A large Bluetooth speaker blasting klezmer music strapped to a neon green tandem bike is not a sight one typically sees riding through the streets of Denver, Colorado.
Unless, of course, it’s the annual Jewish Deli Bike Tour.
This past Sunday, the third event of its kind rolled through the Mile High City. Nearly 90 Jewish Denverites took to the streets on recumbent, electric, tandem and road bikes, navigating from one deli to another (from Zaidy’s, to Woodgrain, to Rosenberg’s, to Call Your Mother, to Leven Deli) for bites of bagels, pastrami and rugelach, and for a chance to connect with community, culture and identity by blending two interests that don’t always intersect.
Among the crowd of Jews on wheels was Ryan Warner, who wore a royal blue T-shirt that read, “I can’t keep calm I’m Jewish“ (in the vein of “keep calm and carry on“) with matching royal blue high-top Converse. Rounding out his bike tour uniform was a pair of socks with Jewish stars pulled above his sneakers. A returning participant, Ryan took part in the inaugural Jewish Deli Bike Tour in 2022.
“It was so scrappy in the beginning and now it’s a choreography. Everything is laid out. It’s really exciting to see it grow up.”
Daniel Siegel of the Denver JCC and Avi Stopper of Bike Streets, whose mission is to get 100,000 Denverites of all backgrounds riding bikes every day, arranged said choreography.
The Jewish Deli Bike Tour is, first and foremost, Daniel’s brainchild. He partly credits the idea to the conditions of the pandemic lockdown, during which he spent his time either riding his bike around traffic-less Denver streets or at home, bored.
“Having some time to be bored allows for creativity,” Daniel said. “I was sitting at my desk one day and thought, wouldn’t it be funny to map a route of all the local delis?”
Daniel led the first Jewish Deli Bike Tour two years after mapping the route, coordinating with all participating restaurants and bearing responsibility for the physical safety of the 15-20 premier participants. Many of them were either Daniel’s friends who showed their support for his zany idea or were otherwise involved in Denver Jewish life.
When local Rabbi Caryn Aviv heard about the event, she convened Daniel and Avi for what she called a “bike shidduch.” The Denver JCC and Bike Streets have partnered for subsequent bike tours, with Avi focusing on routes and safety and Daniel focusing on shtick — like orchestrating the Bicycle Horah that took place halfway through the ride in City Park, where cyclists rode in circles while Hava Nagila blared from the speaker strapped to the neon green tandem bike.
As the program grew to have a more formal structure, so did the array of interested participants. Originally designed as a program for adults aged 22-40, Daniel noticed that people outside of this demographic, older and younger, were enthusiastic about the idea and signed up. “I’m not a big proponent of putting barriers on things and telling people they can’t be a part of something, especially as a community center,” Daniel said. Inclusivity has been part of the recipe for the program’s growth and success since — the tour has sold out yearly, usually on the day registration opens.
As the group traversed from deli to deli, participants made friends among themselves, many of whom were meeting for the first time. Questions of where you are from and live, how you heard about the tour (often by flier or word of mouth) and why you signed up (new to the city and want to meet people and explore; a clever idea for celebrating Jewish life) naturally took shape; a community within a community formed.
The Jewish Deli Bike Tour is a joyous occasion for riders and deli owners alike. When asked to participate in the first Jewish Deli Bike Tour, Zaidy’s owner, Joel Appel, thought, “hell yes — and I only tell people to do things if it’s a hell yes.”
“You see this crazy gaggle come in every year, and it’s just fun to see them descend upon your deli for 20 minutes and feed them, which, I mean, is very, very Jewish,” Appel said.
The spirit of the Jewish Deli Bike Tour, which Daniel and others have described as “very Denver,” embodies the ethos of Denver’s Jewish community. Rabbi Adam Morris, or “Rabbi Mo” as his congregation calls him at Temple Micah, called Denver’s Jewish community a “creative” one. Noting that, as of the last Brandeis University study, the percentage of Jewish Denverites affiliated with synagogues is lower than the national average, he attributes this statistic to Jewish Coloradans deriving spirituality from Colorado itself. The landscape of the Rocky Mountains provokes religious and spiritual experiences of a sort, and so, too, does the landscape of Denver’s Jewish delis.
“I hope they can replicate this program elsewhere,” Ryan, the participant in the matching blue shirt and sneakers, said before biting into a Montreal-style bagel outside Woodgrain. “The point is, there are Jewish delis in so many communities that we don’t think of as that Jewish. So, highlight that.”
