Late Night Bagels

If you chopped my arm off with an axe, you might be surprised to see that the stump that remained had a giant hole in it. That’s because my body is made of bagels. I am 70 percent water, 30 percent bagels. No week passes in my life without the consumption of at least one or more bagels. If I go for more than a week without a bagel, my hair falls out, my eyes turn black, and I start chanting strange Kabbalic verses that’d make Madonna’s head spin. Luckily, I live in Richmond, so unless someone kidnaps me and ties me to a chair and feeds me a constant stream of ham and mayonnaise to un-Jew me, I will never be without a bagel. And thank God, because bagels are my favorite day food. (As opposed to my favorite night food, which is the burrito. But that’s another subject.)

Bagels come in all shapes and sizes, flavors and textures. The way Italians feel about the right pasta with the right dressing is how Jews feel about the right bagel with the right cream cheese. Pumpernickel, onion, and everything are all the perfect vehicles for the classic combination of cream cheese, lox (or nova) with onions, tomato, and capers. In fact, many bagel establishments offer this very combination with the expectation that you won’t ask for this with something as ill-fitting as a cinnamon-raisin bagel. Anyone who eats lox on a cinnamon-raisin bagel is arousing the wrath of the vengeful Hebrew God who may not only smite you but force you to spend your afterlife performing, in perpetuity, the bottle dance from Fiddler on the Roof for audiences of angry geriatrics who think they’re going to see Neil Sedaka.

There is a good rule of thumb when it comes to choosing your bagel and cream cheese combo: The worse your breath will be afterwards, the better it will taste. So garlic bagel with chive spread? Check. But sesame bagel with plain cream cheese? Or worse: low-fat cream cheese? Look, if that’s you, I know who you are. You thought The Lake House was the best movie of 2006, and your cell phone ring is "My Humps" by the Black Eyed Peas. Not that I’m judging you, or anything. What we put on our bagels is a private matter, unless we make it public. Then you open yourself up to scrutiny.

Bagels tell us who we are, who we were, and who we’ll be as we grow older. Their oracular qualities are echoed in their O-like shape—a giant circle that suggests the cyclical nature of things. If you feel directionless, empty, searching for an answer, forget religion: Go to the bagel. It’s a simple formula that works wonders—change your bagel and change your life.

jwxxx