Brookwrite

Hanukah giving

By Doug Brook
Deep South Jewish Voice Columnist

Think back a few short weeks. You remember, when you first realized that Thanksgiving is coming soon to a dining room near you.

You finally plowed through the last pile of dishes from your last High Holy Day gathering, and saw your kitchen calendar for the first time since August. You flipped through the months, wondering where the time went, how much older the kids got, whether your child could win a science fair with any of the growths on that last pile of dishes.

Then you flipped to November. You saw Thanksgiving was nice and late this year. The 28th. You smiled, knowing that you had plenty of time to cook, and to stock up on sedatives. Then the smile faded, as you looked at the day after.

Yes. Hanukah in November.

It's not like it's never happened before. But if you don't remember the last time it did, you won't have never remembered the last time it didn't fall so close to Thanksgiving. Nope.

Before you believe the hype, the propaganda that says this is just another freak occurrence in the balance of the lunar and solar-powered calendars, let me warn you. Hanukah is the day after Thanksgiving for a reason.

Yes, Hanukah is early by design. The problem is, nobody can agree on whose design it is. Some academicians claim to have conclusive evidence that it's similar to a design by Frank Lloyd Wright from his early years when he and his brother Orville Reddenbacher invented flight. Experts on our staff believe this is conclusive proof that academicians need to get out more.

As you might be aware, Hanukah has fallen for several thousand years in proximity to Christmas. This temporal coincidence has given these holidays a direct association in many people's minds. Well, that and the centuries-old tradition of gift-giving on Christmas, and the decades-old tradition of gift-giving on Hanukah (which was first inspired by the rabbinic declaration that Jews don't buy retail).

In recent years, there has been buzz about an effort to bring more independent focus to Hanukah. There has been a desire to bring the holiday more back to its original roots of lighting candles to keep warm and giving gelt (money) instead of gifts to be safe from giving people back-of-the-closet filler.

To make Hanukah more of a gelt trip than a guilt trip, the Union of Hebraic Federations has decided to try out Hanukah a little earlier in the year. "With the lunar calendar as it is, who's really going to notice?" says Rabbi Shmuel Shlemiel, senior rabbi of the UHF. "We've been meeting with great frequency to aggressively act on this topic."

Instead of a radical shift (or, as some critics are saying, a shift by radicals), they decided to move the holiday back only one month. This keeps it in the late fall, early winter period. It also makes it seem more like a traditional Jewish holiday by giving it a proximitous tie-in to another holiday (Thanksgiving) that revolves around a meal.

But for every shlemiel, there's a shlemazel. And in this case, Rabbi Shlumiel Shlemazel leads a small coalition against the holiday time change. "What's next? Rosh Hashanah in July?" asks Shlemazel. "Or how about moving Yom Kippur to the fifth day of Passover?"

While the rabbis debate, the holiday falls that early this year. To take advantage of the opportunity, various companies are positioning themselves to cater to the new Hanukah incarnation.

One kosher food distributor, Hoss and Pfeffer, Incorporated, is preparing several new products with a direct Hanukah and Thanksgiving tie-in. The most anticipated one is sweet potato latkes, based on a traditional southern recipe. They also have a special cranapple sauce specially created to go with the latkes.

But there's more than just food available. The polished French winery La Vernie has come up with a special kosher Chardonnay to go with turkey and stuffing. According to Leonard Squiggy, the head of the winery, "we wanted to provide a kosher wine that complements your Thanksgiving Hanukah turkey.

"The tryptophan in turkey make you sleepy, or is it the annual Thanksgiving NFL game that's never any good? Anyway, this Chardonnay has been specially processed so the alcohol does not make you tired. In truth, the wine cancels out the tiring effects of the turkey and the annual loss by the Detroit Lions. Surely you realize the obvious benefits."

Well, this columnist is not named Shirley, but anyone can see that it's more likely that a Chardonnay can keep you awake than the possibility of good NFL games on Thanksgiving.

So for this year, we get to try two different holidays together. We get to follow Thanksgiving dinner with the first night of Hanukah dinner. Of course, the real question will be the day after Thanksgiving. This is the busiest day of the shopping year. Will Jews spare themselves from the insanity because Hanukah starts so early, or will there be an even worse last minute rush because it's our only day to shop? Only time will tell.

And, through it all, Rabbi Shlemazel is far from accepting defeat. "I guarantee that Hanukah will fall later again next year," asserts Shlemazel as he proudly thumbs through a 2003 calendar that he bought his wife for Thanksgiving this year. I mean, for Hanukah.

Doug Brook is a technical writer in Silicon Valley. His play Retrograde, which is in the 8 Tens @ 8 Festival anthology, recently had its professional New York premiere on 42nd Street. For more information, past columns, other writings, and other current events, visit his website at http://brookwrite.com/.