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Crumbs cupcakes, founded by a Jewish couple, makes a comeback

(New York Jewish Week) — Picture the Upper West Side, circa 2003, the year that Jewish couple Mia and Jason Bauer opened Crumbs Bake Shop at Amsterdam Avenue and 75th Street. In the wake of a cupcake craze kicked off by a “Sex and the City” scene filmed at Magnolia Bakery, fans lined up for Crumbs’ oversized cupcakes, available in inventive varieties like Black-Bottom Cheesecake Brownie, Grasshopper and Squiggle, a gargantuan riff on the traditional Hostess cupcake.

The wildly popular Manhattan bakery quickly grew into a chain — by 2013, Crumbs had more than 70  stores across the country.

Soon, however, the dream crumbled. The Bauers sold the chain in 2011, but by 2014, due to a variety of factors — including increased competition, high real estate costs and general gourmet-cupcake burnout — Crumbs closed its doors. Later that year, an investment group tried to resurrect the troubled brand — reopening some stores and adding challah to the menu on Fridays — but failed.

Now, however, Crumbs is back, with the Bauers again at the helm but with a new business plan: In place of brick-and-mortar bake shops, they are selling desserts online at originalcrumbs.com. They are also offering delivery in New York City through Gopuff, and their baked goods are available at select local supermarket chains, including Gristedes, D’Agostino’s and ShopRite.

“There were things we always wanted to accomplish with the brand that we didn’t have a chance the first time around,” Mia Bauer told the New York Jewish Week. “We didn’t feel like Crumbs kind of petered out the way it deserved to. That wasn’t the ending we foresaw for Crumbs. We really had nurtured it and cultivated it and we felt like it deserved better than that.”

After the original Crumbs folded, Mia spent time raising the couple’s two children in their Short Hills, New Jersey home. She returned to political campaign work, which she was doing prior to becoming a full-time baker. Jason, meanwhile, opened a brokerage business and a spirits company in New York, and also took a corporate position at WeWork.

After a few years, however, the Bauers were ready for a change, and market research confirmed the interest that former Crumbs customers were expressing to Jason.

In 2021, Jason paid just $350 to the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office to revive the brand. Since then, the couple have been analyzing market research, altering their business model, attending trade shows, creating new recipes and designing new packaging. They formally relaunched the business in November 2023 and it is now known as Original Crumbs Bakeshop.

Now, as before, Crumbs products are kosher: Their cupcakes are under National Kosher supervision by Rabbi Aaron Mehlman, and a new product, soft-baked cookies, are OU-Dairy certified. The Bauers keep a kosher home, and as Jason told the New York Jewish Week, “We wouldn’t sell any food as a profession if it weren’t kosher.”

“The highlight of our week is Shabbat, but Jewish principles are woven throughout our daily existence,” said Jason, who, together with his family, belongs to the Kabbalah Centre in Manhattan, as the family splits its time between New Jersey and the Upper East Side.

Kabbalah, Jason added, “informs our every decision both in our personal and business lives.”

When Crumbs first opened 20 years ago, the bakery became known for their “signature” 4.25-inch diameter cupcakes, described now on their website as “twice the size of a normal cupcake.” At the time, such oversized treats were an anomaly.

“I actually didn’t realize they were oversized,” said Mia, who said she began baking as a child of 7 or 8. “That’s how I always made my cupcakes for family and friends. I assume it started out kind of innocently. I had a muffin pan in my home as a kid and that’s what I used. It didn’t occur to me that my cupcakes were that much bigger than the average cupcake.”

When the Bauers launched Crumbs their goal was to bring back the corner bakery, which, in the early 2000s, had started to disappear; the couple realized that supermarkets were basically the only option for baked goods for many people. At the same time, Mia, who had worked in a bakery as a teenager, had been “longing for the experience of a neighborhood bakery,” according to Jason.

While the new iteration of Crumbs isn’t focused on local bakeries, nostalgia still drives its founders: “We wanted to pivot and be the box of cupcakes or package of cookies that people have in their home,” Mia said, recalling fond memories of Entenmann’s cookies.

During Crumbs’ initial run, Mia — who lived in Israel from ages 1 to 7 and admits to a preference for plain white cake with lots of frosting — ended up creating more than 120 cupcake flavors, with about 30 varieties available in each shop at any given time.

These days, the cupcake varieties have been reduced to 12, plus seasonal and holiday flavors. Crumbs still offers their cupcakes in their signature size, as well classic ( aka “normal”) and mini sizes. The classic-size cupcakes are sold in supermarkets, and will now cost a little more than $2, considerably cheaper than the $4.50 bakeries used to charge.

“We’re able to produce them in volume with efficiencies that allows the price point in supermarkets to be significantly less than it was in our stores,” Jason said.

Crumbs 2.0 has added a line of soft batch cookies in eight flavors, most of which are takeoffs of their most popular cupcake flavors, like Cotton Candy, Sprinkle Sundae and Marshmallow Cookies & Cream. The small, soft-baked cookies — much like the Entenmann’s chocolate chip cookies that Mia was so fond of — are packaged in resealable, stackable, plastic cookie jars and cost $8.

“We are pretty fanatical about quality control,” Mia said. “I treated our stores like my kitchen. Even now, in supermarkets, it’s the same quality control.”

According to Jason, every cupcake is still made and decorated by hand, and the cookies are homemade, too. These days, Crumbs has become something of a family business, with the couple’s children —  Annabelle, 15 and Zack, 13 — serving as taste-testers, critics and digital media consultants. “We run by both our kids almost anything social media-related to get their input,” Mia said.

Jason sees their return to the bakery business as bashert, using the Yiddish word for destiny. “We’re both very spiritual people,” he said. “We’ve always felt when the opportunity presented itself to us, there’s a reason it came back into our life, so we couldn’t ignore it.”


The post Crumbs cupcakes, founded by a Jewish couple, makes a comeback appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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Holocaust Survivor Marian Turski Dies Aged 98

Marian Turski speaks on the occasion of the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, in front of the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes in Warsaw, Poland, April 19, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Kacper Pempel

Holocaust survivor Marian Turski, who became a journalist in Poland and headed an international committee of Auschwitz survivors, has died at the age of 98, said the Polish weekly magazine Polityka, where he worked as a columnist.

In an article on Tuesday announcing Turski‘s death, Polityka described him as “an exceptional guardian of memory, an outstanding man whose voice was heard all over the world.”

Born as Moshe Turbowicz on June 26, 1926, in Druskieniki, in what is now Lithuania, Turski was sent to the Lodz ghetto at the age of 14.

In 1944 he was transported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp set up by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland, where both his father and brother died.

In 1945 he survived two death marches, firstly from Auschwitz to Buchenwald, a concentration camp in Germany, and then from Buchenwald to Theresienstadt, where he was liberated by the Soviet Red Army.

More than 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, perished in gas chambers or from starvation, cold, and disease at Auschwitz, where most had been brought in freight wagons, packed like livestock.

After World War Two Turski lived in Lower Silesia, southern Poland, before moving to Warsaw, where he worked as a historian and journalist. He started working at Polityka in 1958 and was the author of several books.

He was made an honorary citizen of Warsaw in 2018, in part as recognition for his work in setting up the Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews in the city.

In January, Turski gave a speech at the commemorations of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in which he warned against rising antisemitism.

“We see in the modern world today a great increase in antisemitism, and it was antisemitism that led to the Holocaust,” he said.

“Let us not be afraid to convince ourselves that we can solve problems between neighbors.”

Over 3 million of Poland’s 3.3 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis.

In all, between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically killed 6 million Jews across German-occupied Europe, along with gypsies, sexual minorities, disabled people, and others who offended Nazi ideas of racial superiority.

The post Holocaust Survivor Marian Turski Dies Aged 98 first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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My Message to Donald Trump: The Jews Need You

US President Donald Trump speaks during a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the East Room at the White House in Washington, US, Feb. 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Leah Millis

What happens when the past starts to look dangerously like the present? The hate my family fled in the Soviet Union is back, not just in distant countries but in my city, on social media, and even in the political discourse of this country.

My ancestors didn’t survive oppression by being passive. In the Soviet Union, they fought to preserve their identity, even when being Jewish was a crime. Synagogues were destroyed, Hebrew was banned, and Jewish people were persecuted in every aspect of life. Yet, they kept their faith and traditions alive, passing them down secretly, risking everything to do so.

They weren’t just surviving — they were resisting. And that resistance is part of the reason I’m here today.

But now, in 2025, the same struggle is back: the slurs on the subway walls, the antisemitic graffiti at parks, the casual hate directed at Israel. It’s not just words, it’s a message: Jews don’t belong.

After the October 7th Hamas massacre, we saw a spike in antisemitic incidents, and the climate is growing more hostile. This isn’t some far-off problem; it’s here in America, and it’s escalating.

Donald Trump’s return to the White House makes the need for action even more straightforward. Under the Biden administration, antisemitism surged, and yet the response was mostly silence or half-hearted condemnations. Jewish communities were left exposed as attacks increased. This can’t continue.

We need leadership that takes direct, meaningful action to combat antisemitism — not just when it makes headlines, but every day. Now back in office, Trump has the responsibility to prioritize this fight. His words and actions will shape the future of our country, and it’s time to show authentic leadership by actively protecting Jewish communities.

Antisemitism has become normalized in many spaces, and it’s not something we can hope will fade. We need policies that protect Jewish people, enforce stronger laws, and educate against hate speech. This is about more than just rhetoric. It’s about taking action that ensures we are not targeted simply for being who we are.

I hear the slurs, see the symbols, and witness the spread of harmful stereotypes, often with no consequences. Whenever I speak up, it feels like I’m fighting an uphill battle. But I’m not alone.

This is part of a larger fight. We need leaders, not just in my school or community, but in the White House, who will stand against hate and take tangible steps to protect us.

The responsibility to fight antisemitism can’t fall solely on students or Jewish communities — those in power must take it up. President Trump, this is your moment. Do not let this crisis go unaddressed. If you genuinely want to leave a legacy of strength, act now. Make fighting antisemitism a priority.

We must ensure that history doesn’t repeat itself. The stakes are too high. We cannot afford to wait for another crisis to occur. If you want to be remembered for more than just words, show the courage to lead the fight against antisemitism.

The writer is a high school student from Great Neck, New York, passionate about advocacy and government. Through his writing and activism, he engages others in meaningful conversations about US politics, international relations, and Israel’s significance as both a homeland for the Jewish people and a key ally of the United States

The post My Message to Donald Trump: The Jews Need You first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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CBS’ Margaret Brennan Said ‘Free Speech’ Enabled the Holocaust; She Has No Idea What She’s Talking About

People with Israeli flags attend the International March of the Living at the former Auschwitz Nazi German death camp, in Brzezinka near Oswiecim, Poland, May 6, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Kuba Stezycki

It was bad enough when Whoopi Goldberg of The View infamously said the Holocaust was not about race. On Sunday, Margaret Brennan of CBS’ Face The Nation interviewed Secretary of State Marco Rubio. During the interview, Brennan said, “free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide” in Nazi Germany.

Was it freedom of the press when Nazis shut down the Munich Post, which for a decade had been warning against Hitler and covered the suspicious death of his niece? What about all of Hitler’s critics and enemies — why would they have to flee if there was free speech?

What an actual dictator does is close down free speech to maintain groupthink. Brennan embarrassed herself using the buzzword of “weaponizing” without understanding its meaning, or the fact that it was a lack of freedom of the press that was weaponized to help Hitler conduct a genocide.

In March 1933, Hitler passed the Enabling Act and, in his speech, said that “the entire educational system, the theatre, the cinema, literature, the Press and the wireless, all these very things will be used as a means to this end and valued accordingly. They must all serve for the maintenance of the eternal values present in the essential character of the people.”

So now that we established as of 1933 there was no freedom of the press, how could Brennan claim a “weaponization” of free press caused a genocide? Perhaps, she has no idea of what she is talking about, and she should make an on-air apology if she has not already.

I would not expect that she or Goldberg would have read a book called Mein Kampf. But Hitler wrote: “Again and again our Jewish press has known how to concentrate special hatred on England, and many a good German simpleton has fallen into the Jewish snare with the greatest willingness, drooled about ‘strengthening’ German sea power, protested against the rape of our colonies, recommended their reconquest, and thus helped furnish the material which the Jewish scoundrel could pass on to his fellow Jews in England for practical propogandist use.”

Perhaps Brennan could educate herself by watching a film or play about Sophie Scholl and the White Rose members. Scholl and her compatriots were executed for handing out pamphlets that called for resistance. They declared Hitler was a liar. She was 21 when she was executed. Strange, I don’t see any students today being executed for free speech.

Such reports on national news networks assume that the general public has little knowledge of the Holocaust, which is sadly true. If anyone is weaponizing anything, it is Brennan using scare tactics to try to compare modern day political figures to Hitler, which is a tough comparison to make considering no American leaders have advocated for Jews to be eliminated, whereas Hitler used that terminology and hatred from the very beginning.

Be skeptical any time you hear the phrase “weaponized.” Many podcasts and anti-Israel speakers have tried to ignore antisemitism by saying it is being “weaponized” by Jews. You may also hear that Jews “weaponized” the Holocaust to create the state of Israel.

If Jews, after seeing the horrible genocide, understood the need for a Jewish state — and the countries of the United Nations voted for establishment of Israel due to the savagery of the Holocaust — that is called understanding the consequences of events. It is not called weaponization.

The author is a writer based in New York.

The post CBS’ Margaret Brennan Said ‘Free Speech’ Enabled the Holocaust; She Has No Idea What She’s Talking About first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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