Pumpkin-pie flavored doughnuts. Fried sweet potato pancakes with cranberry relish. Menorahs shaped like turkeys.
Social media sites are abuzz with all-things “Thanksgivukkah.” That’s the term given to the extremely rare convergence of Thanksgiving with Hanukkah, the eight-day Jewish Festival of Lights, on Nov. 28.
Enchanted with the culinary and cultural possibilities of this hybrid holiday, many American Jews in the Southland are gobbling up the phenomena.
“I’m not surprised there’s national media attention or that it would be an important pop cultural moment,” said Dana Gitell, 37, a marketing professional from the Boston area who claims credit for coining the term a year ago. “But I am shocked by the level of interest, the amount of media attention and the excitement as early (as this) in the season.”
Gitell teamed up with her sister-in-law Deborah Gitell of Hollywood, also a marketing professional, to create the popular Thanksgivukkah Facebook page last year. Deborah Gitell is also co-producing a Thanksgivukkah Festival in Los Angeles on Nov. 29 with Jewish singer/songwriter Craig Taubman, who founded Pico Union Project. The festival will be held at the nonprofit group’s new multi-faith and multi-cultural center in the predominantly Latino and immigrant Pico-Union district downtown.
“I thought if this is something that will never happen again (in our lifetimes), why don’t we light the (Hanukkah) candles and have a community celebration with Jews and Koreans and Latinos?” Deborah Gitell said. “This is an ultimate American mash-up holiday. I think that’s why people are so excited.”
When exactly this convergence will happen again is subject to some interpretation.
According to a calculation by physicist Jonathan Mizrahi, who works at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, the precise intersection of Thanksgiving Day with the first day of Hanukkah, determined by a Jewish calendar that is primarily based on lunar cycles, happened last in 1888 but may not happen again in more than 77,000 years. That’s because, first, the date of Thanksgiving was adjusted to the fourth Thursday of November by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1942; and, primarily, because the Jewish calendar is gradually moving forward and getting out of sync with the Gregorian calendar at a rate of four days per 1,000 years; if it is never adjusted the two holidays would only meet up again when the Jewish calendar essentially laps the Gregorian in 79811.
However, if one looks at the intersection of Hanukkah eve (Jewish calendar days traditionally start at night) and Thanksgiving night, the last convergence was in 1918 and the next one will be in 2070, according to the Jewish organization Chabad.
In any case, the organizers of the Thanksgivukkah Festival plan to offer turkey-shaped piñatas filled with Hanukkah gelt or chocolate coins, latke (potato pancake) making opportunities with the help of a bicycle-powered blender and holiday-themed games and activities. The Kosher Palate food truck will be selling its fried sweet-potato latkes with cranberry relish and marshmallow fluff, roasted garlic latkes with shaved maple glazed turkey and gravy, fried doughnuts called sufganiyot with seasonally flavored fillings and apple pie spiced fritters, said Michele Grant, the company’s founder, CEO and executive chef.
It is customary to eat fried foods to recall the miracle of Hanukkah, in which according to tradition, a cruse of oil that was found in the ancient Second Jewish Temple in Jerusalem unexpectedly lasted for eight days.
The Thanksgivvukah Festival, for which organizers are still looking for donors on the crowdfunding site Jewcer.com, will be a success “when people look at the value of investing in the community…and in so doing, they are going to grow themselves,” said Taubman, who lives in Studio City. Up to 500 free tickets will be distributed through area community organizations such as the Pico Union Neighborhood Council in advance to make the event, which will cost $5 a person, more accessible to its neighbors.
While Hanukkah is most often compared to Christmas because they usually fall close together, the Festival of Lights actually has more parallels with Thanksgiving, Deborah Gitell said. The Pilgrims left England to escape religious persecution while Hanukkah highlights the struggle Jews faced after Syrian-Greek soldiers seized the Temple and made the observance of Judaism punishable by death.
“Both stories are about the right to practice one’s religion and be free,” she said. “That’s something to really rally around.”
In the spirit of clever commercialism, Thanksgivukkah products already are being sold. Nine-year-old Asher Weintraub of New York City conceived, designed and named the turkey-shaped menorah called the “Menurkey,” raised more than $45,000 in funds through a Kickstarter.com campaign and is now selling his creation online and at the Jewish Museum in New York. Dana Gitell, who trademarked the Thanksgivukkah name for apparel and greeting cards, tapped Los Angeles artist Kim DeMarco, who has illustrated covers for The New Yorker, to design Thanksgivukkah images for the marketing of the hybrid holiday. The Massachusetts mom approached the Judaica retailer ModernTribe, who used the images to create a line of special Thanksgivukkah products that include Woodstock-inspired T-shirts as well as posters and notecards.
More than a month away from the holiday, more than 1,800 T-shirts — which feature a turkey and a menorah on a guitar — have already been sold, said Jennie Rivlin Roberts, founder and president of ModernTribe.
Several bakeries and restaurants around the Southland are also doing their part to commemorate Thanksgivukkah. Bibi’s Cafe and Bakery on Pico Boulevard will offer pumpkin-pie flavored Bavarian creme doughnuts at its bakery as the holiday approaches and at the Thanksgivukkah Festival, said owner Dan Messinger.
From Nov. 22 through Dec. 1, Dog Haus, which has restaurants in Pasadena and Alhambra, will be selling a special “Thanksgivukkah dog,” a smoked turkey sausage mixed with bits of whiskey-soaked cranberries and brown sugared sweet potatoes, then topped with tater tots — signifying latkes — and drizzled in apple-raspberry compote.
Adam Gertler, who owns Gertler’s Wurst and sells his sausages to Dog Haus, was excited when he was approached by one of the owners of Dog Haus to create a special dish for Thanksgivukkah. Hanukkah seems to get short-shrift, Gertler said, and Thanksgiving is his favorite holiday.
“Hanukkah was the red-headed stepchild to the winter holidays. Hanukkah has always been the Pepsi to Christmas’ Coke,” said Gertler, who is Jewish. “So by teaming up with Thanksgiving, Hanukkah gets pushed into the spotlight this year.