Although the sale made him a millionaire many times over, Noah Alper’s heart has always been in the right place.  As he explains in his book, Business Mensch: Timeless Wisdom for Today’s Entrepreneur, his goal wasn’t to start a large bagel franchise and eventually sell it for millions of dollars but rather to simply make bagels the way he remembered them as a kid growing up on the East Coast.

My father, Rabbi Henri E. Front z”l, was the rabbi at Temple Beth David in Westminster, CA. As part of his duties, the temple would host a second night of Passover. My father wrote the temple’s Haggadah for the event although it was mainly a compilation from other sources. It is the same Haggadah we use today for our family Passover service although I updated it a few years ago.

The best part of the Haggadah is the closing prayer, which everyone at the Seder reads together. It is a thought-provoking meditation on the meaning of the holiday and was written by Rabbi Elliot D. Rosenstock. I invite you to make it a Passover tradition at your Seder.

You Haven’t Fully Celebrated Passover…

You haven’t fully celebrated Passover unless you have actually tasted the bitterness of bondage and resolved never to inflict it upon another person’s spirit or will.

You haven’t fully celebrated Passover until you have felt the anguish of those whose daily fare is not much more ample than unleavened bread and have resolved to help alleviate their plight.

You haven’t fully celebrated Passover unless you have taken fresh delight in the glories of the emerging Spring season.

You haven’t fully celebrated Passover unless you have truly said dayenu: “Thank you God for the blessings which are mine. Even a fraction of them would excite my gratitude.”

You haven’t fully celebrated Passover unless like Moses you realize that you are obligated to resist evil that threatens not only yourself but others.

You haven’t fully celebrated Passover until you have realized that Judaism summons you to sing as well as to sigh, feast as well as fast, play as well as pray.

You haven’t fully celebrated Passover unless you have decided to prove yourself worthy of the suffering, the sacrifices, and the courage of your more farseeing predecessors.

You haven’t fully celebrated Passover until you have sensed again that Judaism is a faith which likes to be explained.

You haven’t fully celebrated Passover unless you have understood that the opinions and ideas of your children deserve to be honored.

You haven’t fully celebrated Passover until you have sharpened your appetite for freedom — for yourself and for all mankind.

To celebrate National Bagel Day, bagel shops around the nation are offering specials, so you might want to stop by your favorite bagel store or bakery today to sniff out a deal. And even if no deal is to be had, go ahead and fress (eat) anyway – I give you permission.

Yesterday, two different furry animals poked their heads out of the ground to take a look around. Early in the morning in Pennsylvania, the famous groundhog Punxsutawney Phil looked around and predicted an early spring. Later at sundown, Chinese people around the world elevated the rabbit to supreme status as they ushered in the Year of the Rabbit. If you are a fan of such events, and we are, it was a hare-raising day indeed!

Chinese New Year is the time when we pay homage to our own love of all things Chinese, for the Jewish Zodiac would not exist in a vacuum. So we say thank you to the Chinese for their Zodiac as we usher out the ferociousness of the Year of the Tiger. We hope the Year of the Rabbit will bring us a year of peace – for the rabbit is above all else an animal who loves to love.

For the Jewish Zodiac, the opposite might be true as 2011 brings us the Year of the Pastrami. Last year was a year of regeneration, symbolized by the “greening” and “fermenting” nature of the Year of the Pickle. Hopefully this year we are out of our “predicament” (a synonym for pickle) and can feast with ferociousness on the fruits (and meats) of our labors. Nothing symbolizes this more than the pastrami.

Pastrami comes from the root “pastra,” meaning “to preserve” in Romanian, so in that sense pastrami and pickle have a lot in common. But nothing symbolizes abundance like a pastrami sandwich. At the turn of the 20th century, a Jewish immigrant’s hopes and dreams were “piled as high as the slices of a pastrami sandwich.” So too should our hopes be for 2011.

Pastrami is a party animal who loves a celebration: “Brisket’s hipper sibling, always smokin’ and ready to party. You spice up life even if you keep your parents up at night. Compatible with Pickle, who’s always by your side.”

So this year, dig in! Don’t just take a bite of the sandwich, devour the whole thing.

Or as the Chinese say, “Gung Hay Fat Choy!” Loosely translated, that means “L’chaim!”

Seth Front is the creator of the Jewish Zodiac®, a deli food parody of the Chinese zodiac, and a screenwriter (“Nickel and Dime”) who writes about his seriocomic Jewish life at blog.jewzo.com.

There was a panic in the astrology world recently when astronomer Parke Kunkle of the Minneapolis Community and Technical College declared that the zodiac signs have shifted due to a realignment of the Earth, moon and stars.

The Egg Cream is dying. Unless you’re a person of a certain time and place – New York before the 1950s – you probably don’t even know what an Egg Cream is.

An Egg Cream is essentially a chocolate soda. It’s made with chocolate syrup – Fox’s U-Bet the preferred brand – whole milk and seltzer water. This bubbly favorite was made famous during the era of soda fountains and soda “jerks,” the name for those young men behind the counter who would “jerk” the soda fountain handle to add the soda water.

But hardly anyone goes to a deli and orders it anymore. Mostly I think deli owners are to blame for this. The Egg Cream gets little notice on the menu, usually stuck on the last page in the beverages section under coffee, tea, and Dr. Brown’s. And if somebody by chance orders an Egg Cream, they make it in the kitchen then bring it to the table with no fanfare whatsoever, a total stealth mission. I can imagine a waitress serving an Egg Cream to a patron and whispering “here’s your Egg Cream but don’t tell anyone about it – we wouldn’t want to sell many of these. If you could act like you’re not enjoying it that might help too.”

Is this any way to treat an icon?

When I was a kid, I remember going to Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlour. The place was pure fun: a red and white striped facade with waiters and waitresses inside wearing garters on their arms and straw hats on their heads. Farrell’s billed itself as an old fashioned soda fountain shop and every kid wanted to have his birthday party there. And we all wanted the same thing: The Pig’s Trough.

The Pig’s Trough, or “The Trough” for short, was a double banana split served in an stainless-steel pig’s trough. Whenever anyone ordered one, the waiters would bring it out with great fanfare, ringing bells throughout the restaurant to celebrate its arrival. One of the waiters might even don a gorilla mask and carry a bunch of bananas since that was one of the main ingredients.

The best part about The Trough was because of its name you were allowed to throw all etiquette to the wind and devour it like a pig. Maybe you started with a spoon but by the end, when what remaining ice cream had melted into liquid, you’d put your face directly into the trough and lick it all up it like a pig. Heck, it was your birthday and your friends were egging you on, so who could complain?

Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlour Restaurants were incredibly popular in the 1960s and 1970s and grew into a nationwide chain of 130 locations under the watchful eye of its founder Robert “Bob” Farrell. Bob sold out in 1985 and the new owners changed the concept and the chain died, although they’ve recently brought it back.

What does this have to do with the deli? Deli owners gripe that their clientele is too old, that the deli doesn’t attract the young. They also complain that margins on food, especially popular items like pastrami and corned beef, are too slim. The solution to both of these problems: bring back the Egg Cream!

If I were running a deli, every time someone would order an Egg Cream, I’d ring a bell and every waiter would simultaneous yell “Egg Cream.” Then I’d have someone bring out a tray with all the fixings for an Egg Cream. With great fanfare, the waiter or waitress or maybe even a special “Egg Cream Specialist” would place the tall frosted glass on the table, put the long stirring spoon into the glass, then dramatically pour an inch of Fox’s U-Bet syrup from high above into the glass. Then he’d do the same with the inch of whole milk. Then he’d take the seltzer, preferably from an old-fashioned seltzer bottle if they could get one, and slowly yet artfully pour it three quarters of the way up the glass. Then, in front of everyone at the table, he’d rapidly stir the mixture so that the carbonated seltzer would create the foam head that typifies a well-made Egg Cream. After that, the waiter or waitress would slide the Egg Cream in front of the patron. It would be a Broadway show at your table.

I think if delis did that, not only might someone else at the table order an Egg Cream, but a few more tables might also. And any youngster who was in the restaurant would be begging his or her parents for one. After all, an Egg Cream appeals to the child within all of us.

If deli owners did this, not only would their profit margins increase (a $2.50 Egg Cream can’t cost more than 50 cents to make, if that) but they’d also be creating a new, younger generation of deli aficionados. Kids would be begging their parents to take them to the deli. All it would take would be one order of an Egg Cream and the youngsters would be hooked.

Deli owners, it’s in your hands.

Copyright 2010 The Jewish Zodiac, LLC.

Seth Front is the creator of the Jewish Zodiac®, a deli food parody of the Chinese zodiac, and a screenwriter (“Nickel and Dime”) who writes about his seriocomic Jewish life at blog.jewzo.com.

We Jews have a deep connection to our foods. If I didn’t know this before I created the Jewish Zodiac, I sure found out quickly.

I never imagined for a minute that anyone would be anything other than delighted with whatever Jewish Zodiac sign they were. After all, have you ever questioned your Chinese Zodiac sign? Think about it.

As for me, I’m Year of the Rat. In retrospect, who wants to be a rat? The Chinese Zodiac says that the rat is “intuitive with ability in acquiring and holding on to things it values.” That’s a nice way of saying it’s a long-tailed rodent that scavenges for food and spreads disease.

More often than not when we encounter our Chinese zodiac sign, we shrug it off and say “I’m a Snake” or “I’m an Ox” without thinking twice. After all, it’s only the Chinese Zodiac.

But the Jewish Zodiac? That’s another thing entirely. Now it’s personal!

I once spent an hour in deep discussion with a very charming woman who tried to convince me that I needed to redo the entire Jewish Zodiac because there was no Year of the Gefilte Fish. I explained that I originally considered Gefilte Fish and even wrote it up (“Stop carping about people trying to mold you, life’s too short. You’re so unique friends don’t know what to make of you: keep them swimming upstream. Horseradish has the hots for you.”) but concluded that gefilte fish was more of a Passover item than a deli staple.

I even sent her a photo of a gefilte fish designed by my food stylist and shot by a professional photographer which didn’t make it onto the placemat, thinking she’d be delighted. She wrote back complaining that there was too much gelatin and gave me instructions on how to make it come out moist yet dry, with just carrot and horseradish on top. It turned out she and her friends made gefilte fish from scratch every Passover and took their roles as preservers of the tradition very seriously.

I can respect that.

Deli food – all Jewish food really – is our birthright: it ignites our imagination and sparks our passion and I’m honored that I’ve touched a nerve. So I guess I shouldn’t be surprised when someone says “but I don’t like chopped liver” or “that description doesn’t fit me at all.” But I’m still amused that they take their Jewish Zodiac sign so seriously, despite my best efforts to the contrary. The conversation usually goes like this:

“Chopped Liver? But I don’t like chopped liver. I’m more of a pickle person.”

“Then be a Pickle.”

“But I was born in 1969.”

“So lie about your age!”

Sometimes the person will proudly proclaim “you’re right, I’m the Year of the Pickle.” But just as often they won’t. It’s as if it’s written in stone, even if at the bottom of my placemat I remind people that “the Jewish Zodiac is fictional and intended for entertainment purposes only. Don’t take it or yourself too seriously.”

All of which reminds me of my friend Wayne Levine, of BetterMen.org, who is a Men’s Life Coach and Mentor. The catchphrase on his website is “Be The Man You Want To Be.” What that means is “don’t let others define who you are – define yourself.”

The same holds true for the Jewish Zodiac. If you were born in the Year of the Blintz but you love Egg Creams, be the Year of the Egg Cream! If you lie awake at night dreaming of the perfect pastrami sandwich but your Jewish Zodiac sign is Chicken Soup, embrace the Year of the Pastrami! Who am I to tell you otherwise?

Or, as Wayne would say, “Be The Deli Food You Want To Be.”

Copyright 2010 The Jewish Zodiac, LLC.

Seth Front is the creator of the Jewish Zodiac®, a deli food parody of the Chinese zodiac, and a screenwriter (“Nickel and Dime”) who writes about his seriocomic Jewish life at blog.jewzo.com.

People often ask me how I came up with the idea for the Jewish Zodiac and I tell them it all started at a Chinese restaurant.

I had been working on a screenplay at my office, struggling really, and it was just about noon and I had a hankering for Chinese food. So I went to my local Chinese restaurant and ordered lunch. As I waited for my Mongolian Beef to arrive I started reading the Chinese Zodiac placemat that served as my table setting. Then I looked around – most of the people in the restaurant were Jewish.

I said to myself “If they really want to cater to their audience, this should be a Jewish Zodiac placemat and not a Chinese one.” A Jewish Zodiac? What would a Jewish Zodiac be? It wouldn’t be Year of the Dragon or Year of the Ox. It would be Year of the Bagel and Year of the Lox. It would be deli food. And that’s when the light bulb went off, or should I say lightning bolt.

Now I don’t consider myself a deeply religious person, not in the traditional sense, but there have been a few times in my life when I’ve felt a connection to a higher power. And this was one of those times.

These moments – which I can count on one hand – have all occurred while in the creative process. I consider these “white light moments,” episodes when all sense of time and space dissolve and I suddenly tap into a higher source. During these times, I’ve felt like a conduit for ideas that seem to come from outside of myself and gracefully flow through me onto the page fully realized, as if from God, or a Muse, or the collective unconscious of the universe.

That’s how I felt when I came up with the Jewish Zodiac, or should I say when the Jewish Zodiac found me. Why me? Why not me! Who better than a rabbi’s son and comedy writer to create a deli food parody of the Chinese zodiac?

The creation of the Jewish Zodiac reminds me of something I learned in a Kabbalah class I once took. The teacher said, “God has already created everything in the Universe – he’s just waiting for Man (and Woman) to discover it.”

I think that’s true. And sometimes God has a way of finding us in the strangest of places, when we’re least expecting it.

Copyright 2010 The Jewish Zodiac, LLC.

Seth Front is the creator of the Jewish Zodiac®, a deli food parody of the Chinese zodiac, and a screenwriter (“Nickel and Dime”) who writes about his seriocomic Jewish life at blog.jewzo.com.