For 40 Years, They Have Given Thanks Together

Mary Ann Jones made her trademark toffee bars because the rabbi from the temple across town “likes those a lot.”

She and other members of Anaheim United Methodist Church laid out a spread of kosher macaroons and chocolate bonbons purchased especially for their Jewish guests. And for the 40th year running, they celebrated a joint Thanksgiving service that unites the Methodist congregation with its Jewish counterpart from Temple Beth Emet.

About 400 people were expected to attend the service, which featured the choirs of both houses of worship.

“I think this is wonderful because when you know people on a one-to-one basis, you don’t have a fear or a misunderstanding about them,” said Jones, 63, of Orange, who joined the Methodist church in Anaheim with her husband 33 years ago.

“The services leave you feeling warm and knowing that God is out there with all of us,” she said. “Afterward, we just have a wonderful time laughing and talking and introducing ourselves. It makes us realize how much we have in common.”

The Thanksgiving service is not the only interfaith service of its kind in Orange County. But it is by far the oldest, said William Shane, executive director of the Orange County chapter of the National Conference, an organization that promotes interfaith understanding.

In the beginning, the Conservative Temple Beth Emet had no building of its own, so the congregation worshiped at the Methodist church. When the synagogue finally was founded on the other side of the city in 1957, the members invited their church-going friends to celebrate Thanksgiving.

The church returned the favor the following year. The temple responded in kind the next, and so it has gone for four decades.

The rabbi and minister who forged that early friendship are long gone. But the tradition of a common Thanksgiving celebration has taken firm root. Over the years, the game of mutual hospitality has come to symbolize something much greater: respect for diversity. “I view Thanksgiving Day as the only civil religious holiday that America has,” said Temple Beth Emet’s Rabbi Mordecai Kieffer, who gave Wednesday night’s sermon at the church. “It is therefore critically important for people of all faiths to find some way to pray together.”

The praying at the service “does not reflect normal Jewish liturgy nor normal Methodist liturgy,” Kieffer said. “But we have found a way to say other things that are worshipful which we think are important.”

The service binds a community of believers in one God, he said, and highlights “the faithfulness that our religions teach to the idea of serving humanity.”

“We have written a service that is appropriate for both congregations to share,” said the Rev. Robert Shepard Jr., Kieffer’s counterpart from the church. “It’s not a Christian or Jewish service per se. It’s meant to be a Thanksgiving message.”

Kieffer’s Wednesday night sermon was titled “Giving Thank.” He used the singular form to point out that it is “impossible for the religiously observant person to thank God or anyone else for just one thing.”

Next year, his congregation will host the service and lay out the tables of food, and Shepard will give the sermon.

“It’s a statement to the community at large that Christians and Jews can be friends and share a common relationship,” Shepard said.

The tradition has led to other projects between the two congregations. Over the last few years, church pastors have joined with Kieffer to teach adult education classes. There, participants can hear the Protestant and Jewish perspective on the Bible and ask questions.

Jones has been a regular participant.

“We learn history, we learn religion, and best of all, we learn friendship,” she said. “There’s one woman who I always look forward to seeing because she’s so cute.”

The joint services, too, have been illuminating, Jones said.

The first time she walked into the temple, she was hesitant.

“It was going into the unknown, not knowing exactly what their form of worship was,” she said. “But once you’ve done it, you feel very comfortable, and you can’t wait to go back. It was fascinating to see the arc that has the Torah in it, and the inscriptions around it.”

Kieffer said members of his temple have been equally awed.

“This is a highly desired moment by both my community and the community of Anaheim United Methodist Church,” he said. “Nobody comes to this service feeling dragged. They are not pushed here, except by some higher force.”

The service may be the oldest of its kind in the county, but it is not the only one. University Synagogue in Irvine on Wednesday celebrated an interfaith pre-Thanksgiving service with Irvine United Church of Christ. Rusty Kennedy, executive director of the Orange County Human Relations Commission, was the featured speaker.

And the United Methodist Church of Garden Grove hosted its second annual Interfaith Community Thanksgiving Observance on Wednesday. That celebration, which was expected to attract 700 people, featured music in English, Spanish, Samoan and Arabic, as well as Jewish, Christian, Bahai and Buddhist religious readings.

On Nov. 16, the Newport Mesa Irvine Interfaith Council sponsored its third annual Thanksgiving music festival, featuring choirs from more than five faiths.

Shane said that several Christian and Jewish Orange County congregations have held Passover/Easter exchanges. But the appeal of Thanksgiving is a message that crosses religious lines.

“Thanksgiving is an American holiday, and it’s an opportunity for people to realize the beauty and the strength of American diversity and to rally together around a concept of sharing,” Shane said. “That’s really what’s going on.”

Kieffer agreed: “People say travel broadens. Well, by learning how to respect and accept each other, our horizons have been broadened religiously.”