Penny Postcard
My friend, Rabbi Liza Stern, tells a story each Thanksgiving that is as dear to our family as it is to hers.
It begins with the years before the First World War, with all the trappings of a tale told by firelight: the widow, the wagon, the five hungry children. The widow is her great-grandmother, trapped in the poverty and privation of Eastern Europe. But because she is the indomitable Mindel Weiss, she manages to book passage on a ship to America.
The ship arrives in New York on Thanksgiving, but there is one final test of her spirit and resourcefulness. The official standing at the gate to her future asks for proof that she will not be a public burden. Can she prove that she can support herself and her children?
The truth is that she can’t. There are no more coins in her purse or her pockets. And there is no affidavit from a sympathetic relative.
And yet the official refuses to turn her away. He asks the widow and her children to open their suitcases and he begins to root around for something that will help them. Because this is a tale of wonders, the Thanksgiving miracle is a penny postcard, a message from Mindel’s distant American cousin wishing her well on her journey from Hungary. It is enough for the Weisses and enough for the official. He takes the postcard as a promise of support. Whatever happens, the Weisses will be cared for.
That’s the part that always moves me, that stirs me with a hope for our collective future. American history is a complicated affair. Periods of open, generous universalism alternate with its clenched, suspicious opposite: a nativist fear of the foreigner, the Other. We close our borders and begin to dream of walls, of artificial sameness and safe familiarity. Then everything changes and we begin to dream again, of a gorgeous multiverse of ambitious people, each contributing a different gift to America. It’s one of the reasons we are so strong and commanding. It’s one of the reasons that our story continues to inspire.
That’s exactly what I want for all of us. I know the heroism of people like Mindel. She could have been my own Latvian grandmother, a refugee from the persecution of European Jews. But I want to honor that anonymous official. On a Thanksgiving Day deep in the last century, he did not retreat into bureaucratic enforcement. He did not turn his back on a widow and her children. Instead, he was responsive, merciful, and humane. He reached across the barriers of history, set aside whatever biases he might have had, and embraced the humanity of the family in front of him. He found a way to open himself to their need.
I wish that there was a statue to honor his generosity, but in the meantime, I hold his memory in my heart. His spirit once saved a desperate family, and one day soon that spirit will prevail again.