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Cheesecake Corner in Brooklyn honors the Jewish founder of Junior’s restaurant

Editor’s note: This article is part of a new series, Sign Post, which explores street signs and other locations around the city that are named in honor of Jewish New Yorkers.

(New York Jewish Week) — At the intersection of Flatbush Avenue Extension and Dekalb Avenue in Downtown Brooklyn sits Junior’s, an iconic New York restaurant and bakery famous for creating “The World’s Most Fabulous Cheesecake,” as they describe it.

For the last 24 years, the intersection has been known as Harry Rosen Way — Cheesecake Corner, named for the Jewish New Yorker who opened the Brooklyn institution in November 1950. Rosen died in 1996 at age 92; after handing the business to his sons, Junior’s is now run by grandsons Alan Rosen and Kevin Rosen.

“I see it definitely as part of the Jewish tradition,” Alan Rosen told the New York Jewish Week about Junior’s iconic cheesecakes last year. “I don’t think America identifies it as a Jewish dessert, but it has its roots there for sure. We came here from Eastern Europe. We brought our recipes to the Lower East Side and you know, we went from there.”

The busy intersection was co-named for Harry Rosen in March 1999. As the New York Daily News reported at the time: “Scores of onlookers waited for free slices of cheesecake, the green street sign was unveiled to applause, in honor of the son of immigrants who built a world-famous restaurant that is a required stop for campaigning Presidents, entertainers and other notables in downtown Brooklyn.”

“If one child tugs on his mother’s sleeve and asks why the street is named Harry Rosen Way and Cheesecake Corner,” Alan Rosen was quoted by Newsday as saying at the unveiling, the mother should tell “the story of a man who was poor and built a business up from nothing.”

Harry Rosen was born on the Lower East Side in 1904. After dropping out of school at age 13 to work at a soda fountain, Rosen — who “started making egg creams on the lower East Side of Manhattan, saving a nickel a day,” as Alan Rosen said in 1999 — eventually opened four sandwich shops in Manhattan.

In 1929, he opened The Enduro Cafe, a lively steakhouse with a nightclub-like atmosphere on the corner of Flatbush and Dekalb in Brooklyn. Though the restaurant closed in 1949, Rosen did not want to abandon the location. Instead, the following year, he opened a more family-friendly establishment, Junior’s — named for Rosen’s two sons, Walter and Marvin.

A replica of the sign hangs above the hostess stand inside the restaurant. (Julia Gergely)

When the Brooklyn Dodgers moved to Los Angeles in 1957 and nearby Ebbets Field, in Flatbush, was demolished in 1960, much of the borough lost its luster. It was time for Junior’s to innovate: Rosen hired Danish-born baker Eigel Peterson to perfect the restaurant’s baked goods, and it was then that the restaurant’s world-famous cheesecake recipe was developed, alongside danishes, rugelach and other cakes.

Per the restaurant’s website: “The Rosen family saw all the changes in Brooklyn in the 1960s including the flight to suburbia, the rise of gangs, high unemployment in the borough and the city. However, Harry Rosen never thought for a moment that he would join the exodus from Downtown. Junior’s in the 1960’s was a place where all colors of people in all styles of dress could gather without tensions. Good food and good service became the great equalizer.”

Later that decade, Rosen’s sons took over the business, with grandsons Alan and Kevin coming on board in the 1990s. Throughout the decades, Junior’s has remained a mainstay for locals, politicians and celebrities — and has become something of a pop culture icon itself. The restaurant and its cheesecakes have been featured everywhere from a Notorious B.I.G. music video to MTV reality show “Making the Band” to the HBO hit “Sex and the City.”

Now boasting a thriving mail-order business for its cheesecake, Junior’s has also expanded to include two Midtown outposts and one at Foxwoods Casino.

But the original restaurant remains a Brooklyn institution. On a steamy day earlier this week, when the temperature climbed into the 90s, the atmosphere inside the 420-seat restaurant was jovial. Manager Will McCarthy pointed the New York Jewish Week to an indoor copy of the Harry Rosen Way — Cheesecake Corner street sign, which reads “Do the Right Thing Way” on the back. It’s signed by that film’s Brooklyn-based director, Spike Lee. (The restaurant is not in the movie, said McCarthy, but Lee is a regular.)

Director Spike Lee signed the back of the indoor sign: “To Junior’s, Da best cheesecake in da world. Peace and love Spike Lee.” (Julia Gergely)

McCarthy, who has been with Junior’s for 17 years, said the best part of his job is “meeting new people every day.”

Community-mindedness remains at the heart of the business; as the New York Jewish Week reported last year, Junior’s hosted a gun buyback event in Brooklyn in an effort to prevent violence. “I’m in the restaurant business,” Alan Rosen said. “But I took it upon myself to do something. It was a tipping point.”

And just what makes Junior’s cheesecake so special? “Besides the love, he said, “it’s cream cheese, it’s fresh eggs, it’s sugar, heavy cream and a touch of vanilla.”

—
The post Cheesecake Corner in Brooklyn honors the Jewish founder of Junior’s restaurant appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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The Future of Syria Is Uncertain; Here’s What Israel Should Be Doing (PART ONE)

Saudi Arabia’s Defense Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman meets Syria’s newly appointed Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shibani, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Jan. 2, 2025. Photo: Saudi Press Agency/Handout via REUTERS

The main lesson of the surprise attack on the Assad regime by the rebels in Syria begins with an overall view of the strategic logic that drives the Middle East region. The lesson that many in the West refuse to accept is that the region is a perpetually unstable ecosystem.

An ecosystem is sensitive to any small change. The conceptual opposite of an ecosystem is a sophisticated railway system. In the railways, operational stability is planned and managed according to a linear engineering design. In an ecosystem, conversely, stability is the result of systemic equilibrium and is always both temporary and sensitive to changes.

Western culture, which aspires to establish a reality of sustainable stability in the region, finds it difficult to accept that the Middle East — which contains clans, tribes, and radical terrorist organizations — is a system that operates according to the dynamics of an ecological system.

The achievements of the Israeli war against Hezbollah in Lebanon and against Hamas in the Gaza Strip created new conditions that marked an opportunity for the Sunni rebels in Syria. They took their chance and attacked the Assad army and the Iranian Shiite militias, toppling the Assad regime in less than two weeks.

The constant search by many Middle East actors for new fighting opportunities lies in their fundamental perception of all situations of calm, even prolonged periods of apparent peace, as temporary.

The Turks dream of returning to the expanses of the Ottoman Empire. Aleppo once played a central economic and symbolic role in connection with the cities of the Harran Valley in Turkey, including the city of Shelly-Orfa. After Napoleon’s retreat from Egypt and the Land of Israel, Muhammad Ali, the ruler of Egypt, sought to extend his control from Israel to Aleppo. In the years 1839-1841, the Second Egyptian-Ottoman War took place in the region. With the help of a British expeditionary force, the Ottomans defeated the Egyptian army and pushed it from the Aleppo region to the outskirts of Sinai. Greater Syria, which extended to the Land of Israel, returned to Ottoman control. Turkey aspires to restore this regional order. From their perspective, the struggle began in Aleppo with the pursuit of Damascus, which contains important Sunni mosques.

There is much more involved here than a longing for the past. The past in this region drives religious and national struggles. I learned this during a visit to the Iranian pavilion at the Shanghai Expo. Opposite the visitors’ entrance, a map of the Persian Empire from the time of Darius was displayed across the entire wall. This was a kind of declaration that Iran aspires to return to that glorious past.

This kind of thinking is the driving force in the region — even for borders that have gained international validity, such as the Sykes-Picot borders. In the Middle East, nothing outweighs religious and national dreams. Those dreams never fade; they rather await the right opportunity.

For Americans who continue to seek a stable and sustainable regional order, it is worth suggesting that they treat the Middle East as if it were prone to hurricanes that erupt from the oceans and strike the region from a system of forces beyond human control.

This is not to say that no capabilities exist with which to restrain and delay conflicts in the regional chaos that characterizes the Middle East. But even arrangements that seem to promise a degree of stability and calm must be sensitive to the possibility of unexpected factors arising within the system.

Tactical note

The rebel offensive in Syria also teaches an important tactical lesson about the characteristics of the new war. As on October 7, we saw the outbreak of rapid battle movement involving civilian vehicles, including motorcycles, SUVs and vans, in mobile and agile groups.

No one who promises a demilitarized Palestinian state will be able to stop the Palestinians from purchasing motorcycles and SUVs. Israelis should give thought to the image of a raiding party on motorcycles and jeeps breaking into Israel by surprise from Tulkarem-Qalqilya to cut through the coastal strip. They must understand that the IDF, with all its strength, cannot guarantee overwhelming superiority in any possible context.

The IDF’s operations in Syria

Even the best intelligence experts had difficulty predicting the tsunami of the rebel assault that so swiftly toppled the Syrian government and its army.

There is a great lesson here in recognizing the limitations of human knowledge. We cannot pretend to know or be able to control events that occur suddenly and unpredictably. Precisely for this reason, the speedy organization by the Israeli leadership and the IDF of a proper response to the Syrian rebel surprise deserves special appreciation.

The IDF’s rapid operational response to developments in Syria was guided by three objectives:

  • To strengthen the defense effort on the Golan Heights. It is worth noting that preparations for strengthening and expanding Israel’s defense systems in the Golan — through proactive operations east of the border fence — began in the Golan Division, with the support of the Northern Command, several months ago. These preparations enabled a rapid response to expand Israel’s defensive hold on vital areas in the buffer zone defined in the 1974 Separation of Forces Agreement between Israel and Syria. The IDF also took control of the peaks of the Hermon Range in a location that allows for influence deep inside Syria and southern Lebanon.
  • To destroy the numerous weapons left behind by the Syrian army in Syria. In an unprecedented attack by the Israeli Air Force and Navy, weapons systems were destroyed that, had they remained operational, could have been used against the State of Israel. This effort was carried out with rapid momentum and precise management.
  • To project power in the face of the chaos and make clear that the State of Israel has a security-strategic interest in the developing trends in Syria and will not be content to passively look on. Prime Minister Netanyahu wisely emphasized that Israel will try not to interfere in the institutionalization of the new order being organized in Syria. However, Israel has an interest in influencing developments in southern Syria in the Yarmouk Basin, where, until recently, Shiite militias took part in efforts to smuggle weapons to the Palestinian Authority and towards the Kingdom of Jordan. Looking north from the Hermon area, Israel has a primary interest in preserving Hezbollah’s isolation in Lebanon and preventing any possibility of reinforcements or new weapons arriving via Syria.

The first two objectives have been achieved in an astonishing manner. The third is complex and will require dynamic monitoring combined with an international effort emphasizing Israeli interests.

The situation in Syria continues to be unprecedented in its uncertainty.

Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen is a senior research fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. He served in the IDF for 42 years. He commanded troops in battles with Egypt and Syria. He was formerly a corps commander and commander of the IDF Military Colleges. A version of this article was originally published by The BESA Center.

The post The Future of Syria Is Uncertain; Here’s What Israel Should Be Doing (PART ONE) first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Palestinian Authority: Munich Massacre of Israeli Athletes was a ‘Quality Operation’

An image of one of the Palestinian terrorists who took part in the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Forty-six years after the death of Ali Hassan Salameh, who planned the murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972, the Palestinian Authority (PA) continues to tout Salameh as a hero.

The official PA news agency, WAFA, praised Salameh, who was the commander of operations of the Black September terror organization, saying his “name was associated with many quality operations” — a reference to the Olympics Massacre:

Headline: “46 years since the death as a Martyr of leader Ali Hassan Salameh”

“On Jan. 22, 1979, the Israeli Mossad (Israeli Secret Intelligence Service) assassinated leader Ali Hassan Salameh ‘The Red Prince’, who was the founder of the PLO leadership security force (later Force 17) [parentheses in source]

… As soon as he moved to Beirut, he was assigned to oversee the special operations against the Israeli occupation worldwide. His name was associated with many quality operations.” [emphasis added]

[WAFA, official PA news agency, Jan. 22, 2025]

A week earlier, the PA and Fatah marked the 34th anniversary of the assassination of two other terror leaders: Salah Khalaf “Abu Iyad,” who was the head of Black September, and “fighter Fakhri Al-Omari ‘Abu Muhammad,’” a co-founder of Black September and “one of the close associates of Abu Iyad in the united [PA] Security Forces.”

The official PA daily praised the terrorists as follows:

With their deaths as Martyrs, the PLO, the Palestinian revolution, and Fatah lost [two] of their most committed and skilled leaders, whose record is filled with sacrifice and struggle against the Israeli occupation…”

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Jan. 15, 2025]

Fatah vowed … to continue the struggle and the resistance to the occupation [i.e., Israel] and its aggressive machinery, and to protect our people’s achievements that were painted with the blood of the Martyrs until defeating the occupation and achieving our people’s freedom and independence.” [emphasis added]

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Jan. 15, 2025]

Black September was a secret branch of Fatah, and today’s Fatah didn’t miss the opportunity to join in glorifying terrorist mastermind Salameh.

Fatah marked Salameh’s “death as a Martyr” by posting the image above with the following text:

Text: “46 years since the death as a Martyr of commander Ali Hassan Salameh”

[Fatah Commission of Information and Culture, Facebook page, Jan. 22, 2025]

The PA and Fatah’s infatuation with Salameh and fellow terrorist murderers from Black September is not new. For decades, Palestinian Media Watch has exposed the glorification of the Munich Olympics attack and its perpetrators and planners.

In fact, this past summer, the PA chose to name its largest summer camp, which hosted 150 children aged 7-13, after terrorist Salah Khalaf, “Abu Iyad.”

On the 50th anniversary of the massacre, Palestinian Media Watch exposed that what has become a dark stain on the Olympics and has settled in the collective global memory as an illustration of the horrors of terrorism, is actually a symbol of glory and honor for the PA.

The author is a senior analyst at Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article was originally published.

The post Palestinian Authority: Munich Massacre of Israeli Athletes was a ‘Quality Operation’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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There Is a Huge Difference Between Israeli Hostages and Freed Palestinian Murderers

Ofer Kalderon embraces his partner, Ramat Gan, Israel, February 1, 2025. Photo: Maayan Toaf/GPO/Handout via REUTERS

Over the weekend, as Israeli hostages held by Hamas were again released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, it became clear that media outlets are unable to stop the use of misleading terminology that creates a moral inversion between victims and perpetrators.

The misleading terms were sloppy, at best, or biased, at worst, mixing “hostages” with “prisoners” and “soldiers” with civilians.

NBC News, for example, led with a headline calling Palestinian prisoners “hostages.” After being alerted by HonestReporting, they swiftly corrected it to “prisoners,” but the fact remains that an editor there was either confused or agenda-driven:

And the word “soldier” messed up the coverage of The New York Times and Sky News, which couldn’t get their facts straight.

The New York Times called Israeli civilian Arbel Yehoud, who was released on Thursday by Islamic Jihad, an “Israeli soldier.”

She was not; she was a civilian kidnapped from her home.

And Sky News, while mentioning the first round of the deal, called Israeli civilians Emily Damari, Romi Gonen, and Doron Steinbrecher “soldiers.”

Meanwhile, the BBC had to apologize for calling three Israeli hostages Yarden Bibas, Keith Seigel, and Ofer Calderon “prisoners.”

But the UK network had no qualms about using footage of terrified Arbel Yehoud by none other than Hassan Eslaiah —  a Gaza photojournalist who was fired from CNN and AP after HonestReporting exposed his ties to Hamas.

(Not only was Eslaiah spotted using his access to get closeups of the hostages but he was also later photographed with UN staff.)

To be clear, misleading terminology has an apologetic effect — captive soldiers or prisoners are not the same as hostage civilians, and the same goes for misleading terminology on the Palestinian side.

For example, Sky News described Palestinian mass murderer Zakaria Zubeidi as a “freed Palestinian prisoner”:

The aim of this misleading terminology, conscious or not, is a moral inversion — because if the hostages are prisoners or soldiers and the perpetrators are family guys celebrating their freedom, it’s clear who’s right and who’s wrong.

Media outlets should be more careful with their choice of words because it creates the very reality they report on.

The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.

The post There Is a Huge Difference Between Israeli Hostages and Freed Palestinian Murderers first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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