This has got to be a prank and a well-produced one. Manischewitz, the leading brand of kosher products based in the United States, founded in 1888 and best known for its matzo and kosher wine (thank you, Wiki), on Wednesday night tweeted this: “You asked, we listened. The R&D team hasn’t slept all week and now the factory will be cranking out these babies 24/6. Just in time for July 4th! An American tradition your Bubbie will love.
Needless to say, the Internet has begun cranking out smart-alecky responses, and it stands to reason those will only increase once the folks on the east coast wake up and check their phones. Adam Howe (he/him) tweeted what we all are thinking (but mostly with only one pronoun): “It’s possible this is a joke. It’s also possible that it’s real. I can’t decide which, nor how I feel about it. On the one hand, I like gefilte fish. On the other hand, making it into a pseudo-sausage served on a bun with hot dog accouterments offends every fiber of my Chicagoanism.”
He/she is right, and you can probably add the offended fibers of NewYorkerism, Jerusalemism, wherever Jews have lived in large groups without ever asking for their hot dogs to be made of grounded carp. Yuck.
You asked, we listened.?The R&D team hasn’t slept all week and now the factory will be cranking out these babies 24/6. Just in time for July 4th!
An American tradition your Bubbie will love.#GefilteDogs #GefilteBeef pic.twitter.com/Wtg1mZCAYL— Manischewitz (@ManischewitzCo) June 22, 2022
I searched the Internet––so you won’t have to––and discovered FishHotDog.com. But nowhere do they mention gefilte fish hot dogs. Theirs is basically a bunch of breaded fish sticks in a bun, which if you count carbs is probably enough to send your pancreas into insulin rhumba.
So I went deeper and googled “gefilte fish hot dogs,” and found this insightful headline on Reddit: “Hot Dogs Are Just Gefilte Fish Made Out of Cow.”
No, they are NOT. Then there was this digression: “Can Dogs Eat Gefilte Fish?” I’m not sure, but I promise you, cats devour the stuff, and when Tuxedo cats slurp up their gefilte, they can be easily mistaken for a shalosh-seudos in Borough Park.
Back to Wiki for the fundamental definition: Gefilte fish, Yiddish for “stuffed fish,” is a dish made from a poached mixture of ground deboned fish, such as carp, whitefish, or pike. It is traditionally served as an appetizer by Ashkenazi Jewish households. It is popular on Shabbat and Jewish holidays such as Passover, but it may be consumed throughout the year.
But not on a bun in Yankee Stadium on the Fourth of July. I mean, you might as well serve sushi under the July sun, and chrain is basically red wasabi – but can the stadium lavatories handle the mob traffic come the seventh-inning stretch?
Finally, this is how I know it’s most likely a joke: I searched the Manischewitz website for “gefilte dogs” and got this result:
Anyway, I ain’t putting one of those fishy things in my system, with or without a bun. And my Fourth of July, folks, is all Juicy American hamburger or frankfurter (both named after German cities, by the way).
