Third, smoking or salting the fish minimized the need for refrigeration. Before there was lox, there was herring. It was only once the Jews emigrated to the U.S., and salmon was relatively cheaper and easier to come by than herring, that lox became a favorite.
http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/3227501/jewish/Why-Do-Jews-Eat-Lox-and-Bagels.htm
Of course, kosher-keeping Jewish people couldn’t eat it. So they substituted lox slices for the ham, cream cheese for the hollandaise sauce, and bagels for the muffins. Thus, the Jews created a new Jewish-American classic, bagels with cream cheese and lox.
http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/3227501/jewish/Why-Do-Jews-Eat-Lox-and-Bagels.htm
But its closing prompted us to revisit Smith's treatise. The origin of the bagel, Smith tells NPR's Scott Simon, is somewhat mysterious.. What's certain is that bagel met and married lox in New York, she says. Smith was also one of the editors of Meatpaper — and a former NPR intern. Bagels are a true American melting-pot meal, she says.
http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/09/21/224531885/no-schmear-job-at-last-a-history-of-bagels-and-lox
Lox and smoked salmon are both examples of what is known as cured fish. “Curing” a fish — like curing meat or cheese or any other foodstuff — means to treat it for the purposes of preservation. This can be done by any one of several methods (or a combination of methods), including pickling, smoking and salting.
http://forward.com/articles/7669/the-raw-truth-about-lox/
A Little About Lox. The Jewish affinity for salted or smoked fish is based on a number of factors. First, fish is considered pareve, and can be eaten in a dairy or meat meal. (Note: While fish and meat may be eaten in the same meal, they cannot be eaten together.
http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/3227501/jewish/Why-Do-Jews-Eat-Lox-and-Bagels.htm
Although many view the term as referring to one who has no connection to Judaism other than eating bagels with lox on Sunday, I think this term also has a positive connotation, for it highlights the fact that even assimilated Jews retain a connection to their Jewishness.
http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/3227501/jewish/Why-Do-Jews-Eat-Lox-and-Bagels.htm
Lox is sometimes referred to as a variety of smoked salmon (as smoked salmon is sometimes known by the generic term “lox”), but this is a mistake, for no smoke is used making lox.
http://forward.com/articles/7669/the-raw-truth-about-lox/
While “bagels were Polish and cream cheese was Native American,” Jews began to eat salmon en masse in early 20th-century America, where the fish was plentiful. European Jews had long smoked and salted their fish, and they did the same with salmon when the transcontinental railroad opened in 1869.
http://www.momentmag.com/talk-of-the-table-lox-an-american-love-story/
Most Americans, even Jews, don’t know that lox was invented in America, not Eastern Europe, explains Gil Marks, author of the Encyclopedia of Jewish Food. “Salmon was not an Eastern European fish,” although it was familiar to Scandinavians and Germans, including German Jews, he says.
http://www.momentmag.com/talk-of-the-table-lox-an-american-love-story/
The word lox itself is evidence of the food’s non-Eastern European roots. “The key to understanding the emergence of the term among Eastern European Jews in America is that lox is a German word,” Marks says. Lox is the Americanized spelling of the word for salmon in Yiddish (laks) and in German (lachs), and also a derivative of the Swedish gravlax, meaning cured salmon.
http://www.momentmag.com/talk-of-the-table-lox-an-american-love-story/
where did the term lox originate
The term lox originate in Bagels. The term Lox originated from Bagels.