This year Hanukkah overlaps with Thanksgiving for the first
time since 1888. Such a coincidence will not happen again for over 70,000
years. I’m not usually an early adaptor, but the chances of my being here for
this future union of Pilgrims and Maccabees is slight, so I have decided to
celebrate this conjunction of holy days with a special prayer: Hodu L’Adonai.
Those who know their Hebrew Bible will recognize Hodu L’Adonai as the opening verse of
Psalm 136: Hodu L'Adonai ki tov, ki l'olam chasdo/Give thanks to God, Who is good, for God’s
mercy is boundless. But this prayer of thanksgiving holds a special surprise.
Hodu is rightly translated here as “Give thanks,” but more surprising it is
also the Hebrew word for “turkey.” Yes, there is a slight difference in
spelling between these two hodus but
let us not limit our great and glorious God to the grammatical quirks of
Hebrew. For thousands of years God hid the link between thanksgiving and turkey
in plain sight, waiting for us to find it.
As we gather on
Hanukkah and light our candles in celebration of the Maccabees’ victory over
the Greco–Syrians let us sing hodu
l’Adonai: give thanks to God, and then let us give turkey to God as well.
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