Thanksgiving meets Chanukah

 Rabbi Tzvi Freeman

This year, American Thanksgiving falls on the first day of Chanukah. It only happened once before, in 1888. And it's impossible to determine when or if this will ever happen again. 

There's got to be some connection between Thanksgiving and Chanukah, something that's speaking to us especially this year. Why? Because the Baal Shem Tov taught us that everything a person sees or hears is meant to be a lesson in life. So, when something as striking as a convergence of celebrations comes up, we need to figure out what it's telling us.

The Wrong Match?

Actually, if you're looking for a Jewish thanksgiving, it's Sukkot. Sukkot is the original Biblical Thanksgiving. The Torah calls it The Festival of Ingathering-in other words, when all the crops, fruits included, have been gathered in. At that point, we gather for seven days to show our thankfulness. After we left Egypt, Sukkot also became a festival to celebrate the divine protection we enjoyed for forty years in the wilderness. And that protection continues to this day.  Sukkot never coincides with Thanksgiving. That's a good thing. On Sukkot, we sit outdoors in a makeshift hut-not necessarily the way you would want to end November if you lived in, say, Portland, Maine.

When you think about it, Thanksgiving has more to do with Chanukah than any other holiday.

But here we have Chanukah lining up with Thanksgiving. And when you think about it, Thanksgiving has more to do with Chanukah than any other holiday.

Beyond Corn & Watermelons

Thanksgiving is not your typical harvest festival. It's about more than bumper crops and giant watermelons. Thanksgiving comes packed with a deep narrative-what Peter Gomes calls the "American sense of mythic past.1" It's a narrative about an arduous journey to escape religious persecution for freedom in a new land, the establishment of a democratic charter and the sense of Divine providence that carried those refugees through their plight. Thanksgiving & Chanukah are both deep narratives in a nation's collective consciousness. That's Chanukah, as well: a narrative deeply embedded in the collective Jewish psyche of how we fought back against religious oppression in our own land, earned our freedom and thanked G-d for the miracles.

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This week's commentary on the convergence of Chanukah and Thanksgiving were taken from chabad.org

for additional insights on this week's parsha and others, visit The JTS Torah Commentary archive: http://www.jtsa.edu