For Openers

Food For Thought

Yiddish Limericks

Los Angeles

A man to a music clerk said,
"Your pricing's way over my head."
"We don't Handel* here,"
She told him. "My dear,"
He answered, "I'll take Bach instead."

A

merica's largest bagel chain finds itself in the
hole.
The Einstein/Noah Bagel Corp., which owns
539 bagel shops across the United States,
announced last month that it won't be able to pay off a
$125 million debt and may have to shut down unless it
finds new financing.
Other bagel makers are in similar straits, victims partly
of over-expansion but mainly of changing American tastes,
according to the Los Angeles Times.
The popularity of bagels took off about a decade ago,
when health and weight-conscious consumers sought a
substitute for the high-fat doughnut.
An average-sized plain bagel has only 1 gram of fat —
but 300 calories — compared to a chocolate-glazed dough-
nut's 14 grams of fat — and 260 calories.
With booming economic times, however, and few signs
that past diet regimens have notably
slimmed the American figure,
„ „,4 0•00 11 K t i kt fp,
consumers are ready to live it
up, say the experts.
"Americans are either
tired of experts telling
them what's good or
bad for them, or
they're just,too tired to
. . „
; ;
care," notes the Times.
;
Giving weight to the
analysis is the fact that while
Noah shut down 14 of its stores last year, doughnut chains
such as Krispy Kreme and Winchell's are opening up new
locations at a record pace. ,
To some extent, the chain's stores became victims of
their own success, with convenience supermarkets, dough-
nut shops and coffee joints like Starbucks jumping in and
offering bagels to their customers.
Einstein/Noah Bagel Corp. was formed in March 1995
through the combination of four leading regional bagel
retailers — Brackman Brothers Bagel Bakery from Salt
Lake City, Bagel & Bagel in Kansas City, Offerdahl's Bagel
Gourmet in Fort Lauderdale and Baltimore Bagel Co. of
San Diego.
The firm later acquired Noah's New York Bagels. ❑

— Tom Tugend/JTA

— Martha Jo Fleischmann

* bargain

.

02000

•

By Go

w

hat is the contemporary name of
the country of Ashkenaz, from
where more than half of world
Jewry, the Askenazim, trace their origin?

•.qsauaD
Jo loog acp uz pauoyuaui ;say ‘iCuvituaD
dof dU1VU 1U,91.91119 U27 SZ ZinialCISy uatrauv

Quotables

"If you go to more than 10 bar mitzvahs, you
get an 'honorary Jew' certificate, and I went
to at least 10 the year I was 13. I was drunk
on Manischewitz for half of 1983."
— Actor Edward Norton,
who directed and co-stars in the new movie
comedy "Keeping the Faith," about a priest and
a rabbi who pine for the same woman.

"My friends said the miracle of the last three
months was that I was able to keep quiet all
that time."
—Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt,
on successfully countering Holocaust denier
David Irving's libel suit.

GRAHAM n Mendel

,RABBI, WE'RE CONCERNED
THE LOSS OF VALUeS IN AMERICA.
THAT'S WHY WE WANT TO GIVE
OUR CHILDREN A GREAT
REwGIOUS EXPERIENCE

RIGHT ! GCE WANT OUR CHILDREN THAT'S WOMPERFUL! HOW MUCH OF
To UNDERSTAND JUDAISM AND .JOUR TIME ARE yOU
ALL OP THE /, , ,AsDoM Amp
lwit.i.,ING TO DEVOTE TO
BEAUTY IT ADDS To LIFE . I
C.61-68RATING
UM
JUDAISM?
"•
4/.!REMEMBER
\
WERE GOING To PO
MORE RoLLeA BEADING
THIS EAR?

s

,

4/28
2000

5

