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Health & Fitness

Annual Interfaith Thanksgiving Service To Be Held Wednesday, November 27 at 7:30 pm at Mishkan Torah

It is a Greenbelt tradition that the various religious groups that comprise the community hold an interfaith service each year on the eve of Thanksgiving. Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists and Bahais join together to express thanks for the bounty of the harvest and for living in a community where such interfaith cooperation is possible. This year, the annual interfaith Thanksgiving Service will be held at Mishkan Torah Synagogue at 7:30 on Wednesday, November 27.

This year’s service will be doubly important for Mishkan Torah. This year the eve of Thanksgiving will coincide with the lighting of the first Hanukkah candle. Hanukah, known as the Festival of Lights, is an eight day affair commemorating the victory of the Jews, led by the Maccabee Brothers, over an oppressive Hellenistic regime around 164 BCE. According to Mishkan Torah Rabbi Jonathan Cohen, this convergence has only happened once before, in 1888, and will not be seen again until 2070 and again in 2165, based on calculations by Jonathan Mizrahi, a quantum physicist at the Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico. After that, Mizrahi calculates that, due to the vagaries of the lunar Jewish calendar, the two holidays are not set to overlap until the year 76,695!

The interfaith service will last for about an hour. Rabbi Cohen will deliver the principal address on the subject of what Hanukkah and Thanksgiving have in common. There will be a voluntary collection for the benefit of the Greenbelt Emergency Fund, which helps families who are in imminent danger of being evicted from their homes. The service will be followed by refreshments including the traditional Hanukah sufganiyot (jelly donuts) .The event is free, and open to the whole community.Mishkan Torah is located at 10 Ridge Road, Greenbelt, Maryland 20770.

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