Thursday 7 April 2011

A story about the hole in the bagel

THE BAGEL HOUSE

2 Stoke Newington High Street

Cream cheese bagel

The Bagel House is open 24hrs and bakes its own bread and cakes on the premises. The three women behind the counter are all chatting to a couple of women and their children. One breaks away to serve me. A cream cheese bagel please. She puts it in a bag. One pound ten please. I hand over the money and try and start up a bit of a conversation about the 24hr opening. So, you must have to work shifts if you are open 24hrs, that must be a pain? Nah, I am off at two. Do you get many people in at four in the morning? Yeah, she says as she hands me my change. I sense she has better things to do than answer my inane questions, so I thank her and leave. I save the bagel till I get home. Lots of cream cheese, but I’d say I’ve had better bagels.



It strikes me that it didn’t say it was kosher. Does that mean it is not a real bagel? A bit of digging leads me to find out that Eastern European Jews brought bagels to North America in the late 19th century, and although bagels are considered ‘Jewish food’, they have no religious significance. Bagels simply have been popular in Jewish circles for generations. So a bagel is a bagel is a bagel, kosher or not.

A story about the hole in a bagel
I remember once hearing a story recounted by Iain Sinclair about an elderly Jewish gentleman reminiscing about his childhood and eating bagels at his grandfather’s house. His grandfather would always ask him to leave him the hole in his bagel, so he would eat most of it then offer the remains to his grandfather. ‘No, no, I just want the hole’, his grandfather would say, ‘that is too much’.



So he would nibble away some more and offer it again. ‘No, no, it is still too much, I just want the hole’, his grandfather would reply.



So again, he would nibble some more, until finally there was nothing left. At this point his grandfather would pretend to be aggrieved that his grandson had not done as he had asked. ‘But where is the hole, I asked you to leave me the hole!’

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