This is one of those stories that is a rare bit of uncontroversial feel good news, and I think it deserves a short diary.
Most Americans are familiar with bagels and their chewy wholesome deliciousness, which are so mainstream that one hardly thinks of them as particularly Jewish cuisine anymore.
But fewer people outside of New York City and a few other traditional Jewish enclaves are familiar with the more esoteric Bialy, which is similar to a bagel in its chewy bread-like quality, but is not boiled prior to baking and has no hole, only a thinner region in the middle.
Bialys have become more of a niche product, and with that transformation many bakeries have declined. Now New York's oldest Bialy shop, Brooklyn's Coney Island Bialys and Bagels, has been rejuvinated by seemingly unlikely new owners.
In this story from the Jewish Daily Forward, we learn the heartwarming news
Coney Island Bialys and Bagels, teetered and fell in September, after Steve Ross, whose grandfather began the company 91 years ago, called it quits. In a twist of history — and, one might say, a twist of bread as well — the store has been saved by two Muslim businessmen who leased the space and started a corporation under almost the identical name. They’ll keep the kosher shop’s offerings the same, preserving its history.
Retiring owner Ross is a living connection to the Jewish immigrant past:
The founder of the original store was his grandfather, Morris Rosenzweig, who came from Bialystok, Poland, the town from which bialys got their name. Rosenzweig began the company in 1920, making it the oldest in the city.
And only in the wonderful melting pot that is New York City would that connection to the past be kept alive and vital by new immigrants from halfway across the world
“It’s the same bialys…We are using the same recipe, too,” said Peerzada Shah, who now co-owns the business with Zafaryab Ali, who worked with Ross at the bialy shop for a decade. “We want to keep the place on track,” said Shah. And since re-opening in September, customers have regularly told the pair, “We appreciate that you’re keeping the store open,” according to Shah.
The rest of the world could learn a thing or three from the tolerant, secular melting pot of New York City, a place where we don't bat an eyelash when Mexicans immigrants run superb Greek diners, Chinese immigrants run great burrito shops, Dominican immigrants wait tables at Indian restaurants, and now Pakistani Muslim immigrants run an iconic Jewish bakery.
Let's hear it for New York!
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