I only had an hour to spare between Maariv and my next appointment but my shoes were so worn I could feel the small nails sticking into my feet. As soon as my son and I entered the shoe store “it” began. The woman helping us said “I guess this is your Chanukah present for yourself correct?”
Over the next ten minutes the woman — irrespective of her slacks and uncovered hair — did her best to convey to me and my son that she too was a member of the tribe in good standing.
She told us about her grandchildren and her need to get them Chanukah gelt. She was thrilled when she found out I was a rabbi and proceeded to list other local rabbis whose feet are adorned with her shoes. In short she made an intense effort to bond with her co-religionists.
This not-so-covert and often overt
attempt by “not-yet-observant” Jews to connect to me and other frum Jews has been observed diagnosed and even identified by experts for many years already. The experts have even given a name to this mode of behavior. In the not-so-scientific Jewish sociological world it is referred to as “Bageling.”
The person doing the talking is engaging in the art of “bageling ” and the person they’re talking to is being “bageled.” 
If there was a frum version of Funk and Wagnalls Dictionary — Frum and Veiter perhaps? — the entry under “Bageling” might  read: 

“The attempt of a ‘not-yet’ frum person to communicate and convince through word and/or action an already frum person that they too are a ‘card-carrying’ member of the Jewish people.”
Examples of bageling include although are not limited to:

1. Saying “Shalom” numerous times
2. Using Yiddish words and expressions irrespective of their applicability to the current conversation
3. Wishing one a Good Shabbos on Sunday or “Good Yom Tov” in the middle of the winter
4. Informing another Jew proudly that their Zeidy also had a big beard and also wore a black hat and a long coat
5. Insisting that the food they are eating is of course “glatt kosher”
6. Reminding the other Jew of their love of Israel and how they still recall their trip to Israel in 1963

According to the latest statistical evidence bageling has surpassed Jewish Geography as the most commonly engaged-in verbal communication between Jews.
I’ve been bageled in supermarkets in Staten Island and at checkout counters in Clifton. 
I’ve been wished “zei gezunt” by bareheaded men in Zurich and greeted with a “Shalom” by elderly women in Sheepshead Bay.

Young men have assured me of the kosher status of their snacks in airport waiting areas and couples in parking lots in Passaic have asked me to pray for their relatives.
In truth bageling stems from a very good and pure place from a deep-seated desire found in every Jew in the world.
This desire is the need and the want to connect with their authentic birthright and heritage. Every Yid from the checkout clerk in Cliffside Park to the nurse in Nebraska wants to reconnect to his roots. When these less-affiliated Jews see a Yid who in their eyes embodies that which they know to be authentic and real they’re aroused to link and bond with that person.
Their sometimes clumsy and affected attempts at being authentically Jewish are in reality a scream for help and for connection. Their bageling is a sincere attempt to connect with us.
Are we prepared to “bagel back” and meet them halfway?