By Rabbi Rachel Esserman

It seemed like everywhere I turned today, something controversial concerning bagels occurred. The first instance came during my chaplaincy work. My time generally overlaps most staff and individuals’ lunch times. The food can look and smell really good, which is difficult because I normally have to wait another hour or two before I can eat lunch. Anyway, today a staff member was eating a beautiful bagel sandwich. I could tell it wasn’t lox and cream cheese, so I asked what it was. She answered, “Ham and cheese.” She also noted that it tasted really good.

Now, the staff person was not Jewish, so there is no reason for her to know I would never eat ham and cheese on a bagel (or on anything else). The two just don’t go together, but that’s because the only fillings for bagels when I was growing up were lox or whitefish. (By the way, I also love a toasted bagel with butter, especially if it’s an onion bagel. I don’t need to put anything else on it.) This reminded me that bagels are now an all American food and that most people who eat them will not be using traditional Jewish fillings. As hard as it can be to admit that bagels are no longer an exclusively Jewish food, it’s clear that’s now true.

But this was not my only time I heard something controversial about bagel choices. Later the same day, I saw an article in a Hey Alma e-mail about the actor Adam Brody, who was called “everyone’s favorite TV hot rabbi.” I haven’t seen the Netflex show “Nobody Wants This,” where he plays a rabbi, but the Jewish press loves publishing articles debating the show’s plot and characters. The Hey Alma article discussed an interview Brody gave that appeared in the UK magazine The Stylist. It included information about when he worked at a bagel shop. While he liked savory bagels, he noted that one of his old favorites (which he claims not to have eaten in years) is a chocolate chip bagel with strawberry cream cheese. The author of the Hey Alma article objected to his choice, although she still thinks he’s the hot rabbi of the season.

I’ve written before about how I don’t consider chocolate-chip challah real challah and must confess I feel the same way about bagels. Except, perhaps, for cinnamon raisin, bagels should be savory. As for strawberry cream cheese: that actually sounds good, although I wouldn’t want to put it on an onion or garlic bagel. The flavors just clash. However, I could see it on plain bagels, or, even better, banana bread.

By the way, not everyone I’ve met over the years thinks of bagels as Jewish food. When I spent 10 months in Israel during rabbinical school, I had three Israeli roommates. After a trip to Jerusalem with American friends, I brought some bagels back to our apartment, One roommate absolutely refused to even try it a bite. I explained that it was just bread in a different shape, but, even though she was Jewish, to her, bagels were a foreign food that no good Israeli would eat. Maybe we should keep that in mind before we criticize someone else’s choice in bagels or bagel toppings.