The Voyage of the Bagel:

The evolution of jewiish food

Book I

"All noble things are as difficult as they are rare”. Spinoza

"That goes double for steaks!" Baruch Spinachoza, 1764

The potato knish, the onion kugel, schmaltz: For generations, Jews have enjoyed these delicacies, rarely pausing to wonder, where did they come from? Most of the Gedolim, the Kveydim and Shmeynim took the book of Brayshit (Genesis) at face value, and assumed that the great foods have been handed down through the generations from the time of Adam, or, more precisely, Eve.

Rashi, commenting on the verse "of all the fruits you may eat" ( Gen II: XVI,) interprets fruits in its wider sense, to include…

anything first rolled or wrapped in dough and then baked or fried (fricassee).

The Rumbunn, in "on Brayshit," muses…

"surely a dish as subtle as a cheese k'nish could not be conceived of, from nihility, by a human brain. For it is written,

"Many foods made by Yiddish, but Only God can bake a k'nish."

Not even the argumentative Sephorno[1] objects to this opinion, as we see in the following comment on Gen 1: 20,

"On the fourth day of creation, when G-d commanded the seas to teem with fish, it is clear that some fish were selected, ground up, then boiled with an onion and a bit of pepper, and set aside to serve to Adam on the seventh day."

It was not until the comparatively recent 18th century, that the first free thinkers dared to question these assumptions.

In 1763, a young Rabbinical student in Frankfurt-on-Rye by the name of Baruch Spinachoza was forced by miserable financial circumstances to wait on tables part time in an inn not far from his yeshiva. His alert, Talmud- honed mind could not help noticing the energy and dynamism in the world of food. Dishes went in and out of style (but they were guaranteed to raise a smile!). One month, the customers wanted Frankfurters, but a scant few weeks later they were all ordering Hamburgers from the Burger joint across the Rhine, and poor Baruch was pulling in nothing in tips. Menus sprung up like mushrooms and were just as quickly discarded. For the natural world of culinary life it was eat or be eaten and for sausages, it was the survival of the fattest. Baruch's notes, first scribbled on greasy napkins, grew into a book, The Origin of the Spicies which suggested that all modern flavours are derived from Yemenite hilbeh ( fenugreek sauce ). It gave the conservative scientists of the Academy heartburn, but it sold like hot Latkes. It was soon followed by a controversial article on the evolution chicken schnitzels, for which he won a Pullet "Sir" Prize. He never went hungry or scrounged for tips again.

Yet Spinachoza was never able to validate his theories. It remained for later generations of researchers to peel back the fossil record in which can be found, practically unchanged, the primordial ancestors of the foods Jews choose to chew today. (see NOTES at the end of this treatise).

The following photographs offer conclusive evidence that Jewish foods evolved over vast eons of time until finally appearing in the familiar forms we know and fress today. ("Fress, today, all my tsorris seem so far away!" / line from a popular song.)

A FOSSULIA OF NASHERAI

/ Kneidlach, Pre- Cambrian Period:
Most primitive forms of food; soft bodied organisms, soft boiled eggs
/ Boneless fishes:
Egg cluster of the Protopisces Gephilte Fish, Pre- Cambrian. The male Gefilte bites off slices of carrot and places them on top of the eggs, just like their modern descendants.
/ Cambrian Period: General warming of climate. Thus this shmura matza was able to develop and bake in less than 18 minutes!
/ The first boned creatures: This brisket has survived, almost unchanged, and can still be found in delicatessens in parts of the Bronx and Toronto. Pre-Silurian
/ It is an all too common assumption that all prehistoric food was Ashkenazi. This fossil Kubeh, Early Ordovican, found near Mossul, Iraq, is definitive evidence that Eastern delicacies, too filled the primordial seas.
/
Strange and wondrous creatures appear, most of which leave no trace, except for their indestructible intestinal tract: Thus, the ancient Kishke, or stuffed Derma, the near ancestor of all Kishkes today, and about as palatable. Pre-Ordovican
/ In the ORDOVICAN PERIOD, the first shelled creatures appeared. This is a
' Varnishke,' a pasta shell, (1.cm) usually found in colonies of thousands, together with KASHA, a type of semolina.
/ As trees spread out over the land, new species evolved to join them in partnerships. Here is a perfect apple shtrudel, differing from today's shtrudel only by the direction of the coil. Try putting this baby in your E-mail address.
Pre-Ha'etz
/ Chicken soup appears, as evidenced by this 'feesle.' Most parts of the chicken soup were too soft to leave fossils. Paleontologists have been easily able to reconstruct entire soups from a piece of one foot:
Thus, the facile fossil feesle bissel.
/ THE KORBANIFOUROUS AGE: Fishes with massive heads appear, a clear sign that Rosh Hashanna is not far away; only another 340,000,000 years and three weeks.
/ The Bony Fishes: Kippers and Sardines
proliferate, and take over the seas, which soon start to acquire a salty taste. It has been postulated that were it not for schmaltz herring, the Jewish people may not have evolved at all.
/ This primitive salmon fell into a swamp of cream cheese and thus was preserved intact for 230 million years. Talk about leftovers!!: Quatredairy Period
/ Giant Bagels rolled across the plains of the LATE CAMEMBERIAN EPOCH. In this excellent specimen, the cream cheese is quite evident.
/ From this rude beginning evolved the corned beef sandwiches we know and love today.
/ THE MACABEIAN AGE: Donuts, soofganyot and schvingim are the dominant species, as oil is now plentiful and hot. This is a primitive N. American donut; The hole would not be round for another million years
/ The aptly named Rav Cook, with some Asiatic Soofganiot. Note the spherical shape, the complete lack of a hole, and the large size. The same goes for the two fossils he is holding.
/ The inner structure of these American donuts are quite visible.
/ The humid climate and the abundance of yeast, allowed these donuts to increase in size. Modern paleontologist demonstrates how predators might have developed in their wake.
The ascendancy of pastry marks the beginning of the Crumbian Era.
/ Donautus Brontosaurus, perhaps the largest pastry ever to live on dry land.
It was so huge, that it needed an extra hole so that the filling could reach all parts of its body.
/ This petrified cinnamon bun looks just like the ones my mother used to bake. Yumm.
Early Pastriociene Era
/ Giant sliced Hallah, 15 meters in diameter: Pastriociene Era, also called the Age of Dinnerosaurs, 'terrible foodstuffs.'
/ Did Mammals cause the extinction of the giant baked goods? Here is a fossilized rat, preserved for eternity in the act of treifing up this Halla, Feh!!! LATE JURASSIC PARK PERIOD.
/ What a great pair of pulkelach!
(The meideleh is sitting on the fossil.) TyranoPulke Rex ruled the Esso'Zoic; one leg bone could provide enough cholent meat for a small city, but the kids would still fight over who gets it.
/ A Living Fossil.
Rabbi Moishe Aryeh Friedman, ultraorthodox anti-Zionist extremist.

NOTES and FREQUENTLY ASKED KASHES:

WHAT IS THE FOSSIL RECORD EXACTLY?

1 The Fossil Record (78 rpm) / 2 The Fossil Record Player / 3 Dancing to
The Fossil Record / 4 Fossullia

( NOTE: All the pictures in the above table are of real fossils, painstakingly dug from the strata of the ages with the help of GOOGLE. OK, so not all. There are maybe three exceptions, well, four if you count Reb Moshe Aryeh!)

/Barry Silverberg ,

Kiriat Shmona, Purim, 2007

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[1] Did you know that the Sephorno had a terrible lisp and referred to himself as The Theforno all his life? That's why they thtuck him at the bottom of the page, where he couldn't drool up the other mefarshim.