Intermission 1: Bagelcorn
Press a button to discover how the bagel transitioned from the ethnic era to the commercial era!
Technology
Technology played a pivotal role in shifting the bagel's status from that of a Jewish food to a variation on white bread that appealed to a mainstream American audience. The primary catalyst for the shift from the ethnic era to the commercial era was Daniel Thompson's, a Canadian-born American Jewish inventor, 1962 invention of the bagel machine, which could produce 2,400 bagels in one hour. This machine irreversibly changed bagel production and marketing; by democraticizing the ability to produce bagels, the machine dismantled Local 338's monopoly of bagel production knowledge. Indeed, the new technology rendered the highly skilled manual labor of rollers obsolete, allowing non-Jewish union members to enter the bagel production industry. Local 338 recognized this existential threat to their secretive cultural knowledge and, in turn, responded with Luddite-inspired sabotage: they famously threw wrenches into new machines. Yet their efforts, coupled with traditional bagel producers' rejection of new automation technologies, ultimately failed because bagel-producer Murray Lender, a Connecticut-based, second-generation bagel producer, embraced the technology. By coupling mass bagel production with quick-freezing technology and polyethylene packaging, Lender extended the bagel's shelf life from 7 hours to 72 hours and made mass distribution a possibility. The profit derived from increased production encouraged other bagel producers to adopt bagel technologies. With this shift to automotive production, however, the bagel's texture and taste changed. These technologies required the ethnic bagel's characteristic stiff dough to be thinned with water and the two-minute kettle boil to be replaced with 20-30-second steam injection ovens. These changes created the softer, breadier, and less flavorful commercial bagel.
Early Bagel Machine
World War II is often referred to as the "great watershed" of Jewish-American history. Post- WWII, Jews were given social permission to leave their Lower East Side urban enclaves and, alongside many gentile Americans, enter the new American frontier: the suburb. The GI Bill provided Jews with the opportunity to capitalize on this culture of acceptance; its provisions, which sponsored education and home loans, allowed Jews to access new suburban developments and amenities. Additionally, Americans viewed WWII as a victorious fight against fascism and veterans of the war, which included Jewish Americans, were treated with admiration and respect. Additionally, the act of fighting alongside gentile Americans (the armed forces did not segregate based on religion) helped reverse pre-war anti-Semitic stereotypes and unite Jewish interests with American interests. The horrors of the Holocaust, moreover, made overt expressions of antisemitism socially and politically illegitimate in the US, reversing the public’s negative perception of Jews. This reversal is most apparent in the cultural sphere, with Bess Myerson's becoming the first and only Jewish Miss America in 1945. Her victory signaled that Jewish women now had access to privileges previously reserved for white, Christian American women. However, to be accepted into the homogeneous post-War American culture, Jews in the suburbs needed to identify with their Jewish heritage less overtly and mirror their neighbors’ gentile lifestyle. Therefore, although non-Jews were now willing to consume the bagel, they required the bread to be altered to suit their palates. Enter the supersized "roll with a hole": the commercial bagel.
War
Betty White post-win
Promotion
It is extremely important to note that the changes that facilitated the rise of the commercial bagel, namely technological changes and the post-war culture of acceptance, did not merely happen to Jews. Rather, Jews played an active role in their and the bagel's shifting cultural role. Indeed, Jewish bakers served as cultural interpreters, temporarily preventing mainstream America from erasing the bagel's ethnic connotations. Jewish innovators such as Murray Lender both adopted new bagel technology and helped introduce it to the public by educating their new gentile consumers through pronunciation guides (it's BAY-gul). Additionally, Jews entered mainstream media and promoted the bagel as a sophisticated Jewish cultural experience, marketing the Bagel, Lox, and Cream Cheese combination as a harmonious combination of Jewish and American food traditions; this upscale exchange replaced cheaper Jewish ingredients such as herring and schmaltz with the status-signaling American items, Pacific Northwest salmon and Philadelphia Cream Cheese. These efforts lowered the barrier to entry for mainstream America into the bagel market. Yet, to access mainstream American markets, Jews rebranded the bagel as a breakfast bread rather than a Jewish bread. Their decision to do so would have cascading effects for the rest of the bagel's history.
Murray Lender 1960-2010