rnarble twist
sourtlougli
sunflower
1 grain
10 grain
1
t's been a great 5,755 years, but it's over.
Oh, sure, the Jewish religion proba-
bly will survive at least another five mil-
lennia. The State of Israel still will be
going strong well into the next geolog-
ic age. The Jewish people, as a com-
munity of faith, will be intact to greet the
Messiah.
But Jewish culture — in the sense of all the
everyday habits of speech, dress, and food that
distinguish Jews from their neighbors? Kiss it
goodbye.
12 grain
carrot
jalapeno corn
a Sunday morning without bagels was not worth
getting out of bed for.
The bagel was once an apt symbol of the Jew-
ish people themselves: round, to represent the
unity of life; shaped around a hole, to symbolize
the emptiness and sadness we acknowledge even
in the midst of joy; tough and chewy, to symbol-
ize Jewish resistance to oppression; and imper-
ishable, to symbolize Jewish survival.
At the same time, as recently as 25 years ago,
it was rare, outside the major East Coast cities
and Los Angeles, to find a gentile who even knew
LOVE You!
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THE D ETROIT J EWIS H NEWS
The signs are everywhere:
42
In a recent poll conducted by Chaim
Yankelovich Associates, 46 percent of Jewish
adolescents defined "kreplach" as "part of the
Monroe Doctrine."
Eighty-five percent of Iowa farmers use the
words "schmooze" and "schmaltz" in everyday
conversation.
Jalapeno bagels.
What's so bad about jalapeno bagels? If you
have to ask, you're not part of the solution —
you're part of the problem.
For if bagels were not the totality of Jewish
culture, they were surely a powerful symbol.
What wedding, bris, or bar or bat mitzvah cel-
ebration was ever complete without those crusty,
chewy, lox-laden, cream cheese-slathered, pop-
py seed-bedecked delicacies? There was a time,
within the living memory of many Jews, when
what a bagel was. New York Jews attending col-
lege in places like Norman, Okla., or Madison,
Wis., sometimes went into severe withdrawal
symptoms that the student health services were
powerless to treat.
Now look what they've gone and done. Jews
are celebrating their simchas with croissants,
chapatis, and tortillas, while gentiles are lining
up at the drive-through windows of 2,000 fast
food outlets and shouting into the clown's face,
"Two bagels with ham and melted cheese!"
The Fruit Of Intermarriage
The bagel, in other words, has followed the
path of pizza, tacos and other "ethnic" special-
ties down the path to assimilation. The bagel
has intermarried.
What the bagel has mostly intermarried with
is muffins, followed closely by coffee cake, soft
sun-dried tomato & herbs
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