Flying the bagel flag
2025 is a time to dig in locally and get to know my neighbors. So I flew the bagel flag to encourage folks to stop by, fix themselves a bagel and chit chat.
A neighbor of mine who lives a few blocks away flies his gin pennant flag on occasion, an invitation to stop in for one of his fancy cocktails. Every time I heeded the flag, I sat at the kitchen bar having a conversation with someone I had never met. The gin pennant flag is a maritime flag, and the story is that flying it was an invitation for officers to come aboard the ship for a free drink. There is no military story behind the bagel flag, but I liked the idea of it and thought I could entice people to come to my house and talk with me if I offered up fresh bagels. I live on a block that is dense with single-family homes and apartments, and we don’t all know each other. So my husband ordered me a bagel flag, and last Sunday I flew it.
When I was looking through the archives of the American Jewish World, the Twin Cities Jewish newspaper, I learned about a 1970s bagel club. It was actually called the Ruth Lipschultz bagel club, and newspaper articles referred to her as the ‘bagel queen.’ The club was a gathering for prominent local Jewish folks to gather on Sunday mornings to eat great bagels, kibbitz, and raise money for local Jewish causes. The bylaws and articles were so unexpected, so fun to read about, and inspirational enough that I started my own bagel club. I have wanted to deepen my connection with Jewish women in Madison and am doing this through the bagel club. But unlike the bagel club, the bagel flag is not exclusive. So I started making my bagels, posted a photo of the flag on Instagram, and put out the flag at ten am last Sunday.
The flag did what I hoped. The people who stopped by ranged from good friends, to friends, to a neighbor and the three Norwegian women who were part of an apprenticeship exchange program with her, to a neighbor that I didn’t know, and her two sisters in town to celebrate a 30th birthday.
Although a great bagel can go a long way to shake me out of a bad mood, I know it is not going to shake us out of the institutional crisis we are living through. But I have been thinking a lot about how people can knit together as a community. I co-host a podcast where we talk with people doing the crucial work of strengthening democracy at the grassroots by helping their neighbors form real human connections. (link here to check it out.) It is cocktails for my neighbor, it is bagels for me. If you have a flag you fly (maybe metaphorically, maybe physically), I would love to hear about it. If you live nearby and you fly your puzzle flag or your tamale-making flag or your dance lesson flag, etc, let me know. I’ll stop by.
This is a delightful practice!