Zionists Out of the Peace Movement

Bill Henry, Z"L, circa 1940

The 16th annual Bill Henry International Eat-a-Cheeseburger Day begins at sunset on Wednesday, October 1, 2025, and ends at dusk on the 2nd. This day honors the memory of Bill Henry (né Herskovitz), Z"L, for a decision that quite possibly saved an eight-year-old boy from a life of "Jewish chauvinism and exclusivism". For the full story behind Eat-a-Cheeseburger Day please see the 2011 post about this momentous day.

Labels: Bill Henry, halacha, Henry Herskovitz, Judaism, Talmud

Bill Henry, Z"L, circa 1940

The 15th annual Bill Henry International Eat-a-Cheeseburger Day begins at sunset on Friday, October 11, 2024, and ends at dusk on the 12th. This day honors the memory of Bill Henry (né Herskovitz), Z"L, for a decision that quite possibly saved an eight-year-old boy from a life of "Jewish chauvinism and exclusivism". For the full story behind Eat-a-Cheeseburger Day please see the 2011 post about this momentous day.

Labels: Bill Henry, halacha, Henry Herskovitz, Judaism, Talmud

Bill Henry, Z"L, circa 1940

The 14th annual Bill Henry International Eat-a-Cheeseburger Day begins at sunset on Monday, September 25, 2023, and ends at dusk on the 26th. This day honors the memory of Bill Henry (né Herskovitz), Z"L, for a decision that quite possibly saved an eight-year-old boy from a life of "Jewish chauvinism and exclusivism". For the full story behind Eat-a-Cheeseburger Day please see the 2011 post about this momentous day.

Labels: Bill Henry, halacha, Henry Herskovitz, Judaism, Talmud

Bill Henry, Z"L, circa 1940

The 13th annual Bill Henry International Eat-a-Cheeseburger Day begins at sunset on Tuesday, October 4, 2022, and ends at dusk on the 5th. This day honors the memory of Bill Henry (né Herskovitz), Z"L, for a decision that quite possibly saved an eight-year-old boy from a life of "Jewish chauvinism and exclusivism". For the full story behind Eat-a-Cheeseburger Day please see the 2011 post about this momentous day.

Labels: Bill Henry, halacha, Henry Herskovitz, Judaism, Talmud

Bill Henry, Z"L,circa 1940

Wednesday, September 15, 2021, is the 12th annual Bill Henry international Eat-a-Cheeseburger day.* This day honors the memory of Bill Henry (né Herskovitz), Z"L, for a decision that quite possibly saved an eight-year-old boy from a life of "Jewish chauvinism and exclusivism". For the full story behind Eat-a-Cheeseburger Day please see the 2011 post about this momentous day.

*The holiday begins at sunset on 9/15 and ends at dusk on 9/16.

Labels: Bill Henry, halacha, Henry Herskovitz, Judaism, Talmud

Bill Henry, Z"L,circa 1940

Sunday, September 27, 2020, is the 11th annual Bill Henry international Eat-a-Cheeseburger day.* This day honors the memory of Bill Henry (né Herskovitz), Z"L, for a decision that quite possibly saved an eight-year-old boy from a life of "Jewish chauvinism and exclusivism". For the full story behind Eat-a-Cheeseburger Day please see the 2011 post about this momentous day.

*The holiday begins at sunset on 9/27 and ends at dusk on 9/28.

Labels: Bill Henry, Henry Herskovitz, Judaism, Talmud

Bill Henry, Z"L,circa 1940

Tuesday, October 8, 2019, is the 10th annual Bill Henry international Eat-a-Cheeseburger day.* This day honors the memory of Bill Henry (né Herskovitz), Z"L, for a decision that quite possibly saved an eight-year-old boy from a life of "Jewish chauvinism and exclusivism". For the full story behind Eat-a-Cheeseburger Day please see the 2011 post about this momentous day.

*The holiday begins at sunset on 10/8 and ends at dusk on 10/9.

Labels: Bill Henry, Henry Herskovitz, Judaism, Talmud

This post draws heavily on material published in some of my earlier posts.

In an otherwise well-written and informative article, "In Israel, religious extremism is pervasive, unchecked", Kathryn Shihadah repeats one of those deceptive, hoary myths about Israel that never seem to die. A little more than a third of the way into the article she asserts, "Israel's founders were secular".

It is true that many figures such as David Ben-Gurion, widely regarded as "the father of modern Israel", may not have been conventionally religious nevertheless Jewish identity is built upon a religious foundation. In Ben-Gurion's memoir, Recollections (London: Macdonald Unit 75, 1970), he acknowledged this: "Everything we are as Jews ... comes directly from the Bible. In size we are nothing as a people and never have been. Had we not been children of the Book, who would have heard of us?" (p. 16). Elsewhere in the book he asserts:

As to the Jews, I can only point to our Bible and to its sequence in the many Jewish initiatives to regain Israel stretching across the centuries since Masada and say: This is our Mandate. Come see for yourselves.

Since I invoke Torah so often, let me state that I don't personally believe in the God it postulates. I mean that I cannot 'turn to God', or pray to a super-human Almighty Being living up in the sky ...

Yet, though my philosophy is secular, I believe profoundly in the God of Jeremiah and Elijah. Indeed, I consider it part of the Jewish heritage and the Jewish obligation to hold to this concept of God ...

Certainly in Israel today we are Messianic. The Jews feel themselves to have a mission here; they have a sense of mission. Restoration of sovereignty is tied to a concept of redemption. This had determined Jewish survival and it is the core of Jewish religious, moral and national consciousness. It explains the immigration to Israel of hundreds of thousands of Jews who never heard of Zionist doctrine but who, nevertheless, were moved to leave the lands wherein they dwelt to contribute with their own effort to the revival of the Hebrew nation in its historic home. (pp. 120-122)

Ben-Gurion's remarks above echo his 1936 testimony to the British Peel Commission: "The Bible is our mandate.''

On a more personal note in Recollections he wrote: "for many of us, anti-Semitic feeling had little to do with our dedication [to Zionism]. I personally never suffered anti-Semitic persecution ... We emigrated not for negative reasons of escape but for the positive purpose of rebuilding a homeland ..." (p. 36). The idea of Palestine as the Jewish homeland to be rebuilt is, again, a foundational Judaic religious idea.

Ben-Gurion's position is no aberration. Theodor Herzl also successfully cultivated rabbinical support that continued to bear fruit decades later. In his Zionist manifesto, The Jewish State, he had a definite, positive role for rabbis—"on whom we especially call"—and synagogue in the movement. Herzl argued that Jews "feel our historic affinity only through the faith of our fathers" and the Jewish "Faith unites us."

The influential Moses Hess, in "Rome and Jerusalem," wrote of the Zionist movement: We will "draw our inspiration from the deep well of Judaism". A 2001 scholarly biography of Hess features a chapter on "Hess's 'Return' to Judaism and Narrative Identity". A recent article in Modern Judaism - A Journal of Jewish Ideas and Experience refers to Hess as "a Prophet of Spiritual Zionism" (see also the epigraph to this blog quoting Hess).

To turn to a more contemporary source, in Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years, the late Israel Shahak writes:

The ideological defence of Israeli policies are usually based on Jewish religious beliefs or, in the case of secular Jews, on the "historical rights" of the Jews which derive from those beliefs and retain the dogmatic character of religious faith.

... close analysis of Israeli grand strategies and actual principles of foreign policy, as they are expressed in Hebrew, makes it clear that it is "Jewish ideology," more than any other factor, which determines actual Israeli policies. The disregard of Judaism as it really is and of "Jewish ideology" makes those policies incomprehensible to foreign observers who usually know nothing about Judaism except crude apologetics.

The existence of an important component of Israeli policy, which is based on "Jewish ideology," makes its analysis politically imperative. This ideology is, in turn based on the attitudes of historic Judaism to non-Jews, ... Those attitudes necessarily influence many Jews, consciously or unconsciously. Our task here is to discuss historic Judaism in real terms.

Although the struggle against antisemitism (and of all other forms of racism) should never cease, the struggle against Jewish chauvinism and exclusivism, which must include a critique of classical Judaism, is now of equal or greater importance.

To successfully challenge Zionism we must have an accurate understanding of it and part of that includes dispensing with the myths of Israel's secular founding and secular Zionism.

Labels: David Ben-Gurion, Israel, Judaism, Zionism

Bill Henry, Z"L,circa 1940

Wednesday, September 19, 2018, is the 9th annual Bill Henry international Eat-a-Cheeseburger day.* This day honors the memory of Bill Henry (né Herskovitz), Z"L, for a decision that quite possibly saved an eight-year-old boy from a life of "Jewish chauvinism and exclusivism". For the full story behind Eat-a-Cheeseburger Day please see the 2011 post about this momentous day.

*The holiday begins at sunset on 9/18 and ends at dusk on 9/19.

Labels: Bill Henry, Henry Herskovitz, Judaism, Talmud

Bill Henry, Z"L,circa 1940

Saturday, September 30, 2017, is the 8th annual Bill Henry international Eat-a-Cheeseburger day.* This day honors the memory of Bill Henry (né Herskovitz), Z"L, for a decision that quite possibly saved an eight-year-old boy from a life of "Jewish chauvinism and exclusivism". For the full story behind Eat-a-Cheeseburger Day please see the 2011 post about this momentous day.

*The holiday begins at sunset on 9/29 and ends at dusk on 9/30.

Labels: Bill Henry, Henry Herskovitz, Judaism, Talmud

Bill Henry, Z"L,circa 1940

Wednesday, October 12, 2016, is the 7th annual Bill Henry international Eat-a-Cheeseburger day.* This day honors the memory of Bill Henry (né Herskovitz), Z"L, for a decision that quite possibly saved an eight-year-old boy from a life of "Jewish chauvinism and exclusivism". For the full story behind Eat-a-Cheeseburger Day please see the 2011 post about this momentous day.

*The holiday begins at sunset on 10/11 and ends at dusk on 10/12.

Labels: Bill Henry, Henry Herskovitz, Judaism, Talmud

... with the destruction of the Temple the Sadducees disappeared altogether, leaving the regulation of all Jewish affairs in the hands of the Pharisees.

Henceforth Jewish life was regulated by the teachings of the Pharisees; the whole history of Judaism was reconstructed from the Pharisaic point of view, and a new aspect was given to the Sanhedrin of the past. A new chain of tradition supplanted the older, priestly tradition (Abot i. 1). Pharisaism shaped the character of Judaism and the life and thought of the Jew for all the future. True, it gave the Jewish religion a legalistic tendency and made "separatism" its chief characteristic; yet only thus were the pure monotheistic faith, the ethical ideal, and the intellectual and spiritual character of the Jew preserved in the midst of the downfall of the old world and the deluge of barbarism which swept over the medieval world.

Source: Kaufmann Kohler, "Pharisees," Jewish Encyclopedia (1906).

Labels: history, Judaism

The subject of the Star of David comes up from time to time in anti-Zionist discourse. It recently popped up here where it appears in two controversial images of flags bearing that symbol.

There are at least two things to know about this subject: First, the Israeli flag is the Zionist flag. According to the World Zionist Organization: "The form and colors of the Israeli flag as we know it today was officially established as the flag of the Zionist Movement in the 18th Zionist Congress in 1933 (though it was introduced into the movement in the late 1800's). Six months after the declaration of the State, this flag was adopted as the national flag."

The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs concurs:

At the ceremony of the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, the dais was decorated with a picture of Theodor Herzl, flanked on either side by the flag of the World Zionist Organization. This flag, adopted by the first Zionist Congress in Basle in 1897, had become accepted by Jewish communities throughout the world as the emblem of Zionism ...

[The] decision to adopt the Zionist flag to be the flag of the State of Israel reflects its power as a symbol of the spirit of the Zionist movement.

The second thing to know is that the symbol at the center of the Zionist/Israeli flag—a hexagram referred to as the Star of David a.k.a. the Magen David/Shield of David—is not an ancient symbol of Judaism.

As noted in the "Magen David" entry in the Encyclopaedia Judaica, the hexagram was used "as early as the Bronze Age ... in many civilizations and in regions as far apart as Mesopotamia and Britain." The symbol also "appears in early Byzantine and many medieval European churches ... Probably in imitation of church usage – and certainly not as a specifically Jewish symbol – the hexagram is found on some synagogues from the later Middle Ages ..."

So, how did the hexagram become associated with Jews and Judaism? According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica: "The prime motive behind the wide diffusion of the sign in the 19th century was the desire to imitate Christianity."

Again, The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs concurs:

... the Star of David was never a uniquely Jewish symbol. The standard name for the geometric shape is a hexagram or six-pointed star, composed of two interlocking equilateral triangles. In a classic article, Gershom Sholem shed light on the history of the "Star of David" and its connection with Judaism ...

According to Sholem, the motive for the widespread use of the Star of David was a wish to imitate Christianity. During the Emancipation, Jews needed a symbol of Judaism parallel to the cross, the universal symbol of Christianity. In particular, they wanted something to adorn the walls of the modern Jewish house of worship that would be symbolic like the cross. This is why the Star of David became prominent in the nineteenth century and why it was later used on ritual objects and in synagogues and eventually reached Poland and Russia. The pursuit of imitation, in Sholem's opinion, led to the dissemination of an emblem that was not really Jewish and conveyed no Jewish message.

In The JPS Guide to Jewish Traditions (Jewish Publication Society, 2004), author Ronald L. Eisenberg writes (pp. 575-576):

During the Middle Ages, hexagrams appeared frequently on seals and in churches but rarely in synagogues or on Jewish ritual objects. Indeed, from antiquity until after the Renaissance the menorah ... rather than the hexagram was the primary symbol of Judaism ...

In Vienna ... [in 1656] a marker was set up to demarcate the boundary between the city and the Jewish ghetto. A cross identified the Christian section and a six-pointed star indicated the Jewish area. This was the first time that the Magen David was used as a religious-cultural symbol of the Jewish community.

History cannot tell us what a symbol means to living people now but it can illuminate the path to that meaning. The connection between the Star of David and Judaism is relatively new. It emerges as a counterpoint to Christianity and is inextricably intertwined with and tainted by the rise of Zionism, the ideology of Jewish apartheid in Palestine.

See also: Moshe Ronen. "Magen David: From mystical talisman to Zionist symbol." Ynetnews.com. May 3, 2009.

Labels: Christianity, Judaism, Zionism

Bill Henry, Z"L,circa 1940

Wednesday, September 23, 2015, is the 6th annual Bill Henry international Eat-a-Cheeseburger day.* This day honors the memory of Bill Henry (né Herskovitz), Z"L, for a decision that quite possibly saved an eight-year-old boy from a life of "Jewish chauvinism and exclusivism". For the full story behind Eat-a-Cheeseburger Day please see the 2011 post about this momentous day.

*The holiday begins at sunset on 9/22 and ends at dusk on 9/23.

Labels: Bill Henry, halacha, Henry Herskovitz, Judaism, Talmud

Bill Henry, Z"L,circa 1940

Saturday, October 4, 2014, is the 5th annual Bill Henry international Eat-a-Cheeseburger day. This day honors the memory of Bill Henry (né Herskovitz), Z"L, for a decision that quite possibly saved an eight-year-old boy from a life of "Jewish chauvinism and exclusivism". For the full story behind Eat-a-Cheeseburger Day please see the 2011 post about this momentous day.

Labels: Bill Henry, halacha, Henry Herskovitz, Judaism, Talmud

AnnArbor.com has a recent article about the 10th anniversary of the Jewish Witnesses for Peace and Friends vigil in front of Beth Israel Congregation. In the article, reporter Ryan Stanton quotes congregant Barry Gross touting congregants who "pledge to donate money to humanitarian causes for every protester who shows up on Saturdays".

Their two recipient organizations are the Magen David Adom (MDA)--the Israeli counterpart of the American Red Cross--and Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam (NSWAS), which is described in the article as "a cooperative village jointly founded by Israeli Jews and Israeli Palestinian Arabs to show they can live side by side in peace." The humanitarian value of these two entities is, at best, questionable and, thus, they are very appropriate charitable choices for Zionists.

Emblem of the Magen David Adom (lit. "Red Shield of David")

The MDA is an adjunct of the Zionist movement and the Israeli military and has a track record of not serving all citizens of Israel equally (see here and here). Two anecdotes will give you a further sense of the values of the Magen David Adom. Last year, the MDA created a rabbinical committee to "dictate religious guidelines" to MDA volunteers. The head of the committee is Shmuel Eliyahu (also transliterated as "Eliahu"), the Chief Rabbi of Safad, and who is on the Israeli government payroll. I first wrote about Eliyahu in 2008 when he was singing the praises of "a revenge that is so painful, it will burn into their souls the message of all our enemies that Jewish blood is more valuable than gold and platinum."

A year earlier Eliyahu had been calling for mass killings of Palestinians. Eliyahu has a track record of violent incitement and racism that even embarrasses the 'progressive' Zionist Jews who are calling for his ouster--it's a shande far di goyim don't you know? Please ponder for a moment the outcry if the American Red Cross appointed a similar committee of liberal Christian clergy, let alone violent reactionaries on the government payroll.

My second MDA anecdote concerns its Greater Tel Aviv spokesman, Mydan Ben Yoash. It seems Ben Yoash is a funny man who shared his humor on Facebook. Here's a joke that got him into a bit of trouble last June:

Q: How long does it take an Arab woman to bring down the garbage?

A: Nine months!

Get it? Ha, ha. Is this guy a card or what?

As for NSWAS, here's a description from Mulham Assir writing in the Palestine Chronicle: "Neve Shalom is a fraudulent propaganda construct created (like the Wall of Shame itself, on stolen land) to fool the world with the slogan 'peaceful coexistence is possible.' The subtext is 'if only Palestinians would accept the occupation, the dispossession, our refusal to allow the refugee to come home even as we import people from all over the world to man our "Jewish state" machine, if they accepted their "métèque" and wog status in their own land, but above all, if only most of them would go away voluntarily so we wouldn't have to allay our demographic fears by using tanks, missiles and bulldozers that put a crimp in our image abroad.' "

Elsewhere, Assir refers to NSWAS as a Potemkin village. His critique is underscored by information on the NSWAS web site. For instance, the community is not self-supporting but dependent upon funding from "International Friends' Associations around the world," the European Union, the Israeli government, and, of course, Zionists like Barry Gross and friends. Also, the village is for "Jewish and Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel," Palestinian refugees from 1948 Nakba or 1967 Naksa need not apply. And, yes, you must apply to live in NSWAS and be approved first by "a committee" and then by "the plenum".

Furthermore, the goals and achievements of NSWAS are quite limited: "We talk about 'living with the conflict', 'conflict management', sometimes 'conflict transformation'. We don’t look at our work as 'conflict resolution' because realistically, the conflict requires a political solution." Elsewhere, discussing "problems" arising "in the current political and economic situation" the community admits "Issues also revolve around the imposition of inequalities, rules and trends by the wider society upon the village. An obvious example is that Jews are recruited into the army where they are exposed to danger and possibly active service against Arabs. Another is the fact that Arabs are subject to subtle and less subtle forms of discrimination in the wider society." All this has resulted in the "lowering of optimism regarding chances for an equitable coexistence since September 2000 [the beginning of the al-Aqsa Intifada]" and "a questioning of the degree to which NSWAS's own form of coexistence is successful."

As an aside, there is also the irony that NSWAS was founded by the Rev. Bruno Hussar, a Jewish convert to Roman Catholicism who became a Dominican priest, on land leased and later donated, by a Christian monastery. Yet, today, "the majority of the village members are either secular or regard religious belief as a personal matter, religion is seen more in terms of being a component of one's cultural identity."

All in all, I'd say that MDA and NSWAS reflect the values of Barry Gross and friends quite well. The MDA supports the Israeli military, discriminates against Palestinians, and appoints Jewish racists to high profile positions and NSWAS is a, perhaps, noble experiment that is in fact powerless to address that circumstances responsible for its creation. Why deal with Jewish supremacism when you can simply evade the issue, write a check, and feel smug about it to boot? 

Labels: Beth Israel, Jewish supremacism, Jewish Witnesses for Peace and Friends, Judaism, racism, Zionism

Saturday, September 14, 2013, is the 4th 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". For the full story behind Eat-a-Cheeseburger Day please see the 2011 post about this momentous day.

Labels: Bill Henry, halacha, Henry Herskovitz, Judaism, Talmud

We learn via Henry Herskovitz of a monthly synagogue protest in Boulder, CO. Michael Rabb and other members of CU-Divest began protesting outside Congregation Bonai Shalom (CBS) in November. We would be happy to find a synagogue representing the Judaic mainstream that is not pro-Israel but it appears we'll have to keep looking.

You see, CBS celebrates Yom Ha'atzmaut, which marks a bitter milestone in the Nakba--the violent ethnic cleansing of Palestine by Jews in 1948. Yom Ha'atzmaut celebrates the declaration of "independence" by the Jewish state. This year, as Palestinians commemorated Nakba Day--which is illegal within the Jewish state--with protests, CBS was represented in Boulder's Yom Ha'Atzmaut celebration. CBS Rabbi Marc Soloway was there, along with "past and present IDF soldiers". On a day when Palestinians were brutalized, Jews in Boulder celebrated.

On the CBS web site, Rabbi Soloway makes clear his ethically bankrupt left/liberal Zionist stance: "Recently I was in the locker room of my gym in a conversation with someone who started talking in a very one-sided way about the brutality of the Israeli occupation, which had oppressed Palestinians for hundreds of years! I launched into a passionate, emotional lecture about Israel as the only democracy in the region and its right to self-determination and security and the world's media's bias towards the Palestinian side and what it feels like to be surrounded by people who want to destroy you!"

So, Michael and friends, we bid you godspeed. You have selected an appropriate place for your protests. As Elliott Abrams once observed: "Where is it possible to find a group of Jews who are committed to Israel, and whose children are likely to honor that commitment? The answer is, in a synagogue on the Sabbath."

Labels: anti-Zionism, Henry Herskovitz, Judaism, resistance

Wednesday, September 26, 2012, is the 3rd 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". Since Eat-a-Cheeseburger Day follows the Jewish calendar, it actually starts at sunset on 9/25 and ends at sunset on 9/26.

For the full story behind Eat-a-Cheeseburger Day please see last year's post about this momentous day.

Labels: Bill Henry, halacha, Henry Herskovitz, Judaism, Talmud

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:

• "Gems from 'Jewish Medical Law' " in ZionistsOut
• "A Light Unto the Butchers?" in ZionistsOut
• "McDonald's bans Arabic" in The Guardian (UK)
• "McDonald's changes its brand to suit kosher appetites" in The Guardian (UK)

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

Labels: BDS, Bill Henry, halacha, Henry Herskovitz, Judaism, Talmud