Maudet ani lefaneha, I thank you.

These are the first words uttered by traditional Jewish women and men every day of their waking life.

The first conscious thought is one of gratitude.

And as this is a season of American Thanksgiving,

I thought we'd explore that topic this week. Welcome to the Tikva podcast. I'm your host,

Jonathan Silver. The impulse to give thanks is a natural human sentiment. How does it appear in the

biblical text? And how does the Hebrew Bible's moral teaching instruct the natural

human impulse to gratitude? Well, to help us think about that, I'm joined by the rabbi and scholar,

the CEO of Bnezion, Ari Lam, someone who's thought deeply about the biblical text, its drama,

its cultural and religious significance, and he is our guide this week to the idea of biblical

gratitude. If you enjoy this conversation, you can subscribe to the Tikva podcast on Apple Podcasts,

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ideas. I welcome your feedback on this or any of our other podcast episodes at podcast at tikfafund.org.

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Here now is my conversation with the Rabbi Ari Lam.

Rabbi Lamb, welcome to the Tikva podcast.

Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

So this is a season of the year when Americans in particular are thinking a lot about gratitude.

We're recording this conversation around the American holiday of Thanksgiving.

And it strikes me that in the Hebrew Bible, we meet

women and men who express a wide range of human emotions. There are figures in the Hebrew

...