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A One-And-Only Occurrence

Historic Thanksgiving Chanukah overlap leads to math and merchandise.

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Jacob Kamaras

N

ov. 28 marks Thanksgiving
Day as well as the first day of
Chanukah 2013. It would be a
natural reaction for an American Jew,
when noticing that overlap during a
casual reading of the calendar, to smile or
even laugh. But Dana Gitell took things
much further.
A marketing professional living in
Norwood, Mass., Gitell coined and trade-
marked the word "Thanksgivukkah,"
launched a website as well as Facebook
and Twitter pages for the joint holiday,
and partnered with Judaica retailer
ModernTribe.com on a line of T-shirts
and greeting cards to mark the occasion
— one that, according to one analysis of
the Jewish and Gregorian calendars, won't
occur again for more than 75,000 years.
Gitell, who had known Thanks-
givukkah was coming for five years, said
the more she thought about it, the more
she came to appreciate the significance
behind the overlap of two holidays that
"both celebrate religious freedom" and
have "similar themes:'
"You can celebrate Judaism, you can
celebrate America, and you celebrate the
Jewish-American experience on the same
day because how would this be possible
if we didn't have a country as free and as
welcoming as America?" Gitell told JNS.
org.
Exactly how rare is Thanksgivukkah?
Gitell did her due diligence through
online research and taking a stab at the
math herself, but said she ultimately
leaves such matters "to the scientists:'
Enter Jonathan Mizrahi, who has a
Ph.D. in physics from the University of
Maryland and currently works for Sandia
National Laboratories in Albuquerque,
N.M. Mizrahi used the math software
program Mathematica to chart the
futures of the Jewish and Gregorian
calendars, and the output "produced no
results other than this year:'
"I thought I made an error in the pro-
gram, and I checked what I'd done, and
everything seemed OK, and I pushed
the year out further and further and
further... and it still was telling me that
it wasn't ever going to happen," Mizrahi
said.
According to an analysis posted online
by Mizrahi, the Jewish calendar "is very
slowly getting out of sync with the solar
calendar, at a rate of four days per 1,000
years.

50

November 28 • 2013

I JNS.org

"This means that while pres-
ently Chanukah can be as early as
Nov. 28, over the years the calen-
dar will drift forward, such that
the earliest Chanukah can be is
Nov. 29," Mizrahi wrote. "The
last time Chanukah falls on Nov.
28 is 2146 (which happens to be a
Monday). Therefore, 2013 is the only
time Chanukah will ever overlap with
Thanksgiving.
"Of course, if the Jewish calendar
is never modified in any way, then it
will slowly move forward through the
Gregorian calendar until it loops all
the way back to where it is now. So,
Chanukah will again fall on Thursday,
Nov. 28 ... in the year 79811," he added.
Gitell got enthusiastic feedback when
she started posting juxtapositions and
mashups of different cultural aspects
from Thanksgiving and Chanukah online.
"So many people that I talked to, many
who aren't Jewish, think it's exciting and
funny:' she said.
After creating the Thanksgivukkah
Facebook page with her sister Deborah,
Gitell worked with graphic illustra-
tor Kim DeMarco to design T-shirts
and greeting cards and approached
ModernTribe.com about being the retail-
er. She said she got an email response
from ModernTribe.com within five min-
utes of sending the inquiry.
DeMarco, a professional illustrator
with many New Yorker covers to her
name, designed American Gothikka on
today's JN cover.
"After talking with Dana, and seeing
the modern designs and illustrations of
Kim DeMarco, I knew that a collabora-
tion to create Thanksgivukkah items was
a perfect match for our mission to create
ways for modern Jews to express their
faith and keep our traditions alive, mean-
ingful and fun:' Jennie Rivlin Roberts,
president of ModernTribe.com, said in a
statement.
The ModernTribe.com Thanksgivukkah
merchandise employs the slogan "Light,
Liberty, & Latkes." Ten percent of its pro-
ceeds will benefit the nonprofit MAZON:
A Jewish Response to Hunger.
"I felt like [Thanksgivukkah is] almost
like a Woodstock-like event; we can tell
our kids, 'I was there, I lived through
Thanksgivukkah. I remember that day,
it will never happen again: So that gave
me the idea for something akin to a con-

The "Menurkey"

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cert T-shirt, expressing that
you were there, you lived
through it, as a memento:'
Gitell said.
Gitell said her child-
hood in Squirrel Hill,
Pa., a neighborhood of
Pittsburgh with a significant
Jewish population, colored her passion
for the Thanksgivukkah project.
"[Squirrel Hill] was a place where most
kids were Jewish, and people who weren't
Jewish, they felt left out:' she said. "Non-
Jews wanted to have their own bar mitz-
vah in middle school. That's the kind of
experience that probably could only hap-
pen in America:'
While American Jews prepare for
Thanksgivukkah, whether or not 2013
is the first-ever occurrence of the "holi-
day" is up for debate. In 1863, President
Abraham Lincoln enacted Thanksgiving
to fall on the last Thursday in
November. But Thanksgiving was
changed to the fourth Thursday of
November — not necessarily the last
Thursday — in 1942 under President
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a move
intended to extend the holiday shopping
season.
Using the former date of America's
Thanksgiving, the last Thursday of
November, Thanksgivukkah would have
occurred in 1888, according to Mizrahi.
Thanksgivukkah's frequency can
also depend on whether the first night
or the first day of Chanukah is used

A "Thanksgivukkah" T-shirt offered by

Judaica retailer ModernTribe.com .

as an indicator. This year, the first
candles of Chanukah are lit the night
of Nov. 27 while the first full day of the
holiday is Nov. 28, corresponding with
Thanksgiving.
According to an analysis by Eli
Lansey, who has a Ph.D. in physics from
the City University of New York and like
Mizrahi used the Mathematica software
program, the first night of Chanukah
will correspond with Thanksgiving in
the years 2070 and 2165 — much sooner
than 79811, the next time after 2013
that Mizrahi said Thanksgiving would
fall on the first day of Chanukah.
No matter what metric one uses,
Thanksgivukkah has garnered a signifi-
cant following —Mizrahi's mathematical
analysis drew about 100,000 page views
online, to his "utter amazement?'
"When I first did this, I thought it was
interesting, but I did not expect any-
where near the response I got," Mizrahi
said.

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