The Charlotte Jewish News- November 2026- Page 16
Recognizing the Good
By Glenn Fishkin
For me, this has been one of those years that makes you stop and take inventory. On Sept. 22, my wife, Roni, and I celebrated our 41st wedding anniversary. In May, our son Jason and his wife, Elena, welcomed Stella, our third granddaughter, joining Ella and Maddie. And just recently, we watched our youngest son, Andrew, marry Corinne.
Forty-one years of marriage. Three sons who are building their own lives. Three beautiful granddaughters. And three exceptional, remarkable – pick the adjective – daughters-in-law. Gratitude keeps coming to mind. How could it not?
When I was younger, I’ m not sure I thought about gratitude quite this way. Like most people, I was grateful when good things happened. A new job. Professional success. A healthy child. A family milestone. But somewhere along the way, gratitude began to feel less like a reaction to good fortune and more like a way of looking at life.
Jewish tradition has a wonderful phrase for that: hakarat hatov, often translated as“ recognizing the good.” I like the word“ recognizing” because it suggests the good may already be there, whether we are paying attention to it or not. Gratitude requires us to notice. And that is not always easy.
We live in a world that gives us plenty of reasons to worry. We worry about our children and grandchildren. We worry about health, aging, and the other people we love. We worry about Israel, antisemitism, democracy, our communities, and the direction of our country.
Gratitude does not require pretending those things are not real. To me, it means refusing to let the difficult things become all that we see. Professionally, much of my attention these days is focused on Voices Against Hate, the educational storytelling initiative I launched to preserve Holocaust survivor testimony and connect those experiences to contemporary antisemitism in today’ s world. I’ m very grateful, at this stage of my career, I’ m able to draw on decades of storytelling experience and devote those skills to work that feels deeply purposeful.
My work has also changed the way I think about gratitude. One of the things that continually strikes me when I spend time with Holocaust survivors is how rarely they want the single worst thing that happened to them to define the lives they built afterward. They speak, of course, about devastating loss: families destroyed, homes abandoned, entire worlds that disappeared.
But then they tell you about what came afterward. Marriage. Children. Grandchildren. Careers. Friendships. Communities rebuilt. Lives created in defiance of everything that had been taken from them. There is something profoundly Jewish in that. The story does not end with what happened to us but rather, it continues with what we built afterward.
Perhaps that is one reason gratitude has become more substantive to me as I have gotten older. At 25 or 35, so much of life is still ahead of you. You are building a career, looking for a partner, raising children and wondering what comes next. At some point, you realize that some of the things you once hoped for have quietly become the life you are already living.
Forty-one years ago, Roni and I could only dream of the family that would eventually surround
A Toast Across Time
By Tobias Siegal
In Jerusalem, history is rarely kept behind glass. Sometimes, it is poured into one. That was the idea behind“ Made in Israel,” a festival celebrating local craft distilleries held recently at the Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem.
With live music playing under the open sky, thirsty visitors moved between producers offering contemporary Israeli whiskey, gin, arak, fruit brandies and cocktails. Yet the evening was about more than sampling spirits. It was an invitation to taste the newest chapter of a story that began thousands of years ago.
The Bible Lands Museum is particularly suited to tell that story. Opened in 1992, it grew out of the private collection of Dr. Elie Borowski, a Polish-born Jewish scholar and Holocaust survivor, and his wife, Batya. Its 20 galleries trace the civilizations of the ancient Near East
Three generations of the Fishkin family celebrate a family wedding this summer.
us. We didn’ t picture the three exceptional grown sons living lives of their own, the women they would bring into our family, or three delightful little girls and, hopefully, more, right?
One begins to understand that gratitude is not simply being thankful for getting what you wanted. It is recognizing what you have while you have it. Jewish practice reminds us of this constantly. Traditionally, the first words spoken upon waking are Modeh Ani, an expression of thanks for being given another day. Before the emails. Before the news. Before we accomplish anything. Before we know whether the day will be particularly good or particularly difficult. We begin with gratitude. There is wisdom in that.
Gratitude does not erase grief. It does not make fear disappear. It does not excuse injustice or ask us to ignore the problems around us. It simply insists that joy deserves our attention too. Maybe that is especially important now.
There will always be another headline to worry about. Another problem demanding our attention. Another reason to feel anxious about what comes next. And such things deserve our attention. But so does a wedding. So does the birth of a grandchild. So does a conversation with a friend. So does meaningful work. So does sitting across the table from someone you have loved for 41 years and counting.
Perhaps that is what gratitude looks like to me now. Not a list of blessings recited once a year over Thanksgiving dinner but simply noticing. Paying attention. Recognizing the good while it is actually happening. Because I have lived long enough to know
Sampling and socializing at the Made in Jerusalem Festival. Photo courtesy of the Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem.
that nothing stays exactly as it is. Which may be the best reason of all to be grateful for what is here right now.
Voices Against Hate uses film and storytelling to preserve Holocaust testimony, document contemporary lived experience, and help future generations recognize antisemitism before it becomes normalized. To learn more, visit voicesagainsthate. org
– from Egypt and Canaan to Sumer, Babylon, Assyria, Persia, Greece and Rome – through thousands of objects connected to worship, trade, writing and daily life.
Some of its artifacts are roughly 7,000 years old. Together, they tell the story of a region that served as one of the great cradles of human civilization. Here, people developed early systems of writing, studied the movement of the heavens, built cities, cultivated crops and experimented with the flavors and processes that became the foundations of cuisine. And they drank.
Alcohol is certainly not a modern invention. Archaeologists have uncovered evidence at Raqefet Cave, near Haifa, suggesting that Natufian communities produced a fermented beer-like drink some 13,000 years ago, apparently for ritual feasts. That predates not only the modern distillery but pot-
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