What a blessing that we can all celebrate this once in a lifetime event of the first full day of Chanukah falling on Thanksgiving Day! As Americans stop for this national holiday of offering gratitude, we, as Jews, join them, and add to it our Chanukah commemoration. The wholeness and harmony of our Jewish identities and of our American identities can be fully expressed as we fill our homes with family, show our gratitude through hospitality and generosity, and share with our community the light of our faith.

This year, we kick off the holiday of Chanukah by getting two sacred days in one. This year, we get a national holiday (an extra Sabbath of sorts) to help us take it all in.

May Thanksgiving lift your Chanukah celebration.

May Chanukah lift your Thanksgiving celebration.

May our prayers of gratitude and acts of giving fill our world with light.

With abounding gratitude,

Rabbi Judy, Rabbi Jonathan, Cantor Bernard, Cantor Mary

and your entire Beth El Family

A Prayer for Hanukkah and Thanksgiving by Rabbi David Wolpe

Grateful for our gifts and grateful for our past,
We cherish our spiritual inheritances:
The pilgrims who journeyed,
The Maccabees who fought,
The generations who struggled and sacrificed to preserve their memory.
As Americans and Jews, Dear God, we are doubly blessed:
Given so long a legacy to celebrate in so sublime a land.
So we light a candle, set the table, say our prayers
And declare the miracles - of our tradition, our freedom and our future.
We rededicate ourselves to live so that we might be worthy
Of the greatness bequeathed to us,
And merit the joy of handing it on to generations.

Voice - December 2013