There is a lot of talk and excitement about how Thanksgiving falls out on the first night of Chanukah this year. Or is it the other way round, where the first night of Chanukah falls out on thanksgiving? Either which way, it is a rare occurrence. The last time this happened was in 1888 and the next time some say will be in 70,000 – 80,000 years, which means it will never happen again. I’m confident Jews will be around then, but I doubt that there will be anyone celebrating an American holiday in such a long time in the future. So what does this all mean?

Nothing happens in this world by coincidence. The Bal Shem Tov, the founder of the Chassidic movement, says we must learn from every occurrence that passes through our lives. So what can we learn from the coinciding of Chanukah and Thanksgiving?

I’m in Australia now where we are not celebrating Thanksgiving, though if I were in America I would see an opportunity to invite every last secular Jew I could find to a grand Thanksgiving dinner. And then, at the beginning of dinner, we’d light the chanukiah and sing Chanukah songs. After a dinner of turkey and latkes, I’d make sure everyone goes home with a pledge to light Chanukah candles for the next seven nights. Thanksgiving this year is an opportunity to get more Jewish people involved with Chanukah who would otherwise not be involved.

In my family we only have a party on our Hebrew birthdays and we don’t celebrate our secular birthdays with the exception of my birthday. My Hebrew birthday always falls out after the festival of Sukkot, though my English birthday is in October which often coincides with Sukkot. This means we can invite lots of relatives and friends to my birthday party in the sukkah. For just a sukkah party they may not come.

So use thanksgiving this year as an opportunity to invite people and share the massage of Chanukah…and the massage of thanksgiving for a wonderful harvest of potatoes which made the latkes!