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Circular bread line: through the centuries, with lox and cream cheese.

Article Excerpt
THE BAGEL

The Surprising History of a Modest Bread

By Maria Balinska

Yale University Press

240 pp. | $24

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

My late husband and his brother were brilliant raconteurs, especially of Jewish jokes. Here's one that goes back to the late '50s, when I was a young bride.

A stranded Martian--bug-eyed, armored, tentacled as in an old sci-fi movie--looms in the doorway of a Bronx bakery and casts his ocular protuberance on a tray heaped high with bagels. "Give me one of those wheels for my spaceship," he commands in robotic tones.

Rabinowitz, the owner of the store, hastens to set the creature straight. "No, no," he explains, "these aren't wheels, these are bagels."

"Give me one of those wheels for my space ship," the Martian repeats in his zombie voice, and again Rabinowitz remonstrates, to no effect.

Finally, after several more exchanges, the baker gets a bright idea. Slicing a bagel in half and smearing it with cream cheese, he holds it invitingly out: "Look, taste, eat!" he demands.

The Martian extends a tentacle, takes a bite, and his bug eyes widen. "You know," he says in his alien accent, "this would be deli-shus with lox!"

Even in the white-bread '50s, as Maria Balinska demonstrates in her gem of culinary and social reportage recounting the "surprising history of a modest bread," bagels were tasty enough to tempt not just native diners but visitors from outer space. Yet the Martian anecdote is telling in another way. "Deli-shus" as bagels, cream cheese, and...

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