"Jews" Begins with "J" But So Does "Japanese"

Bagels are considered a "Jewish" food.

Bagelheads, though, are people who inject saline into their foreheads to create bagel-shaped lumps.

But does this linguistic note have anything to do with Jews?

So far, no no

Bizarremag reported recently on an extreme body-modification fad sweeping
the Japanese club scene, wherein people inject their foreheads with saline
solution – causing bagel-shaped swellings:

They look like alien abductees, fresh from invasive research by their
interplanetary masters. But these are Japanese club kids, otherwise known as
bagelheads, deliberately disfiguring themselves by experimenting with saline
inflations.

These self-inflicted saline swellings last approximately 24 hours, and
can be molded into shapes and colored with food dyes.

but...?

Post-Passover New York Goes For...Bagels

What can you do? It's New York.

Passover’s Over, and Bagels Are Back, Big

...Mr. Ahmed and other bagel makers say that the first business day after the holiday ends — Friday — is typically one of their busiest days of the year as Jewish customers line up to observe the passing of at least eight days of yeast privation.

...During Passover, many Jews avoid leavened products in commemoration of the exodus from Egypt, during which, according to Old Testament tradition, the Israelites had so little time to flee that the bread they were baking did not have time to rise, and came out of the ovens as matzo...“Generally,” he said, “we do one and a half times” the normal business on the day after Passover ends.

...Lenny’s Bagels, on Broadway at 98th Street, was open during Passover. But Benjamin Choi, the owner, said that business was down 20 percent during the eight-day holiday. He said he typically makes up for that as the holiday ends...“On an average day, we sell 50 dozen,” he said. “Thursday night and Friday, it’s 70 dozen.”

source


and there's the Reform Judaism input:

...Reform Jews typically celebrate Passover for seven days, said Rabbi Andy Bachman, the senior rabbi at Congregation Beth Elohim in Park Slope, Brooklyn...Rabbi Bachman said he knows more people who are hungry for pizza or pasta, which are also off limits during Passover, than for bagels.

“Maybe what that tells you is that what we’re slowly experiencing is the Americanization of Jewish eating proclivities,” Rabbi Bachman said. “People will go out for more American food than the classic Jewish ethnic food of the bagels. People rush to eat after the Yom Kippur fast, but most people I know don’t rush for a bagel. They go for a slice with some pasta.”

Funny, the NYTimes is enamored with bagels. They had a story just last November.

Looking for bagels? Go here.

It's Sunday, Grab A Bagel (Beigel/Baigel)

Sometimes, the NYTimes can be pleasant reading:

A bagel is a round bread, with a hole in the middle, made of simple ingredients: high-gluten flour, salt, water, yeast and malt. Its dough is boiled, then baked, and the result should be a rich caramel color; it should not be pale and blond. A bagel should weigh four ounces or less and should make a slight cracking sound when you bite into it. A bagel should be eaten warm and, ideally, should be no more than four or five hours old when consumed. All else is not a bagel.

The Jewish bagel’s probably birthplace is Poland. A story popular in the United States, that the bagel was first produced as a tribute to Jan Sobieski, king of Poland in the late 17th century, after he saved Austria from Turkish invaders at the battle of Vienna in 1683, is just that – a story, according to Maria Balinska, the author of “The Bagel: The Surprising History of a Modest Bread” (Yale University Press).

The first known reference to the bagel among Jews in Poland, Ms. Balinska writes, precedes the battle of Vienna by seven decades. It is found, she says, in regulations issued in Yiddish in 1610 by the Jewish Council of Krakow outlining how much Jewish households were permitted to spend in celebrating the circumcision of a baby boy – “to avoid making gentile neighbors envious, and also to make sure poorer Jews weren’t living above their means.” The origin of the word “bagel” is ultimately unclear, but many experts agree, she says, that it comes from the Yiddish beigen, to bend.

Eastern European immigrants arriving in the United States at the turn of the 20th century brought the bagel with them to the streets of the Lower East Side. The rise of the bagel in New York is inextricably tied to that of a trade union, specifically Bagel Bakers Local 338, a federation of nearly 300 bagel craftsmen formed in Manhattan in the early 1900s.

Local 338 was by all accounts a tough and unswerving union, set up according to strict rules that limited new membership to the sons of current members. By 1915 it controlled 36 bagel bakeries in New York and New Jersey. These produced the original New York bagels, the standard against which all others are still, in some manner, judged.

What did they look like? At a mere three ounces, about half the size of the bagel you'll find at a corner coffee cart in Midtown Manhattan, union bagels were smaller and denser than their modern descendants, with a crustier crust and a chewier interior. They were made entirely by hand.

Local 338 held its ironclad grip on the bagel market for nearly half a century, until industrial bagel-making machines were introduced to the market in the early 1960's. The introduction of industrial bagel machines meant any retailer or retail-bakery owner could make bagels with nonunion help.

America’s current mass bagel consumption is all the more surprising because until the 1960s, bagels were little known outside large Jewish communities in major cities. In 1951, The New York Times, in an article about a bagel bakers’ strike (“Labor Dispute Puts Hole in Supply,” the headline noted) felt it necessary to provide a pronunciation guide (“baygle”) and a definition – a “glazed surfaced roll with the firm white dough.” And a 1958 article in the Saturday Evening Post suggested that readers try “a happy new taste experience” – “a sandwich of cream cheese, sliced tomato and lox on a buttered bagel.”

Bagels? Who Said Bagels?

Who said this:-

"What could be worse than not buying bagels for the Jewish prayer breakfast?"

It's in here. Page 54.

The full story is here.

And the short answer is: Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

Don't believe me?

Here's the transcript:-

JUSTICE SCALIA: So there's no standing to challenge a presidential directive which says we are going to buy bagels for all evangelistic Christian breakfasts. (Laughter.)
JUSTICE SCALIA: Okay? But not for any --
MR. PINCUS: No, I think there would be standing.
JUSTICE SCALIA: Why would there be standing?
MR. PINCUS: Because there the challenge is to the discriminatory purchase. It's not about the prayer breakfast, it's about the idea that the Government is purchasing bagels in a religiously discriminatory way.
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Of course. But the point is that makes --
MR. PINCUS: So there absolutely would be standing.
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: But that shows how totally manipulable your incidental test is. You just have to phrase your claim so that it covers 53 Alderson Reporting Company whatever expenditure --
MR. PINCUS: But, Your Honor --
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: -- is offending you. It's not -- incidental doesn't protect you from frivolous or insignificant claims in any way.
MR. PINCUS: Your Honor, I think it does, because there would have to be an allegation in that situation that bagels were being purchased on a religious basis, and that's going to be awfully hard for a lawyer to sign in good faith. I think the problem, if I may --
JUSTICE SCALIA: How does that confer standing? How does that confer standing?
MR. PINCUS: The purchase -- the idea that bagels are being purchased only for evangelicals and not for Jewish breakfasts?
JUSTICE SCALIA: Right. Right.
MR. PINCUS: Because the Government --
JUSTICE SCALIA: Standing by Joe Doaks, not from somebody who's starting a Jewish prayer breakfast and says, you know, what could be worse than not buying bagels for a Jewish prayer breakfast. (Laughter.) With him I could understand, he has standing...