ברוך אתא אדוני, אלוקינו מלך העולם, שלא עשני אינדיאנית ...Thanksgiving in the Holy Land

This past Thursday, the Overseas Department threw an American-style Thanksgiving dinner for it's students, which meant free food, which was great.
Even greater was when they decided to explain the holiday to the 70% of the students who are not American.

"Thanksgiving is the holiday in which Americans give thanks for..."

(I actually don't know what Americans give thanks for, because I was busy saying:)

"...in which Americans give thanks for slaughtering the Indians and stealing their land"

Because lets be honest, shall we? Thanksgiving is a very nice American tradition in which we're thankful that we're not the ones who were forcibly marched out of our homes to contract syphilis and small pox and die over the next few centuries. So, hey! Let's shecht a turkey, smear on some cranberries, and whoop it up!

Whoot.

Also, can we discuss how Israelis don't actually know how to carve a turkey? They kind of flay at it, like it's shawarma, which I have to say, is a very different cut of meat. But the point is that they tried. Also, that the food cost nothing. The intention was there to make everyone a nice "homecooked" family meal. And while that came at the expense of the entire First Nations people (as well as the Metis, the Inuit, and the Innu), it's definitely the thought that counts.

Editor's Note: For the curious, the Hebrew part of the title comes from a prayer said in the morning upon awakening thanking God for, among many things, not having made the speaker a woman. So I edited it a bit to suit my purpose, which you can discover for yourself if you befriend someone who reads Hebrew, because it's possible that I crossed some 'appropriateness' boundary in writing it, but whatever.