How Vegetarians Can Celebrate Thanksgiving

My reason why on Thanksgiving non-vegetarians have a custom to eat turkey,

is because the tasty bird was thought to come from India, whose Hebraic name

is Hodu, Hebrew word for “thanks!” Consuming it in any way, not just as jerky,

we’re able, using Hebrew-English wordplay-tastebuds, to God thanksgiving to proclaim.

This is more difficult for vegetarians, who, in order to praise God,

perforce must link up with some Jewish people, Zooming with them, if there are none in their pod,

hoduing Thanksgiving without a turkey — fair fowl that all presidents must pardon —

and which vegetarians treat as forbidden fruit in their wild west-of-Eden meatless garden,

regarding all the people who encourage them to eat it as most sneaky, snarky snakes;

not only holier than thou, they clearly think themselves, but cooler, drinking their uncool milkshakes.

Robert Krulwich wrote in npr.org, 11/27/2008 “Why A Turkey Is Called A Turkey”:

All over the world, people now can eat American Turkeys, but they don’t call them Turkeys.

Across Arabia, they call our bird “diiq Hindi,” or the “Indian rooster.”

In Russia, it’s “Indjushka,” bird of India.

In Poland, “Inyczka”— again “bird from India.”

And what, we wondered, do the Turks call our turkey?

Well, they call it “Hindi,” again, short for India.

Please pardon me for adding that, while taking into consideration the most friendly attitude immediately demonstrated towards Israel after Hamas’s hostile attack on October 7 by President Joseph Biden, our contemporary Thanksgiving presidential turkey pardoner, I think that he should not be regarded as a turkey. And please pardon Seth Myers for saying, while the octogenarian president was celebrating his 81^st birthday on November 20, 2023:

“That’s right, President Biden today celebrated his 81st birthday, but not as much as Republicans did.” 

Gershon Hepner is a poet who has written over 25,000 poems on subjects ranging from music to literature, politics to Torah. He grew up in England and moved to Los Angeles in 1976. Using his varied interests and experiences, he has authored dozens of papers in medical and academic journals, and authored “Legal Friction: Law, Narrative, and Identity Politics in Biblical Israel.” He can be reached at gershonhepner@gmail.com.