Interfaith Thanksgiving service marks 93 years
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Despite the hardships brought on by the Great Depression, more than 400 area residents streamed into Temple Beth Israel -- filling the sanctuary to capacity and beyond -- on Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 26, 1931.
It was the first Interfaith Thanksgiving Service of Altoona, which, as one of the oldest such services in the nation, will mark its 93rd year next week.
This year, the service will be held the week before Thanksgiving -- 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 21 -- back where it all began at Temple Beth Israel, during the temple's sesquicentennial.
The guest preacher will be Rabbi Sue Levi Elwell, Ph.D., the Temple's Scholar in Residence for the weekend.
Everyone is invited and organizers hope the temple will again be filled with people from all faiths and walks of life as thanks is offered for our many blessings. There will be time after the service for refreshments and for people to mingle and get to know each other, a tradition offered each year by the host congregation.
Elwell, who chose this year's theme of "Room for Everyone at the Table," said this is an "important time of healing in our country."
"We will come together as people of faith to strengthen communities where all are welcome, all are respected, all have a seat at our tables of thanks," she said. "Our power is reaching out to one another and lifting our voices in praise together."
In keeping with the theme, Rabbi Audrey Korotkin said donations of fresh produce, as well as monetary donations, are being accepted to support Sister Paula DelGrosso's St. Vincent de Paul Society Soup Kitchen.
Children will help collect the offering and will help with the produce donations, too, she said, adding it's "a good way to teach them to help other people." Everything collected during the service -- from the offering to the produce -- goes to the soup kitchen, she emphasized.
Korotkin, spiritual leader of the Temple, said that when the temple opened its doors to the community during the Great Depression, not only were they feeding people spiritually, but most likely also literally, as many people struggled to put food on their tables.
The theme also encompasses the idea that everyone "has a say in this world," she said.
"Everybody is included at the table, whatever religious organization you come from," Korotkin said. The interfaith service has expanded to include not only the area's Christian and Jewish communities, but also the Buddist, Baha'i, Muslim and Native American communities, she said.
While the service began as a project of the Sixth Ward, it now goes beyond those boundaries, said both Korotkin and Monsignor Michael Becker.
Becker, of St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church, has been a big supporter of the interfaith program, Korotkin said.
For his part, Becker said his mother was involved in the Ecumenical Conference so "I grew up breathing interfaith."
The service isn't to promote one religion over another -- in fact, each of the groups taking part will be sharing in the service, from offering prayers to providing reflections and music. Instead, the idea is to look beyond religion, to see "we are more alike than we are not alike," Becker said.
Becker used the word "silo" to describe how groups keep together with shared beliefs, stating that the COVID-19 pandemic "put a crimp on a lot of things. ... I'm thinking we have to create some energy in the whole area of ecumenicism ... get out of our silos to a much more community, ecumenical" outreach.
His hope is that the interfaith service shows attendees that "we can work together on many things" despite differences in religious beliefs.
"I hope that they come away with a sense of fellowship," he said of attendees. He hopes, too, that the service can also begin to "bridge the divide" that is seen not only locally, but in the world at large.
"We respond well to disasters, but living together on a day-to-day basis we can be rather divisive," he said. "We have to grow together as a community and become more conscious of our common brotherhood and sisterhood," he added.
The interfaith service is a reminder that "we have a responsibility to everyone ... to treat people how they deserve to be treated as made in the image of God," Korotkin said.
"It doesn't hurt to be nice to people, to greet people, to say hello, offer a smile," she said. "In our little way with this service, we are doing that. … One little bit at a time, we can make life better for somebody else."
"I hope that this interfaith service can remind those who participate that we're all one family -- different faiths, ethnicities, but all one family," Becker said.