Beigel or bagel? The history of the Eastern European Jewish staple and how it shaped the East End today

As Brick Lane’s yellow-fronted Beigel Shop reopens after a surprising four-month closure, we journey back to 14th-century Poland to unravel a tale of baked goods, resilience, and migration.

When a mysterious repossession order was pasted behind the locked-up doors of Brick Lane’s oldest, 24-hour bagel shop, the public outcry was outstanding. Rumours swirled about why the much-loved eatery had put up its shutters, sparking fears of a tragic loss to the East End’s Jewish heritage.

But all was not lost. On June 26, the brightly-coloured magnet for London’s tourists and east London locals alike opened to the public once more, restoring balance to the famous street. Just two doors down from the Beigel Shop at 155 Brick Lane stands its friendly, white-fronted competitor, Beigel Bake; together, the ‘yellow one’ and the ‘white one’ make up irreplaceable pieces of the story of Jewish London, and when one disappeared the story of felt fractured and incomplete. 

Late in June, the family posted a statement on Instagram explaining the reasons behind the shock closure: ‘Our recent hiatus came as the culmination of a long-standing family dispute over the building’s ownership and subsequent rents, alongside the health struggles of our beloved father and uncle, Aron, who remains in recovery from a heart attack and multiple strokes.’

The business has existed in its current form since 1987, when the previous Evering Bakery business was acquired by Israeli brothers David Barel and Aron Zelman, soon joined by their sister Mazal White. But its history as a bagel eatery stretches back to 1855 when it was founded by Russian Jews, according to its owners.

Now, the historic institution is passing into the capable hands of the next generation. Zelman’s 22-year-old quadruplets and Mazal’s three children will be running the business, ensuring it remains in the family as it enters a new era.

‘It’s not just family legacy, but East End legacy,’ says Ashley Zelman, who has taken the reins from his father. ‘It’s always been a bagel bakery since 1855, not from our family, it’s gone through about three different families. But to carry on the legacy, it’s exciting, it’s thrilling, but it’s also scary because you mess up one little bit and then you’ve got all the public outcry.’

After undergoing a quadruple bypass and enduring six strokes, Zelman’s father will not be returning to work in his beloved shop. When the repossession order was served, the family hid the news from him to avoid causing additional stress. ‘He’s gotten a lot better within the last month and a half, but [it’s] small steps,’ his son says.

‘We’re going to bring him here in a couple of weeks, so it helps jog his memory and whatnot, and so he can just see the shop again, but to work, no chance in hell.’

Hayley White, 33, has worked at the business for 18 years and has memories of sitting on a mayonnaise bucket in the shop when she was a toddler. ‘We want to carry it on in the right way, but also give a modern twist to it. Traditional but modern,’ she says.

‘Our head baker, I still remember him from when I was three years old. The flour, rolling the dough, I still remember all of it. I have images in my mind. So that’s what’s important to me, just to keep it going. I want to make my mum proud and my uncle proud.’

The Beigel Shop is more than just a monument to the Zelman and White family legacy; it’s one of the last tangible links to the East End’s rich Jewish past. By preserving the Yiddish term for what has become a globally recognised, mass-produced baked good, the eatery serves as a poignant reminder of the Eastern European origins of the bagel. 

According to Maria Balinska’s “The Bagel: The Surprising History of a Modest Bread”, the first-known reference to the word bagel dates back to 1610 in the community regulations of the Jewish Council of Krakow, Poland, where it was ruled that bagels were to be given to women as gifts after childbirth.

The origin of the term ‘bagel’ comes from the Yiddish ‘beygal’, also spelt ‘beigel’. Its exact etymology is unclear, though it is derived from the Middle High German boug, meaning ‘ring, bracelet’ and related to the Old High German biogan ‘to bend’, according to the Jewish Chronicle. 

In her book, Balinska speculates that bagels may have evolved from soft pretzels brought to Poland by German immigrants in the 14th century. She suspects that these pretzels then morphed into obwarzanek: a braided, ring-shaped bread enjoyed exclusively by the nobility at feasts in the Polish royal court. 

The theory goes that Jewish bakers concocted a similar, cheaper bread for everyday consumption: a caramel-coloured roll with a hole made from yeasted wheat dough. It’s shaped by hand into a ring, boiled and then baked to achieve a chewy, dense, endlessly satisfying interior. 

But antisemitism during this time in Europe was rife, and laws in Poland stipulated that Jewish tradespeople must segregate their economic activities from Christians. Interestingly, Jewish bakers were given unusual leeway, as per a radical code issued from the Polish Prince Boleslaw the Pious in 1264 that said: ‘Jews may freely buy and sell and touch bread like Christians.’

Gradually, Christians began buying Jewish bagels instead of obwarzanek, and the delicious baked goods, sold in baskets or stacked on long sticks by street vendors, surged in popularity, becoming a mainstay of Eastern European cuisine. But how did they end up in the East End?

Between 1880 and 1914, more than 2.5 million Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jews fled Eastern Europe to escape antisemitic persecution. Of these, around 2 million made their way to America, while approximately 350,000 settled in Western Europe.

During this period, the East End blossomed into a vibrant centre of Yiddish culture and commerce. The streets of Mile End, Whitechapel, and Spitalfields were alive with bustling shops offering a rich array of Jewish culinary specialities, from salt-beef sandwiches and Latkes to challah and sweet herrings.

In the early 20th century, London was home to at least 60 Jewish master bakers, with many operating in the East End. One surviving remnant of this bygone era is Rinkoff Bakery, founded in 1911 by Hyman Rinkoff who fled from Ukraine to England with his treasured family recipes. The original bakery was opened on Vallance Road, but now it’s based on Jubilee Street, just off Mile End Road.

As time passed, Jewish families relocated to more affluent neighbourhoods in north and east London, leaving their synagogues, market stalls and bakeries behind. The area transformed with the swathes of Bangladeshi migration starting in the 1950s, adding a new chapter to the ever-evolving story of the East End.

But by retaining the Yiddish spelling in their name, and keeping their baking methods traditional, Beigel Shop is a proud monument to our area’s Jewish past. ‘The boiled and baked on woods into the oven is the original way. We will always keep that way,’ says Zelman. 

‘There are only three bakeries in that I know, in and around London, which is us, Beigel Bake next door, and Shalom’s Bakery in Gants Hill. [Those are] the only three places I know in and around London that still bake it that traditional way,’ he says. But why isn’t anyone else making the real deal? ‘What do I think differently of everywhere else? In most places, they get [their bagels] maybe from JJ Foods or whatnot, if they don’t get them from us, that is. It’s all tray-baked. It’s all factory-made bagels,’ he says.

So what’s the secret recipe behind the Beigel Shop’s shining success over several generations? The cousins refuse to divulge. ‘It’s a family recipe,’ says White, but they tell me some of the basics: flour, water, salt, yeast. 

Twenty years ago when the shop was run by Zelman’s father and auntie, ‘they used to hand roll it,’ but this ‘didn’t make as many bagels as they do nowadays.’ Everyday, the team makes around 2000 to 3000, and up to 10,000 on Saturdays and Sundays.

‘Nowadays we just press it through a machine and let it prove.’ Then, the bagels are ‘boiled in a boiler for a minute to two, then put on woods.’ Zelman explains why: ‘The reason they are put on woods is if you were to put them straight onto the hard, ceramic tiles in the oven, they’d stick straight away, you wouldn’t be able to get them off or whatnot.’ The whole process takes between one to two hours, depending on the season.

Now that the Beigel Shop is back in business, the next generation is eager to make their family proud by running the shop exactly how it’s been done for the past 35 years. ‘I used to come in when I was a baby,’ says White. ‘I’ve always been in [here]. Beigel Shop has always been a part of my life, so I want to do it well.’

While Zelman’s leaving the UK in four months, he’s keen on his future children taking on the mantle when they come of age, just like he did. ‘Even our cousins and my siblings, they all worked here every Sunday when they were growing up, to make a bit of money and learn about the family history and to keep it in the family,’ he says. 

‘So when I have kids, hopefully this place is still here. We’ll definitely be coming here.’

If you enjoyed this feature, you might like reading Trailblazer of Tower Hamlets: Miriam Moses, the UK’s first female Jewish mayor, and her lasting legacy