Thanksgiving as an Israeli-American
When I was a kid, my family moved to the US from Israel. It was me, my parents, and my sister in the country — nobody else. So while I learned about Thanksgiving in school, it wasn’t something we celebrated. Most of us didn’t like the traditional Thanksgiving food, and the whole idea of gathering the family felt silly since there was nobody else to gather. So it was just a nice four-day holiday, stress-free, and occasionally our family friends would pull us into their Thanksgiving dinner because they felt sorry for us for missing out. (We never felt we were “missing” anything, but the company was always nice.)
As an adult, I live in San Francisco, my sister lives in Boston, and my parents live in NJ. Bringing the family together is a nice idea, but we’re still not big fans of Thanksgiving food. And having not grown up much with the tradition, it’s not something we really felt we needed or missed. But since this is the time everyone gets off from work, we found a new tradition we liked. We now celebrate Thanksgivvukah. Regardless of when Hanukkah actually is that year, when we gather in November we have latkes instead of turkey. None of these American-style savory latkes with onions inside — we eat them sweet, with a dusting of sugar or a glob of applesauce on top. (We have yet to eat sufganiyot, an Israeli type of jelly donut eaten at Hannukah, but that’s more because they’re really hard to make than for lack of desire!) We light candles, celebrating the 8th night because it’s the prettiest. Hey, if you’re moving the holiday around anyway, why not choose the night with the most candles!
So this year I won’t be eating turkey or cranberry sauce or even pumpkin pie (though I might sneak a slice at the airport as I leave), but having the chance to celebrate Hannukah every year with my family is what’s most important.
— Effie
This Thanksgiving, the StoryWorth team is sharing some of our favorite holiday memories. The story above was written by our friend Effie Seiberg at Seiberg Marketing.
Feel free to respond with your own Thanksgiving story!
