Bagel Back-Story

I’ve been looking for a bagel ever since I was born, but particularly since moving to East Harlem this past summer. It’s not like I had great bagels growing up; it was Lender’s Bagels or no bagels in Bloomington, Indiana. It was the 1970’s and all I knew from a bagel was that it was infinitely cooler than a slice of bread. The instant upgrade from the dense, hard stick of butter to the shiny silver tub of cream cheese made my heart beat faster. It was a creamy goodness no piece of toast deserved. And no rectangular piece of dough could compare to the circular one that enabled me to stick my tongue through its hole and taunt my younger brother, Andy.

All around me people were keen on English muffins; spreading jam on them and touting the benefits of the countless nooks and crannies. But I felt special that I was in on the bagel – like I was privy to some ancient secret that my family shared. I had always felt like an outsider in Indiana. The neighborhood kids looked at me strangely when they learned that I didn’t celebrate Easter or eat ham or go to church. I felt uncomfortable about being different from them. Like all kids, I wanted to fit in. But I consoled myself by thinking that if having Hanukah meant having the bagel, I’d forego Christmas any day.

My mother would buy dozens of Lender’s Bagels at the local Kroger grocery and then tuck them away in our additional freezer in the garage.

“You never know when you might need a bagel,” my mother would say completely deadpan, as she waited impatiently for the doughnut-shaped rolls to thaw.

Little did I know how right she was; that I would, in fact, spend most of my life searching for the elusive bagel.

It came as a surprise when my parents told me that we would be leaving Indiana. I was five years old when we packed up our Hoosier homestead and moved to northern Israel, where my father took sabbatical and taught economics at the Technion in Haifa. My parents rented an apartment on Mount Carmel situated down the street from a magnificent bread factory with a storefront bakery. The first morning I awoke in Israel, I rose to a smell so intoxicating, so doughy and pure that I just knew it had to be a bagel. It was like no bagel I had ever smelled before.

I went into my parent’s bedroom and begged them to take me to the factory. The anticipation of that chewy goodness was too much to bear. It had been a couple of days since my last bagel and I needed a fix. Now. My parents humored me but I could tell they were worried. I viewed their furrowed brows as concern over what had become a mild obsession; the bagel had taken on a life of its own. I was consumed with bagel desire.

While they were getting dressed I contemplated why the bagel was so delectable when its ingredients didn’t amount to much: mainly water, yeast, sugar and salt.

“How could it be?” I thought. There was something bigger than the bagel at play here. I needed to finagle the bagel to get to its core.

Apparently, in the 1860s a Jewish baker in Austria created a special hard roll in the shape of a riding stirrup. He made the roll to thank the king of Poland for protecting his countrymen from Turkish invaders. After gaining popularity in Poland, bagels eventually made their way to Russia where they were sold on strings. The ring-shaped objects were said to bring good luck and have magical powers.

“Hmmm…” I thought as my parents wearily put their shoes on. Had the bagel cast some magical spell on me? Was each nosh bringing me closer to my past? I had great grandparents, after all, from Eastern Europe. Maybe it was here in the promised land that they were going to contact me through the promised bagel; to show me something I was unable to see through the cornfields in Indiana.

I couldn’t get to the bread factory fast enough. My mouth watering, I tore down the street as my parents called after me to slow down. The smell intensified as I got closer. When I finally arrived, I couldn’t see straight. Visions of bagel had blinded me to the rows of challah bread that sat before me on the counter.

I scanned the long loaves of bread; looking for something, anything round and edible. The Israeli behind the counter had no idea what a bagel even was, let alone had any patience for a five-year-old American who was about to start crying. There was no bagel. I was devastated, and the situation got worse when I inquired about my old faithful, Lender.

“Oh honey,” my mother said soothingly. “I think we’re going to have a little trouble finding a bagel in Israel.”

“How can this be?” I wailed.

She took my hand and explained that the bagel was popular in Europe among Jewish residents, but it was in America that the bagel had become widely popular, especially in New York.

“New York?” I said, not fully understanding the gravity of her words.

“New York,” she said strongly. “That’s really where the best bagels are, honey.”

And with that, I moved to New York. Well, yes, I moved to New York but it took me awhile to get here. About 24 years from the time I stood sobbing at the bread factory, to be exact. But I did it. And now, here in the midst of a New York City bagel bonanza, I find myself having a ‘little trouble’ finding a bagel….