It’s the day after Thanksgiving. I apologise to my American friends for not sending greetings sooner.

‘Thank you’ makes the world go round. If every relationship was graced by the words ‘Please’, ‘Thank you’ and ‘I’m sorry’, not just mouthed but truly meant, humanity would be in a different place. How often I’ve heard it said, with a worn-down sigh: ‘If only he’d just showed some appreciation!’

I’d describe myself as ‘average’ at saying thank you. I admit, I have thought much about it of late. Worry interrupts the nights. There’s anxiety over what’s happening in Israel and around it, worry for friends and colleagues whose children are in combat, worry for the suffering, for what the grim present holds for the unfolding future. There’s anguish over the human sorrows I hear by day, which I’m powerless to relieve and go round and round in my head by night. There’s fear for our beautiful world. Our baby hedgehog Iggy, rescued two weeks ago, will it, please God, make it? It’s a personalised question, epitomising a universal angst.

So the words ‘thank you’ come as rescue. Notice what’s good! Appreciate everything! Don’t miss a chance to say so! I know people who, every night before bed, count five things they’ve been grateful for that day. It’s a good practice; it internalises the habit of gratitude.

Hebrew has at least two ways of saying ‘thank you’. The first is Todah, from the root indicating recognition. Hakkarat hatov, acknowledging the good, is a mitzvah. There’s a special blessing for it: ‘Blessed are you, God, hatov vehameitiv, who is good and does good.’ Setting theology aside, it’s a way of saying thank you to life. Thank you generates generosity; we want to give to others what life has gifted to us.

My second word is baruch, blessed. The rabbis teach that enjoying the fruits of this world without first saying a blessing is a form of theft. A blessing says: ‘This is special; I don’t take it for granted.’ Maybe it’s only an apple, but blessings stop us from thinking things are only or merely, and there are plenty of people for whom an apple, ‘a whole apple just for me,’ would be a miracle.

Judaism is a religion of blessings and thanksgivings. Each festival, over every new item of clothing, for each first seasonal fruit, we say Shehecheyanu: blessed be God who has kept us alive and brought us to this time.

Yet, paradoxically, perhaps the greatest moment of blessing I’ve witnessed was in a hospice. I was asked to see a couple in their thirties whom I’d never met before. The young man was dying and had requested a chaplain to pray with.

I slipped into the side-room with no idea what to say. But the man made it simple. ‘We’ve loved our time together. Tell us a prayer about the love of life.’ I stumbled quickly into a verse from Psalms. I think it was ‘How great, God, are your works.’

I got no further before the man took over. ‘Yes,’ he said, turning to his wife, ‘We’ve had wonderful walks, in the Lake District, the mountains. In London, too. We enjoy city-wandering, old churches, hidden paths.’ Thus they spoke together for two or three minutes, holding hands, smiling at each other.

Then, quite suddenly, the young man turned back to me, his face still calm: ‘Now say a prayer for life’s ending, because it’s over.’

In those grace-filled moments there was no ‘we didn’t have’; there was only thanksgiving.

This happened twenty-five years ago. It’s my teacher to this day.