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Some more bagel photos, courtesy again of Andrew Miksys. Article here.

So. Nestled among the innocent, carefree, goodwishing comments to the bagel piece is this:

In the light of all the terrible things happening to the small local Jewish community and the ongoing efforts of the Lithuanians to hide or minimize their extensive complicity in Holocaust crimes and their government-funded campaign to relativize the Holocaust by falsely equating it with the crimes of Communism, one would imagine that two obviously-intelligent Jewish Fulbright scholars in Lithuania to study contemporary Jewish issues would be able to come up with something more meaningful than reintroducing Lithuanians to bagels.

This was written by one Efraim Zuroff (unless there’s some very weird and motivation-less impersonation going on, in which case, the following is addressed solely to the content of the comment). EZ is a renowned Nazi-hunter and a tireless advocate for Jews and Jewish interests worldwide; I have only the deepest admiration of him — his comment is sort of like a punch from your favorite celebrity.

Jake replied.

Efraim, obviously I am aware of contemporary Lithuanian political rhetoric and its obfuscation of the Holocaust, double-genocide theory, and the historical bleaching of Jewish history in this country, and am keenly interested in raising public awareness to this issue. Considering local Lithuanians have very little interaction with Jews from any part of the world, I would think that a popular Jewish cultural resurgence would be a positivist approach to making Jewish presence felt again in this city, and by proxy, would raise public interest in contemporary Jewish topics / politics. I am sorry that you don’t agree.

I’m quoting this in full because I can’t hope to say it better; but, at the risk of mild redundancy, I will expand.

There are very serious ongoing Jewish- and Holocaust-related issues in Lithuania — Efraim is painfully correct on that point. We are increasingly aware and troubled by these, and like everyone else involved/concerned, are dedicated to publicizing the problem, and finding some sort of resolution.

But none of this detracts from the purpose, effectiveness, and all-around kickassness of the  bagel party. Let’s, for just a second, grant Efraim’s implication (which is stone dead wrong) that this is nothing more than serving a bunch of Lithuanians some decent lox n’ cream cheese bagels. My question, then, which I’ll put in words easily and quickly understood, is: SO WHAT. We are not undermining anyone’s efforts of “significant” Jewish activism. We have not dedicated every waking hour to making bagels. We have not ignored our Fulbright mandates (indeed, this is, dare I say, a fantastically successful implementation and example of the Fulbright’s misison of meaningful cross-cultural communication). We have been in Lithuania for just over a month; the issues Efraim refers to are complicated, nuanced, and extraordinarily political — allow me, please, to gain some fluency in the matters before I chain myself to any gate.  Really, it’s not clear to me what criticism can be levied at something as innocent and fun as a bagel party.

But — and here I return to what Jake stated so eloquently above — a bagel party in Lithuania is obviously not just a bagel party. I’m not sure this came across in the article, but: for most people there, this was the only real engagement with Jewish issues they’ve ever had. The kids here don’t know or don’t care, and this is an unacceptable tragedy. But those English op-eds and essays — which are very very important, if slightly agitated — aren’t read by this crowd; and the heavyhanded activism is completely ignored or, worse, detested. How do you convince somebody in an argument he doesn’t know he’s having? If there has been in recent years a more successful Lithuanian Jewish event that attracted and interested non-Jews, I’m unaware of it. I’m fairly confident that had we thrown a Holocaust-obfuscation roundtable, the turnout wouldn’t be quite so robust. We haven’t kidded ourselves that we’ve solved the country’s problems by baking and serving some bagels; we just believe that it’s a meaningful and fun and quietly powerful entry.

Come on — aren’t bagels a pretty darn good way to open a dialogue? To give people a forum to ask, to wonder, maybe even to reflect? To meet normal, young, American Jews who are proud of their Jewishness, and who want to share that pride? To encounter something Jewish that’s readily digestible and agreeable and apolitical, unlike the anti-Semitism, the anti-anti-Semitism, the anti-anti-anti-Semitism, etc.?

Mr. Zuroff, these Vilnius bagels are, at the very least, harmless — and they just might be actually revolutionary.

As mentioned, article’s up. There wasn’t really any space to go into just how we made the bagels, which are not typically made in the average American kitchen. What I left out was the process.

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All photos, btw, were snapped by the marvelously talented and nice and tall Andrew Miksys.

We had two test runs before the big bagel event. In the first, we forgot the salt — but when we served them, they were toasted and slathered and loxed. Capers, as well — these make superb taste-diversions for the salt-lacking bagel. The next batch, which was more someone’s date than a party, were terrific and beautiful. The final batch — the bagels we eventually served at the party — was hard. We multiplied everything by five, to have enough (in the end not nearly enough), and math+alcohol, as everyone knows, =  not so smooth. And when putting in the salt, the flimsy bag tipped over and released a good deal more than was recommended. (This was the minor mishap I had referred to.) We had an immediate emergency powwow: Do we isolate the infected bowl (about 1/4 of the whole thing) and call them salty bagels? Or do we combine it with the other 3/4 yet unsalted, and hope it wasn’t too toxic and thereby ruin the entire thing?

These are questions that no man should have to face.

We had an enormous bagel party this weekend, and Tablet was kind enough to let me talk about it. There are lots of wonderful photos that couldn’t fit over there, so I’ll post those later today.