My experience of being Jewish in America has always gone like this: "Man, I sure do love insert item of Jewish culture! Wait… you're telling me this is Jewish!?" This extends from the culinary world into things like musical theater and "the old testament" and so on, but food has always been my strongest connection to my culture. There are many misconceptions about what Jewish food is exactly. Many argue that dishes like falafel and shakshuka are Jewish, but historical evidence would say otherwise. The truth is, most Jews lived under subjugation in Europe until the holocaust drastically reduced the population. Those centuries of being beaten down constitute a major factor in shaping modern Jewish culture, with the biggest being our resiliency.

So I’ve been told, a couple hundred years back, it was forbidden for Jews in Poland to bake bread. The smell of yeast in the air, dough rising quietly in a wooden bowl, and the fear that even something as simple as bread could lead to punishment. There are several reasons why that might have been (i.e., bread representing the body of Christ and the impurity of Jews, or the importance of bread in Jewish religion and wanting to curtail our ability to practice), but they all draw back to a fundamental hatred of my people. It was this ban, though, that led to the creation of the most popular Jewish food: bagels. To circumvent the ban, many Polish Jews would boil their bread before toasting it (not technically baking). That story of my ancestors—standing over pots of boiling water and dropping in rings of dough to find a loophole—brings me clarity. As time went on, this method became standard procedure for bagel-making—replacing toasting with baking when allowed—and bagels became a delicacy in Jewish culture. Although it may seem strange that something as simple as boiled and baked white bread could be perceived in such a way, most Jewish foods tend to be bland due to the numerous restrictions imposed before and during the 20th century.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, many Jews emigrated from Europe due to increased violence led by Russian pogroms—violent, government-backed riots against Jews. I like to picture a boat leaving Europe: the cold air and the sound of waves slapping against the sheet metal exterior, the families inside holding onto one another. On a similar ship—the Vaderland—was my great-grandmother, less than two years old, leaving her home in present-day Latvia and boarding in Belgium. After arriving at Ellis Island—a hub for European immigrants moving to the East Coast—she settled in New Jersey, where she’d spend the rest of her life and raise my grandfather, a second-generation immigrant. My grandpa, who we lovingly call "Baba," is the first in an ongoing line of American-Jews that has subsequently led to me and my siblings. None of us know the trials and tribulations of 20th-century European persecution firsthand, but the first time Baba told me about his mother, I recognized the weight of the history I carry. I've faced my own battles, but they’re just ripples in the ocean.

The state with the largest Jewish population is—you guessed it—New York. All five boroughs, along with cities across the country, believe their bagels are the best; some think it's the water in their town that makes the difference. Growing up as a Jewish kid in a less religiously diverse community down south, though, I was more familiar with subpar bagels; my mortal enemy being the dreaded grocery-store bagel. Grocery-store bagels are bad for the same reason good bagels are good: tradition. These poser bagels don't follow the same procedures (e.g., boiling in water with malt) that all good bagels have used since they were created to defy the Polish bread ban, and instead opt for different cooking methods to increase output. What they end up with, though, is a needlessly sweet, bland, soft, and gentrified product that feels more adjacent to Wonder Bread. Other than what I could find at my local Publix, my options seemed limited to chains: Einstein Bros', Goldberg's, and Bagel Bros'.

Though the latter two hold a place in my heart (and are still pretty good), nothing will ever beat the first bagel I had in Brooklyn: I had gone for a trip with my parents, touring my college options junior year of high school. If you asked me now where I got it, I couldn't tell you—it was some hole-in-the-wall a block or two up from my hotel during my stay. Many people—Jews included—will tell you that a bagel needs all the fixings: capers, lox, tomato, and flavored cream cheese. Toppings, though, are a coping mechanism for flavorless bagels—a good bagel seldom needs cream cheese after light toasting. We walked into the cramped shop, picked up a bottle of water for our morning out, and each asked for our regular orders. With no space to eat inside, we leaned on the wall of a brownstone and dug in. Before I ventured up north, everybody had their own recommendation of where to get the best bagel in New York. Funnily enough, none of those people were Jewish. They may have tasted their fair share of bagels, but the more profound meaning was lost on them, so I decided not to listen. When I opened the wax paper it was wrapped in, I was greeted by perhaps the most dangerously oversized sesame bagel ever conceived; it had risen so much in the oven that it caused breaks in the crust, revealing its fluffy interior. Spilling out the sides and through the hole in the middle was—my favorite—plain cream cheese. There are times when you look at a dish and know it'll be the best you'll ever have.

I am a chronic food waster due to generalized anxiety disorder killing my appetite. Still, I don't believe I've ever demolished a bagel the way I did that chilly spring morning. A good bagel has chew: the kind where you have to move your whole head just to tug off a piece. A good bagel has so many sesame seeds that any puff of air in its direction causes them to rain down onto your black pants, leaving a crime scene. You feel the hours being ticked away by the clock as the dough develops—you get to know the family behind the recipe through the coarse texture of cornmeal on the bottom and the perfectly measured-to-taste kosher salt. All of that was present, but it wasn’t why I still carry it with me. That bagel was representative of the much larger picture of my identity as an American-Jew. It's harder to not be reminded of my great-grandmother in moments like that.

At this point, I had already visited Israel and felt even more isolated from my people as a result; since kindergarten, it had been prophesied to me as my true home as a Jew. Walking off the plane, though, everything read as stolen Arab and Muslim culture with a shoddy layer of paint over top, meant to conceal its origins. My brief time in Brooklyn circa 2023, though, was when I felt "the most Jewish" I ever had in my life. New York is entirely defined by the immigrants living within its limits; there’s a reason why you can find more Michelin-rated restaurants there than in any historically white city in the country. One of the first things I was taught in Jewish day school was “love thy neighbor.” With the atrocities being committed in the Middle East, it’s no wonder that Brooklyn felt more like home—there, people don’t just share with one another, they love one another through the boundaries of belief and tradition. One day, I walked through a neighborhood with more signs in Yiddish and Hebrew than in English; that day, I finally felt like I knew my great-grandma, Yam. In those streets, her spirit, along with many others, was present.