The Shapiro Sandwich. Illustration by Tani Levitt/Getty/Canva.

By Tani Levitt May 12, 2023

It’s a day ending in y, so, naturally, Ben Shapiro has been getting ratio’d on Twitter again.

Irked by Jewish Sen. Bernie Sanders’ invitation to Rep. Rashida Tlaib to host a Nakba Day event in the Senate, the Daily Wire founder tweeted that Sanders is “approximately as Jewish as a ham sandwich topped with shrimp on lard bread.”

(Really, Ben? No room for a slice of Swiss cheese on this hate sandwich?)

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Jewish gatekeeping aside, Shapiro’s tweet led me to consider the following question: If Sen. Sanders has an analogous sandwich, then it stands to reason that Shapiro would have one too. But what would it be? I talked with a few colleagues and we came up with The Shapiro, a sandwich that would accurately represent the Orthodox Jewish takesman and provocateur.

The Jewish people supposedly invented the sandwich — salute to Hillel — but if “love thy neighbor” is hard for Shapiro, then kal vachomer, the delicate art of sandwich making, is beyond him. While The Shapiro should be unmistakably kosher — something that matters to approximately 17% of American Jews — it should also be as perverse as suggesting that a Jew is not Jewish.

First, the bread. Shapiro is on the record as a matzo lover, and, paradoxically, he highlighted the lack of “exciting taste” as matzo’s big draw. Nonetheless the bread has to be challah. The Jewish bread most recently at the center of a moral panic is the obvious choice. Over-toasted to dull down the challah’s exciting taste, the bread should be cold when the sandwich is served.

No condiments on The Shapiro. Like its namesake, this sandwich should be sandpaper dry and just as abrasive.

For the protein, gefilte fish. The jellied and from a jar kind, of course. Layer on the slice of Swiss cheese that he left off the Sanders for good measure. (You’re allowed to have cheese with fish according to kashrut!)

There must be a vegetal element of this sandwich, even though Shapiro once suggested that a follower “burn down the VeggieTales factory.” Lettuce, horseradish and radishes all make too much sense, so we will add cooked Moroccan carrots. Shapiro’s wife is Moroccan, which he has, in the past, taken as an opportunity to talk down the food of his Ashkenazi ancestors. Rather than look for a fitting vegetable for The Shapiro, we must make the sandwich true to form and make a point. What point? Not the point.

So there you have it — The Shapiro: A gefilte fish sandwich on over-toasted challah with Swiss cheese and Moroccan carrots. Not my cup of tea, but don’t worry Ben, you won’t catch me yucking your yum. B’teavon!

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