Oh, it may feel like an ordinary winter Monday, but for our people it’s the 15th day in the month of Shevat, the New Year For Trees.

Chabad.org describes the celebration of Tu B’Shevat as the beginning of “the season in which the earliest-blooming trees in the Land of Israel emerge from their winter sleep and begin a new fruit-bearing cycle.” More pragmatically, it’s the point in the fiscal year where fruits are taxed or tithed to the next harvest.

As is the case of all Jewish holidays, Tu B’Shevat is marked by eating specific foods (or in the case of Yom Kippur, specifically not eating food). The seven honored fruits of the day are wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives and dates, which make one tasty, powerful salad when mixed up with some lettuce and feta cheese.

Sure, it’s a minor enough holiday that Jewish newspapers aren’t giving the day off and nobody’s wished me any tree love on the way to the bathroom. But still: The bounty that trees lay out for our hungry bodies should surely be honored.

Go get yourself a pomegrante and a nice container of olives from the deli to nosh outside on your lunch hour. Be grateful.

And oh! Remember the miracle of the 2,000 year-old date palm seed that was germinated in Israel last year? (No? Read up.) “Methuseleh” is now 14 inches tall and though its gender (i.e. whether it will bear fruit, not whether it’s a feminist) is still a mystery.

You’d need one of these for the big a** doorpost of your house.

Torah scribe and artist Avraham Borshevsky has created the world’s largest mezuzah for those extra large in stature and/or faith, and while Borshevsky’s motivation may not be fame, the Guiness Book of World Records has handed down its blessing.

Even a fool Jew like me knows of HaShem’s strong admonition that we place the holy words contained therein all over our doors and gates, so I’m wondering why we’ve all got these dinky three-inch jobbies hanging around. Shouldn’t all mezuzim be at least the size of, say, a baguette challah?

A chaste winky wink to the Bangitout blog for the tip.

Friday afternoon — it happens.

The Yenta has had quite a 2005. Since there’s still a pile of holidays cards to send to El Yenta Man’s clients (it’s just so weird how the knee surgery affected his handwriting), a daughter’s second birthday to plan and yes, still a motherf*n’ Santa snake to find, there will be a Yo, Yenta! hibernation in effect until early 2006.

Please feel free to peruse the archives or Yo, Yenta! advice columns of old.

Wishing you all a warm, food- and fun-filled Chanukah, however you choose to spell it.

*Detail of “The Three Candles” by Marc Chagall.

The Great Latke Hamantaschen Debate sounds like a bunch of nonsense, but at least it’s academic nonsense: It began as “fireside schmooze” to give Jewish students a sense of ethnic pride in 1946, and students and professors at the University of Chicago have taken on the least pressing philosophical conundrum of our time, subjecting two famous Jewish noshes to the rigors of proof and the rules of debate every year since.

An excerpt from the lecture Consolations of Latkes by Ted Cohen:

In every possible world, there is a latke. How do we know this? By discovering that it is impossible to imagine a world in which there is no latke. Try it. First, imagine a world. Put in everything you need for a world; this is to be a whole world, not a fragment. Now add in a latke. Now take that latke out. It cannot be done, can it?

The ongoing debate now has it’s own tongue-in-cheek (and perhaps, mouth-watering) academic treatise, including papers such as “The Latke’s Role in the Renaissance,” “The Hermeneutics of the Hamantash” and other high-minded logic.

Ruth Fredman Cernea, the book’s author, explains that “The things that make this what it is are so deep in Jewish tradition – being able to laugh at yourself, being able to laugh at the seriousness of life. In Jewish tradition, scholarship is serious, but it’s also irreverent.”

The Yenta is spending a highly “traditional” Thanksgiving holiday in Scottsdale, AZ with all members of the immediate family — including the Bubbe, who we roll in from the nursing home every day so she can bask in the glow created by sparks of toys banged together by shrieking great-grandchildren.

My parents, so happy to have not only my whole mishpotech but my Brother-the-Surgeon in town, cooked a sumptuous, all-American meal straight outta Betty Crocker —complete with marshmallow-encrusted yams and cranberry sauce from scratch. (This was, in fact, the first time I have ever known my mother to cook anything at all since the microwave was invented.)

We’re not anywhere near halachic-grade Jews (although no pig has ever set foot, ear or chop near this kitchen) and even though our haimesh relatives moved back to Jerusalem last summer, my folks have gotten used to ordering a kosher turkey. The Surgeon got carving duties, natch. When I commented on the precision cut of the breast, he shrugged and said “same as a mastectomy.” I ate dark meat.

Anyway, I find it interesting that our Jewish family, the oldest one of us a Polish immigrant, knows how to follow the traditions and foods of this American holiday as well (and better than, in some cases) as our Jewish ones. After all — Christian pilgrims swapping maize recipes with the natives? — not so much our history.

Maybe it depends on whose version of history you’re reading: The first Jew to come to America, a Czech metallurgist in service to Britain, arrived here in 1585 and kicked early settlements into gear by discovering how to smelt copper. And those pilgrims? It’s been posited that the first American settlers were actually Jews.

Maybe it’s a stretch, but as an American Jew, it’s important to know that American history is American Jewish history, no matter what those intelligent design people want to teach your kids in school.

And whether you’re eating bird or serving up a nice vegetarian curry, most everyone has a long weekend off. Here’s to enjoying time with the people you love.

*Photo of Jewish poultry farmer plucking a turkey for market circa 1940 c/o Library of Congress.