Nextbook: American as Apple Pie
source: http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/feature.html?id=1075
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- dankitti
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In one of the most darkly comic stories that circulated among Jews in 18th-century Poland, a Jewish simpleton has his life saved by a soggy bagel. One day, the simpleton falls into a river and starts flailing about and shouting for help. Recalling some advice about gentile affection for bagels, he fishes one out of his pocket and chucks the sodden roll to some peasants tilling a field nearby. Fortunately, he’s a simpleton with good aim: the wonder-working bagel alights at their feet, and the peasants come to his rescue.
The story is, like the bagel itself, both whimsical and a bit on the heavy side. It testifies to the bagel’s longstanding ability to “cross over” to non-Jews, but also begs the sobering question as to why the gentiles respond to the bagel but not to the simpleton’s cries for help. The bagel here enjoys a high level of esteem—unlike its cultural ambassador.
With its cynical wisdom, the tale fits perfectly within Maria Balinska’s intriguing book The Bagel: The Surprising History of a Modest Bread, which uses the food’s vicissitudes to illuminate the past 400 years of Jewish history.
[more at the website]
The story is, like the bagel itself, both whimsical and a bit on the heavy side. It testifies to the bagel’s longstanding ability to “cross over” to non-Jews, but also begs the sobering question as to why the gentiles respond to the bagel but not to the simpleton’s cries for help. The bagel here enjoys a high level of esteem—unlike its cultural ambassador.
With its cynical wisdom, the tale fits perfectly within Maria Balinska’s intriguing book The Bagel: The Surprising History of a Modest Bread, which uses the food’s vicissitudes to illuminate the past 400 years of Jewish history.
[more at the website]
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- groups:
- Comic Book Universe
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- tags:
- bagels
