Elliot Cosgrove, PhD November 23, 2024
Hayyei Sarah
Our American Stories
November 23, 2024 · 22 Heshvan 5785
With Thanksgiving just days away, if there is a single shared iconic image of the holiday that comes to mind, it is Norman Rockwell’s famous painting “Freedom from Want.” Created in November of 1942 and published on the cover of the March 6, 1943, issue of the Saturday Evening Post, the painting depicts a large intergenerational family gathered around the holiday table, the central focal point being the roasted turkey served by the family matriarch. The tablecloths are white, the silver is polished, and the food – celery, cranberry sauce, and casserole – abundant. As for the people seated at the table, they are as white as the tablecloths, their gazes directed at each other, so sated and overjoyed by each other’s smiling selves that they pay no attention to the turkey – a nod, as one art historian suggests, to Da Vinci’s “Last Supper,” in which none of celebrants make eye contact with the sacrificial offering at the center.
As you may know, the original painting, now housed in the Norman Rockwell Museum in Massachusetts, was inspired by President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s famed 1941 “Four Freedoms” State of the Union Address. Freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear – the four values for which brave soldiers were sent to the front to fight and make the ultimate sacrifice. Four paintings, one for each Freedom, were commissioned from Norman Rockwell. The Thanksgiving scene represented his idealized vision of abundance, cleanliness, and purity – not a single glass of wine on the table. As the title implies, a world in which there is no want.
And while you may be familiar with the painting and with Roosevelt’s speech that gave life to it, what you may not know is the controversy that surrounded it at the time. Because while Rockwell’s intent was to champion a hopeful vision of America, in the mind of his critics his painting was out of touch, in that the world it represented was not only unrealistic, but tone deaf to the struggles faced by most Americans and most of humanity. As so many faced economic adversity, racial oppression, and the hardships of war, this homogenous, affluent, and blissful image of family life was seen as exclusionary. For a Europe in the throes of war, all the more so; it left a bitter taste and lingering resentment which Rockwell himself was well aware of.
Complicating matters further was the fact that Rockwell’s painting, like each of the other three paintings, was printed with a companion thought piece. The “Freedom from Want” essay was written by the Filipino immigrant, novelist, and labor organizer Carlos Bulosan, who used the opportunity to give voice to the struggles he and his fellow immigrants endured. His essay is disquieting in both substance and style. To quote but one selection: “an America . . . where the tear gas is choking unprotected children . . . Where the prisoner is beaten to confess a crime he did not commit. Where the honest man is hanged because he told the truth.”
“We are the mirror of what America is,” Bulosan raged. “If America wants us to be living and free, then we must be living and free. If we fail, then America fails.” Jarring as Bulosan’s essay is, the juxtaposition of his contribution with that of Rockwell is even more startling. In fact, when Rockwell read an early draft of Bulosan’s essay, he contemplated destroying his painting, the gap between his vision and Bulosan’s reality a bridge too far. Only the desperate intervention of the Post’s editor saved the painting and the day.
Looking back, both men were given the same “Freedom from Want” assignment but responded in two different ways, Bulosan speaking to the harsh realities of his existence and Rockwell hoping to inspire with an aspirational vision. Two very different narratives of our country – a split screen, a fault line revealed – competing visions of the American story.
That was them, that was then; this is today. What is your version of the American story? What image comes to mind as you imagine where we are and where we should be heading as a nation? What is your harsh essay of critique? What is your idealized Rockwellian vision? It is a question that we should consider at all times, certainly in this season of Thanksgiving and, yes, urgently so as we seek to make sense of a divisive election result. An evenly split popular vote revealing not only an electorate divided between red states and blue states, but a fissure at our foundation, the story of who we are and who we seek to be. Communities – national, religious, or otherwise – are far more than a matter of borders, passports, ethnicity, or language. Communities – and nobody knows this better than Jews – are constructed by way of narratives, self-constructed social realities, the stories we tell informing and forming the reality we inhabit and the future we seek to inhabit. Narratives that ground us, inspire us, and sometimes, oftentimes, divide us. Narratives conflicting with the competing narratives of others who lay claim to the same community or nation.
Narratives unite, narratives divide, and narratives evolve. Like many in the room, I recall childhood Thanksgiving school assemblies, some years dressed up as a Pilgrim, some years as a Native American. Well-intended as such efforts were – highlighting the values of courage, gratitude, and patriotism – today they strike me as out of touch with our era of identity politics, indigenous claims, and cultural appropriation. I remember as a graduate student studying some of the competing American narratives – John Winthrop’s Puritan vision of a “City on a Hill,” Samuel Danforth’s 1670 “Errand into the Wilderness,” the Founding Fathers’ national vision of “God’s New Israel.” An America characterized by self-made, self-reliant, frontier-conquering rugged individualists, or, alternatively, a nation of uprooted immigrants. In the words of Oscar Handlin, “Once I thought to write a history of the immigrants in America. Then I discovered that the immigrants were American history.” Sometimes, the narratives come to us by way of popular culture. Israel Zangwill’s 1908 play “The Melting Pot,” the title suggesting an America in which differences melt together into one, an image countered by Horace Kallen’s orchestral vision in which the instrument of every person and people sounds its unique timbre and tonality, each contributing to the symphony of American life. Sometimes, the differences can be traced by way of the American musical canon. As those of you raised on Springsteen’s live box set know well, Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land” was an angry answer to Irving Berlin, who had just written “God Bless America,” which Guthrie believed suffered from blind patriotism, exclusivity, and, as with Rockwell, cut off from the hardships faced by Americans then in the tenth year of the Great Depression.
And while the exercise of identifying and tracing competing American narratives is an endlessly fascinating exercise (at least to me), practically speaking, the question that matters most is to name the competing narratives that presently divide our nation. Because no matter who you voted for in this last election, the nature of a democracy is that not just a candidate wins or loses, but a narrative does. Kennedy had his “New Frontier,” Reagan had his “Morning in America,” Obama had his “Yes We Can,” and President-elect Trump has his “Make America Great Again.” Of course there are policies, character, and competency at stake in presidential elections, but the inescapable fact is that more folk voted to “Make America Great Again” than whatever the other side was offering. Even the Vice-President’s supporters, as I heard former President Clinton reflect the other night at the Beacon Theater, grudgingly conceded that whatever the merits of the respective candidates’ positions on economic, social, or foreign policy may be – President Trump was able to tap into American voter discontent in a way that ultimately led him to victory. No matter what Clinton believes, you believe, or I believe is best for this country, the results of this election make clear that there were more people who found common cause with President Trump’s vision than the alternative.
All of which, I believe, brings us back to our Thanksgiving tables. In just a few days we will welcome family and friends around our tables for turkey (or for some of you, Tofurky), our annualized and ritualized opportunity to share our inherited, evolving, and divided national story. For many, this will not be an easy exercise. This week I have heard from more than one congregational family of people’s unwillingness to sit down together due to the fractious political lines of our time. I am deeply worried that if we lose the ability to break bread together in our own biological families, how can we ever hope to do so as a national family? It is a troubling state of affairs that should worry us all.
And while I have no national remedy, I take comfort in the knowledge that as Jews we know a little bit about the power of sharing our stories – around the Passover table, and, as we know from this week’s Torah reading, passing them down from one generation to the next. Nobody knows it better, nobody does it better than Jews, and this year I encourage you and your families to use your Jewish story telling muscle group around your Thanksgiving table to reaffirm and restore the promise of a shared American national narrative.
In that spirit, I offer you four questions to guide your conversation.
One: What is your telling of the American story? In Passover speak: What, if anything, makes our nation different from all other nations? What are the ties that bind us together? What is our shared history, values, frustrations and aspirations? Go around the table and share your story as others are given the chance to share their own.
Two: Which American stories are not present at your table? It goes without saying, there is still time to invite people to your table, all the more so folk with views different from your own. Those voices also need to be heard. If they are not physically present, read an article (or read the Bulosan essay) that represents a different American reality. Discuss it, be curious, be empathetic; make room in your heart for the possibility that your narrative isn’t the only one.
Three: How can we build common ground between the competing visions of our great nation? In a nation divided between those seeking to make America great again and those insisting that we are not going back, is there a place where we can all come together? The divides are pronounced and will not be easily bridged, but we need a place to start. Invested as we all are in the well-being of our nation, we need to build dialogue, trust, and common cause.
Four: What are you grateful for? This is, after all, Thanksgiving, and no matter our nation’s flaws and internal divides, America remains the greatest country in the world and altogether worthy of our care and concern. What are you grateful for, and how are you going to leverage your “attitude of gratitude” to contribute towards the betterment of our country. How can you get involved – in politics, philanthropy, advocacy, or volunteerism? Tomorrow is our annual Mitzvah Day here at the synagogue. Come! Bring your children and grandchildren. Deliver food to the homeless. Help home-bound elderly. Donate winter clothes for the needy. As Jews we know that the most authentic expression of gratitude is acts of tzedakah. Mitzvah Day is not meant to be a one-off, but a kick-off. Do it tomorrow, do it every day. We are all stakeholders in the well-being of our democracy.
Four questions, but really a single call for dialogue and action. From our Founding Fathers to Norman Rockwell to today, the story of our nation has been written and rewritten, debated and disputed – more narratives and counter-narratives than dare be counted – a tangled web that animates and divides our collective sense of self. But the most important thing to say about our national narrative is not what it says or doesn’t say, but to note that it is still being written – by you, by me, by all of us – in the stories we tell, the stories of others to which we pay attention, and the healing deeds we perform. In private at our Thanksgiving tables, in public wherever we go, we remember that though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. Caring for our country. Caring for each other. In dialogue and building a shared vision and future together.