Thanksgivukkah? Gobble tov! American Jews prepare for 'Thanksgivukkah.'

Thanksgivukkah: An extremely rare convergence this year of Thanksgiving and the start of Hanukkah has created a frenzy of Talmudic proportions.

|
ModernTribe.com/AP
This product image released by ModernTribe.com shows a man wearing a Thanksgivukkah teeshirt, celebrating both Thanksgiving and Hanukkah.

It's a turkey. It's a menorah. It's Thanksgivukkah!

An extremely rare convergence this year of Thanksgiving and the start of Hanukkah has created a frenzy of Talmudic proportions.

There's the number crunching: The last time it happened was 1888, or at least the last time since Thanksgiving was declared a federal holiday by President Lincoln, and the next time may have Jews lighting their candles from spaceships 79,043 years from now, by one calculation.

There's the commerce: A 9-year-old New York boy invented the "Menurkey" and raised more than $48,000 on Kickstarter for his already trademarked, Turkey-shaped menorah. Woodstock-inspired T-shirts have a turkey perched on the neck of a guitar and implore "8 Days of Light, Liberty & Latkes." The creators nabbed the trademark to "Thanksgivukkah."

Songs have popped up with lyrics like these from "The Ballad of Thanksgivukkah": "Imagine Judah Maccabee, sitting down to roast turkey and passing the potatoes to Squanto ..." Rabbi David Paskin, the song's co-writer and co-head of the Kehillah Schechter Academy in Norwood, Mass., proudly declares his the Jewish day school nearest Plymouth Rock.

Let's not forget the food mash-ups commemorating the staying power of the Pilgrims and the fighting prowess of the Jews, along with the miracle of one night's oil lasting eight days. Pumpkin latkes, apple-cranberry sauce and deep-fried turkey, anyone?

"It's pretty amazing to me that in this country we can have rich secular and rich religious celebrations and that those of us who live in both worlds can find moments when they meet and can really celebrate that convergence. There are a lot of places in the world where we would not be able to do that," Paskin said.

The lunisolar nature of the Jewish calendar makes Hanukkah and other religious observances appear to drift slightly from year to year when compared to the U.S., or Gregorian, calendar. But much of the intrigue over Hanukkah this year is buried deep in the history of Thanksgiving itself, which hasn't always been fixed in the same spot. That caused some initial confusion over Thanksgivukkah, aka Turkukkah.

In 1863, Lincoln declared Thanksgiving as the last Thursday in November (the month sometimes has five of those) and the holiday remained there until President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a joint resolution of Congress fixing it as the fourth Thursday, starting in 1942.

Jewish practice calls for the first candle of eight-day Hanukkah to be lit the night before Thanksgiving Day this year, so technically Thanksgivukkah falls on the "second candle" night.

And then there's Texas. Before 1863, each state decided on its own date for Thanksgiving. As late as 1956, Texans were still chowing down on turkey and stuffing a week later than everyone else, according to a history put together by Chabad.org of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement of Hasidic Jews. That means Jews in that state might have also been lighting their first Hanukkah candle in 1945 and 1956.

There's more early Thanksgiving lore and 2,000 years of calendar tinkering involving the Jewish calendar, but we'll spare you.

Jonathan Mizrahi, a quantum physicist at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M., puzzled on the convergence last January, in a blog post with buzzed-about line graphs picked up by others online. More than 100,000 people have visited the blog since then, he said, including some who questioned his calculations and prompted him to post a couple of clarifications.

He hadn't made it clear that he was referring to the "second candle" night of Hanukkah, and he hadn't realized Thanksgiving had shifted from the last to the fourth Thursday of November.

The interest, Mizrahi said, "has truly blown me away. I've just been totally flabbergasted at the number of responses."

While the whole thing is lots of fun, is there anything truly cosmic happening here?

Well, there's Comet ISON, which is scheduled to pass close by the sun on Thanksgiving this year and may provide a nice show — possibly even during daylight. Or not, since comets can't always be counted on.

Mom-of-two Dana Gitell, who lives outside Boston, partnered with an artist and the Jewish gift site Moderntribe to create and sell souvenir T-shirts, cards and a poster. She sees a happy and meaningful coincidence and 10 percent of proceeds will go to Mazon, a Jewish hunger relief organization.

"Cosmic? It's just a day when Jews and the rest of America are celebrating on the same day," she said. "It's an opportunity for us to really celebrate the Jewish American experience, and to give thanks in America for the religious freedom we enjoy here, and for making the Jewish American experience possible."

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Thanksgivukkah? Gobble tov! American Jews prepare for 'Thanksgivukkah.'
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-Wires/2013/1007/Thanksgivukkah-Gobble-tov!-American-Jews-prepare-for-Thanksgivukkah.
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe