In some years, like this one, the eight days of Chanukah partially overlap with the twelve days of secular Chanukah. This means that all the annual Chanukah sales are conveniently well-timed for those who observe the secular day as well.

When this overlap lands right, the annual Chinese food seder – which is celebrated on different evenings every year, but always on December 24th on the secular calendar – additionally becomes a Chanukah meal.

Naturally, because it’s Jewish and it’s food, there are traditions. There are special Chinese recipes to eat on this night. There are also stories to tell on this semi-rare occasion about how Chinese food semi-relates to the story of Chanukah itself.

On Thanksgiving weekend this year, when Southern Miss plays the once similarly directional Louisiana-Monroe, the fact that turkeys aren’t birds of prey – lest they be not kosher – will make Jews everywhere grateful. Except for Jewish vegetarians. Or vegans. Or last-minute shoppers after the turkeys ran out.

But are there other birds for which Jews can be thankful, regardless of their eating habits? (The Jews’ eating habits not the birds’, because their eating habits can dictate their kosherness. The birds’ kosherness, not the Jews’.)

Are any of humanity’s feathered friends featured in Judaism, or even fleetingly present just on a wing and a prayer? Of course, they are. And not just because some people think that services are for the birds.

The world has recently watched the laying to rest of the Queen of England, whose 70-year reign was nearly as long as the sermon last Yom Kippur. So this is a good time to remind all both of our readers that there was actually a long lineage of monarchy in Jewish history.

Yes, we have the King of Kings. But in addition to Elvis, we have the Big G who created heaven, earth, and income tax. If that’s not enough, while people slept through Sunday School they dreamt about names they subconsciously heard like King David, King Solomon, and King crab legs.

People in the Bible were… people. They put their shoes on one sandal at a time. They ate, drank, and didn’t like getting stung by bees just like people today.

A primary purpose of reading from the Torah every week is to find new things it can tell us about our lives, our world, and our quality of education at religious school.

Given the recent passing (not demise) of Tu B’Av – known by some because of its newer, secular variant on February 14th – it’s apt to look at how our forecestors (including our threefathers and foremothers) first hooked up.

What do those nascent moments say about what to do after giving Jdate a credit card number?

Editorial note: This was scheduled to be a piece about biblical sandals. Due to an erroneous autocorrect that slipped by a pair of nimrods, we apologize for presenting this instead.

Today’s world frequently provides scandals of biblical proportions. So, it might be interesting, and even instructive, to revisit the great scandals that are actually in the Bible.

Instead of doing that, this will be a brief exploration of scandals in the Bible as they’d have been referred to in today’s world. These are presented in the order they occurred in the Torah, except for the ones presented out of sequence.

Watergate – To provide water to the Israelites, Moses was supposed to speak to the rock but he decided he wanted a break in listening to the Big G’s commands, so he hit it instead.

Olympic teams have alternate athletes. In that spirit, perhaps the World Games have alternate sports – ones potentially considered but ultimately excluded. Here are some humble examples.

These are the sports you’d see on ESPN18 – The “Chai”, bringing the finest in seldom-seen Jewish sports from around the globe since 1999 B.C.E. If it’s almost a Jewish sport, they’ve got it there.

These are sports that aren’t represented in the World Games. Or the Maccabiah. Or the Olympics. Yet. Perhaps they’ll be included only in the world to come, or maybe these Jewish games will be added soon. After all, the World Games already include Ju-Jitsu.

It takes less time to read a book than to write one. Similarly, it takes less time to ban a book than to read one.

With that in mind, and given how trendy it is to revoke reading materials lately, it’s a reasonable time to unreasonably jump on the banwagon.

Doing away with pieces of literature often focuses on the young, removing books from school libraries and curricula. Sometimes, however, it’s an attempt to save the sensibilities of the greater (and lesser) reading (and non-reading) public, usually resulting in a spike in a book’s sales the moment its ban is announced.

In the weeks concluding March and starting April, Jews everywhere brace themselves for a major religious occurrence that happens around this time every year.

Yes, it’s when the weekly Torah readings reach the book of Leviticus. As its English/Greekish name implies, Leviticus is largely about the Levites – a litany of laws, lots of which lay out the labors of these loyal lugs. Many people remember little about this book because what Leviticus brings in laws, it lacks in story.

Why is this book more related to baseball than all other books? Because Leviticus and baseball both involve sacrifices.

In the latest sign of divine “everyone better start getting along, don’t make me come down there,” this March 17th brings a crossover holiday so rare that nary a mention has been found in the Talmud nor come out of the Vatican.

Purim and St. Patrick’s Day are an unexpectedly well-aligned merger, more so than many institutional conglomerates. So, for anyone who can’t tell their Mordechai from Mardi Gras, on St. Purim’s Day there’s no need to.

St. Purim’s Day brings together the best of both bashes, into a mega-festival that could shut down many bars and liquor stores due to running out of inventory.

This winter, the Yeshiva University men’s basketball team stomped on every joke about famous Jewish sports legends.

They did so by ranking number one in the nation in Division III hoops.

This begs the question of what happens when a player’s kippah falls off during game action. Instead of researching the answer, it’s far more Talmudic (and sillier) to consider and debate the possibilities. At length.

Tu B’Shevat. The Jewish New Year for the Trees. Yes, this holiday exists. After all, trees are people, too, and we have to care for them – it’s not like they grow on trees, you know.

Trees have a long presence in Judaism despite so much of early Jewish history being in deserts. All the way back in the Garden of Eden, there was the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge – which both lasted thousands of years until George Washington famously chopped them down because Martha was making cherry pie for dessert that night.