seeds for generations after him.

His life teaches a simple truth.
Your circumstances do not determine your legacy.
Your choices do.
Your courage does.
Your willingness to build does.

If he could create a future in a place with nothing, then we, with every tool in the world available to us, can certainly do more.

This is the part people usually skip, but this is the part that matters most.

Gratitude is not a feeling.
Gratitude is a responsibility.

If we are lucky enough to have blessings in our lives, we are obligated to use them with integrity, generosity, humility, and courage. Gratitude should make us kinder. It should make us slower to anger. It should make us quicker to help. It should make us aware that nothing is promised.

On this Thanksgiving, I hope you find
peace, even if things are not simple,
joy, even if it comes in small bursts,
and kindness, from others and from yourself.

May we all remember that being grateful is not passive.

It is a way of living.

Rabbi Pesach Lattin
Editor, Publisher of ADOTAT