Boston, MA – In recalling her year-long ascent into pop culture stardom, the Boston-area woman who coined the term “Thanksgivukkah” says that while the success and fanfare around the event is nice, she hasn’t strayed from her original intent which was to use the rare dual-holiday pairing to “celebrate the Jewish-American experience.”
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THE TIMES OF ISRAEL (http://bit.ly/1jFKGQ7) reports that Dana Reichman Gitell, who works as a marketing specialist at Hebrew Senior Life, says she first began noodling with the idea over a year ago after an innocent glance at a 2013 calendar clued her into the fact that both Thanksgiving and Hanukkah share the same date this year.
Reichman Gitell said after combining the two holidays into the single form “Thanksgivukkah,” things kept snowballing, gathering steam through Facebook and Twitter, and then a website, and that once her sister-in-law Deborah Gitell signed on to help, it became clear that it had gotten big enough to successfully market, with the intent being on raising some money for charity through merchandising.
Gitell says that when BuzzFeed picked up on the idea, things really began to take off, culminating in the first-ever “Thanksgivukkah Festival,” a multi-faith festival of music, food and fun scheduled for November 29 in Los Angeles.
So far, the Gitells have raised $20,000 for Mazon, a group dedicated to fighting global hunger.
“Really in my heart, even at that early stage,I thought this is also an incredible opportunity to celebrate the Jewish-American experience… To show our gratitude for America for being one of the best places to be Jewish in this world outside of Israel,” Reichman Gitell said.
What is next CHRISTUKKAH?
#1 – what an idiotic remark
#4 - Thanksgiving isn’t “goyisher”- Its giving thanks to Ribono shel olam for the freedoms we enjoy in America – REGARDLESS of religion.
AS Jews, having been persecuted all over the globe, we should cherish this holiday -for Judaism has been able to grow in this country as nowhere else in the world. So people are having a bit of fun on a- never to happen again- occurrence of Thanksgiving and Channukah- coinciding. Channukah in its own right is a thanksgiving holiday.
Get a life
I enjoyed reading schwartzi’s warped ideas of what halacha is. It is very easy to quote halachos like chukas hagoi as if it applies only to whatever context schwartzi, in his wisdom, says it means! Ah but because Schwartzi has “halacha” on his side he feels justified in putting another Jew down. This behavior, or at least the attitude, is a hallmark of the charedi world.