Originally Posted by
Dovster
Believe it or not, until a few years ago bagels were unknown in Israel!
Today, there are several places where you can get acceptable bagels but the best are at Tal Bagels in Tel Aviv. They also have great shmears to put on them, including excellent chopped liver.
As mentioned in the above post from 2006, Israel had no bagels until about 10 years ago. (It did have very large, round, breads with a hole in the middle but it in no other way resembled a bagel).
Real bagels are still hard to find here (outside of Tal's) but a double miracle happened in the last month. The first part is that pastrami, as New Yorkers know it, became available in supermarkets.
The second part is that a few days ago Jewish rye bread appeared on the market (although, to date, I know of only one supermarket in my area that has it).
Today, for the first time, I was able to have pastrami on rye in Israel! Alas, the closest thing that I can find to Deli mustard is French's Spicy Brown, but after 36 years of living here without pastrami on rye I am not about to complain about the mustard.
(Oddly enough, Hebrew National products are not sold in the Hebrew nation.)