Monday, September 26, 2011

Saturday 10/8 is Eat-a-Cheeseburger Day


Saturday, October 8, 2011, is the 2nd annual Bill Henry international Eat-a-Cheeseburger Day. This day honors Bill Henry (né Herskovitz) for a decision that quite possibly saved an eight-year-old boy from a life of "Jewish chauvinism and exclusivism".

That boy grew up to be Henry Herskovitz and in 1954 young Henry was hungry from fasting on Yom Kippur. Eight-year-olds aren't required to fast and so the fact that his father Bill bought him something to eat is not remarkable, that he bought him a cheeseburger is.

Under Judaic religious law or halacha, cheeseburgers are treif, i.e. they're not kosher. Observant Jews aren't supposed to eat them and some Jews can get pretty worked-up about cheeseburgers. You see, keeping kosher is about Jewish self-segregation. But you don't have to believe me, you can believe Rabbi Yaakov Luban.

Rabbi Luban is a "specialist in communal [kosher] issues" and Executive Rabbinic Coordinator of the Orthodox Union's kosher certification division, the world's largest kosher certification agency. In "Playing with Fire", Rabbi Luban writes:
Thousands of years ago, the Rabbis of old recognized that Jewish identity is the key to the survival of Klal Yisrael ["the Jewish People, as a whole"]. To this end, they enacted three sets of food laws to limit socialization: bishul akum, pas akum and stam yainom (cooked food, bread and wine prepared by gentiles). This was based on the realization that bonds of friendship are established by eating together, and breaking bread with a stranger is the first step to developing a closer relationship. For thousands of years of exile, the biblical and rabbinic laws of kosher have formed a natural fortress that prevented the assimilation of the Jewish people into many different cultures of the world. Today, with spiraling assimilation wreaking havoc at a frightening rate, the prophetic vision of Chazal [an acronym, meaning "Our Sages of Blessed Memory" in ref. to the Talmud] is all the more apparent. It is significant that even for secularized Jews, a kosher kitchen often remains the last bastion against intermarriage and assimilation.

More than two thousand years ago, the Rabbis prohibited eating certain foods cooked by non-Jews in order to limit socialization which might lead to intermarriage between Jews and gentiles.
Okay, so maybe I've taken a little interpretive license with this otherwise true story but, still, I like to believe that Bill Henry's decision to buy his boy a cheeseburger on the "Sabbath of Sabbaths" wasn't an accident but a mitzvah that helped set his son on the path of becoming a mensch, a fighter for human rights, justice, and, peace for all. So, what the heck? If you're not fasting on Saturday 10/8 then join people across the globe in eating a cheeseburger (really, any non-kosher food or beverage will do) in honor of our shared humanity and in memory of Bill Henry, a dad who truly loved his son enough not to try to turn him into a bigot.

P.S. If you're going to buy that cheeseburger at a fast food restaurant (Yuck, don't do it!) then skip McDonald's. With 153 restaurants in Israel, they're big-time violators of the global boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. Try Burger King instead, they pulled out of Israel last year.

See also:

Note: "Playing with Fire" no longer appears at the URL previously embedded above.  However, the article still appears, although uncredited to Rabbi Luban, on the OU site here (see also page 2 of this PDF).

Last revised: 27 September 2022

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// posted by PeaceMonger @ 9/26/2011 04:40:00 PM
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Well, I will be fasting on that date; what Bill Henry chooses or doesn't choose to do is irrelevant to me, much as his writings tend to be. I think a better idea from this basic concept is to have a day where people eat something other than a cheeseburger, specifically an item that would most properly honor the contents of your blog. In other words, millions of people, on that day, would eat shit.
# posted by Anonymous Ben : Thursday, September 29, 2011 2:43:00 PM
 
Your scatalogical imagination says so much about yourself, my friend. It also speaks volumes about just how sick and twisted "Judaism as it really is" and "Jewish ideology", to quote Israel Shahak, can make some people. Yom Kippur is supposed to be a day of atonement and repentance. Clearly, you have some real work to do in that area. God bless you.
# posted by Blogger PeaceMonger : Friday, September 30, 2011 4:32:00 PM
 
I'm very glad the other side has people like you on it. I'm not about to apologize for calling your blog what it is (though, if you want to remove the entire scatology nine yards, I would be happy to substitute the words "rancid garbage" or "toxic waste" in their place. Now everyone wins :-). Kudos on the one matter of posting accurate statements about your lousy work. And as always, G-d bless you!
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : Tuesday, October 04, 2011 2:54:00 PM
 
At least three people in Seattle had cheeseburgers in honor of Bill Henry on Saturday.
# posted by Anonymous Not Ben : Monday, October 10, 2011 9:34:00 PM
 
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