Torta di zucca, an Italian winter squash and olive oil cake. Photograph by Gayle L. Squires Admitting this in the days leading up to Thanksgiving might put me squarely in the crosshairs of the long-defunct House Committee on Un-American Activities, but I’m a risk-taker, so here goes: I don’t like pie. I particularly don’t like…
Just in time for the last week of December, Beth Kissileff has a query about the Yiddish word khoge, which denotes a non-Jewish holiday. Does it, she asks, refer only to a religious holiday like Christmas, or does it also include “civic holidays” like Thanksgiving and New Year’s? Since civic holidays did not exist in…
Now that doughnuts filled with pumpkin crème and potato latkes festooned with cranberry sauce have been safely consumed, and all those recently purchased menurkeys, where “the candles meet the turkey,” are stowed away until the next time they are destined to put in an appearance, it is high time, I think, to take a moment…
Amish preacher Roy Yoder normally marks Thanksgiving the traditional way in his Montana home. But this year, he celebrated Hanukkah instead — in Israel. Instead of tucking in to a turkey meal, he feasted on falafel, and instead of reflecting on the pilgrims, he spent the day learning about the story of the Maccabees. Yoder…
In his annual statement for Hanukkah, President Obama pointed out how rare it is to have the holiday and Thanksgiving fall together. He even used the recently coined term “Thanksgivukkah” in the statement released on Wednesday. “As the first Hanukkah candle is lit, we are reminded that our task is not only to secure the…
This year’s convergence of Hanukah and Thanksgiving, which, we’re told, will not be repeated until 70,000 years from now, leads to a question: Which celebrates the greater miracle? The question may seem misplaced, even impertinent. We understand Hanukah as a celebration of miracle; no miracle is associated with Thanksgiving. Yet I mean to argue that…
Plain old Hanukkah has been somewhat overshadowed this year by the monster that is Thanksgivukkah — for those of you living under a rock, Thanksgiving and the first day of Hannukah fall on the same day. But amid the tsunami of cranberry-infused sufganiyot and Manischewitz-brined turkey recipes, the hybrid holiday has inspired some pretty great…
“A person is obligated to see himself as if he were leaving Egypt.” This instruction from the Talmud may not seem timely at the moment, as American Jews prepare to celebrate the conjoined holidays of Hanukkah and Thanksgiving rather than Passover. But thanks to the visceral, devastating film “12 Years a Slave,” we have a…
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