Kosher Wing Man Hopes to Indulge, Take Flight

Fullbacks and full stomachs: It's Hungry Hungry Hebrew going for the title at Wing Bowl 18.

Though he's just one of dozens set to take part in the Feb. 5 Wing Bowl 18 in what has become a pre-Super Bowl tradition in Philadelphia, he may be the only Shomer Shabbat entrant.

This Hungry Hungry Hebrew hopes to down enough wings at the WIP-sponsored event at the Wachovia Center to ensure him the championship just two days before the Colts and Saints slug it out for the football title.

According to the contestant, the kosher issue "will be quietly resolved" before the eat-off.

Such indulgence, even using kosher meat, may seem hard to stomach, but then the 38-year-old Taxin, an attorney by trade, has had lots of practice: To qualify for WB 18, he reveals, he downed 30 latkes in 10 minutes.

This is not his first binge in the Bowl tradition; four years ago, he qualified by inhaling two pounds of gefilte fish in less than six minutes.

"I love gefilte fish," he says proudly of his necessary gluttony.

A graduate of Harvard and Columbia, where he earned his law degree, Taxin concedes that his effort may not pass any sort of taste test, Judaically speaking. After all, the overeaters' wing man notes: "It poses a halachic problem since you're not supposed to allow gluttony."

The 6-foot, 2-inch, 205-pounder concedes that he's "all muscle" and has "always liked to eat."

He's tackled bowls before --and come out on top.

Take the 2009 Shank Bowl, sponsored by JNFuture, benefiting the Jewish National Fund, which touched down at the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia Building in Center City.

"That was 66 chicken wings in 12 minutes," he says of the event, in which he downed food set before him by Max & David's, the kosher restaurant in Elkins Park.

Course of Action

Food has always meant a solid course of action for this competitor, a member of the prominent Philadelphia Taxin family of restaurant fame.

And so has pageantry.

The Hungry Hungry Hebrew (a title inspired by the iconic 1970s board game and theme song of "Hungry Hungry Hippos"), expects to enter the Wing Bowl backed by a float with a Noah's ark, and "entrance music of a remix of 'Hungry Hungry Hippos' " and a "Fiddler on the Roof" takeoff.

HHH -- whose other titles and activities include third place in a Carnegie Deli Pickle Eating Contest, before he became kosher, he notes, and TV's "Jeopardy" in January 2001 ("I was the first new champion of the new millennium") -- doesn't know if he'll actually win this one, but he does know that he won't eat his words.

After all, he notes that he's in for more than just the glory.

As he proclaims: "I will make the Jewish people proud."