[dlt]

Alouette, when I lived in Jerusalem, the only place to get a bagel was in one Arab bakery in the Old City, and it only vaguely looked like a bagel as it was about 10 inches in diameter.

Sabramerican, I can tell you stranger stories than the one about a Hasid who asks what Gentiles are doing in the Old City.

[Sabramerican]

Send them to Ripley's

[Alouette]

the only place to get a bagel was in one Arab bakery in the Old City

Boiled water bagels are an American thing. My relatives in Meah Shearim had these things made out of cake dough they called "bagels" but not what we're used to. Anyway, bagels are not anymore "Jewish" than pizza is "Italian."

[cookcounty]

"Alouette, when I lived in Jerusalem, the only place to get a bagel was in one Arab bakery in the Old City, and it only vaguely looked like a bagel as it was about 10 inches in diameter."

You are probably overlooking the fact that the majority of Israeli Jews are from the Arab world, many of them refugees. Bagels, lox, Saul bellow, and Streimels are all "Ashkenazic" or European Jewish. The "Sephardic" or Oriental Jews do not know this stuff at all. That doesn't make them less Jewish.

As to "pork butchers" outnumbering "kosher butchers," having visited my Sephardic relatives in Tel Aviv a fair bit, I think that's, well, baloney.