By Rabbi Rachel Esserman

Some folks considered it sacrilege. It was definitely frowned on by New York City Jews. What could be so horrible? When I was growing up, I ate my hot dogs with ketchup and ketchup only. Before you decide this is so beyond the pale that you can’t be friends with me, I now eat my hot dogs with ketchup, mustard and (if available) relish (although I didn’t grow up with relish in the house and still don’t have any in my refrigerator). 
Although I ate hot dogs made of meat when I was young, I later began to eat non-meat ones due to dietary restrictions, although those, alas, have generally been banned from my diet because they contain more sodium than I should eat. It’s not that I won’t eat beef hot dogs; I just don’t cook meat at home. (Trust me, you don’t want to know.) Sigh, a hot dog is such an easy protein (I sometimes have difficulty getting enough protein in my diet) and I really like the way they taste. But I try to save that sodium for other treats, although I would not turn down an invitation to someone’s barbecue (hint, hint) where beef hot dogs were being served. 
My Grandpa Joe (my mom’s father) worked for a butcher when he was young and refused to eat hot dogs. He never explained why, but I’ve read Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” and have a good imagination. (In Sinclair’s expose of the meat industry, he wrote about hot dogs that were partly filled with sawdust. I think, in my grandfather’s case, the hot dog was probably made from parts of the cow no one wanted to eat, or spices may have been used to disguise the taste of spoiled meat.) 
What made me think about hot dogs was an article in the Nosher titled “Hot Dogs Are the Greatest American Jewish Food. Here’s Why” (www.myjewishlearning.com/the-nosher/hot-dogs-are-the-greatest-american-jewish-food-heres-why). I never thought of the hot dog as a Jewish food nor have I ever pondered whether a burger is a Jewish food. (FYI: In case you are thinking of inviting me to that barbecue, I prefer hot dogs to burgers, but would eat a burger if that was all you were serving.) 
The article doesn’t claim that Jews invented the sausage (although there is another Jewish website that tries to find a Jewish connection to almost everyone and everything), but that it is thought that the first person to stick a sausage in a bun (so it could be eaten as a street food) was Jewish, creating what we now think of as a hot dog, even though no one called it that then. Although that hot dog was not kosher, a kosher butcher soon began selling all beef ones (although the article notes that while they picked someone as the first for this, there is no way to completely confirm that information).
While it is kind of neat to think of hot dogs as a Jewish food, it really doesn’t matter if someone Jewish invented the hot dog. The hot dog, even more than the bagel, has become an all-American food, which is perfectly fine with me