Re: Thanksgiving Day

[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Arthur Kamlet) wrote in message news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
> In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> ronit <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >> Now "hodu" is the Hebrew word for India.  It seems then that while Americans
> >> eat Turkey on Thanksgiving Day, Israelis eat India. But what do the Turks
> >> eat ?  America, probably.
> >
> >The full word for turkey in Hebrew is Tarnagol Hodu or Indian Chicken.
> >I thought because turkeys are native to America that Hebrew didn't
> >have a word for this bird so the bright people at the Ben Yehuda
> >academy for Hebrew (or something like that) figured the bird looks
> >like a chicken only it's bigger and has those fancy feathers like an
> >Indian Chief, so let's call it an Indian Chicen. Well, today we don't
> >refer to the Natives as Indians but as Aboriginals or First Nation
> >etc. But the Hodu name is stuck now.
> >
> >Also, a little tidbit for you all and I don't know how true it is.
> >They say that there were Sephardic Jews on the trip that Columbus took
> >to America and when they saw their first turkey, one of the Jews
> >called it "Tuki" (Hebrew for a type of fowl). And perhaps that is how
> >we ended up calling the bird Turkey.
> 
> The way I heard this story, when Jews came to America and saw
> turkeys, they made the same mistake Columbus made, and called it
> the Indian bird.  Columbus was seeking a route to India.
> 
> Those Jews wrote back to the old country describing this Indian
> bird and it was discovered that in India, indeed there was a bird
> fitting that description, so the Indian bird appeared to have a
> "mesora" [tradition] of being kosher, and after several years that
> mesora applied to actual turkeys. So almost all Jews now accept
> turkeys to be kosher.


According to one of R' Frand's tapes, turkeys were brought to Spain
in the early 1500's, made their way to England, and came over with
the Pilgrims on the Mayflower.