“Here’s a bagel. Let’s sit down and talk about this.”

My history professor, Dr. Robert Bernheim (who is also reading Eichler’s Times Echo 😀) was recently interviewed by Beit Polska/Jewish Renewal in Poland about his recent trip(s) to Poland, his family history, and his use of “bagel diplomacy.”

And also “bagel memory.”

From a Portland Press Herold interview last September:

Bagels are a connection. It’s a form, for me, of active memorialization, active remembrance. It connects me to a family that I never knew. I only know about. I don’t have a recipe. I don’t have a kneading trough or a bread bowl. I don’t have any of these things from any of these relatives because the Holocaust erased that.