Thanksgiving, the Pilgrims' American Jewish Holiday

For the Puritans, Exodus was arguably a model for understanding their own lives and history in a manner more all-encompassing and totalizing than for any other historical religious group, with the obvious exception of the Jews. The Puritan divine, Richard Mather asked, “Is not the way to Canaan through the Wilderness? … Doubtless, through the wilderness you must go, if ever you will come to Canaan.” American Puritans and pilgrims like Mather, John Winthrop, John Cotton, William Bradford, Roger Williams, Increase Mather, Cotton Mather, Samuel Danforth, and many others placed Exodus at the center of their vision, seeing their own fleeing from an oppressive England and a Europe wracked by the Thirty Years’ War to an American “Errand Into the Wilderness” as a modern version of the Israelites’ escape into Canaan. Exodus was one of the most potent elements in the construction of what historian Sacvan Bercovitch called “the Puritan origins of the American self.” The Puritans made Exodus an organizing principle of their experience, and, in turn, it has become indispensable in comprehending the wider American experience. Through the Puritans, the story of Exodus became a motivating script for all manner of American stories.