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Founded by a Holocaust survivor, a Bronx bakery’s kosher cheesecake is as tasty as ever after 6 decades
(New York Jewish Week) — Near the northern terminus of the 1 train, just south of Van Cortlandt Park, an unassuming Bronx storefront has been producing thousands of dense, delectable cheesecakes each day for more than 60 years.
Adorned with a simple red-and-blue sign and occupying the same storefront throughout its history, S&S Cheesecake has become the stuff of legend: Though other spots — say, Junior’s — may have better name recognition, many in-the-know New Yorkers consider S&S’s cheesecakes to be the best in the city. What’s more, its cheesecake recipe hasn’t changed one bit since Holocaust survivor Fred Schuster, 98, first opened the kosher bakery in 1960.
Though Schuster remains a regular presence at the bakery, these days S&S Cheesecake is operated by one of his daughters, Brenda Ben-Zaken, and her husband Yair. But other than a few nods to modernity — an espresso machine and a small cafe for dine-in enjoyment; upgradedg equipment to increase output to 2,000 cheesecakes a day — little has changed in the past six decades.
“The secret is to bake with love and serve with pride and passion,” Yair Ben-Zaken told the New York Jewish Week of the shop’s success. Since its founding, S&S has supplied cheesecakes to countless restaurants and shops, from as far away as Alaska to as close as the iconic Upper West Side grocery Zabar’s. Their products are available for nationwide shipping via their web site or Goldbelly as well.
Ben-Zaken and Schuster spoke to the New York Jewish Week on a sunny, temperate morning just a few days ahead of Shavuot — a holiday, which this year begins the evening of Thursday, May 25, when Jews traditionally eat cheesecake and other dairy food. Ben-Zaken was busy packing up hundreds of cheesecakes that he is shipping around the country, as well as several that S&S donates to the Riverdale Jewish Center, the Orthodox synagogue where he and Schuster are members.
“It gets busy with Shavuot, [but] there is a lot to celebrate with summer and graduations this time of year as well,” Ben-Zaken said. “We are feeling [the busy season] now, but it’s not the same as Christmas and Thanksgiving — those are the real cheesecake holidays for us.”
Before he established his modest cheesecake empire, Fred Schuster was born in Germany in 1925 — only eight years before Hitler came to power. “That was the end of my childhood,” Schuster told the New York Jewish Week.
In an effort to keep him safe, Schuster’s parents first sent him to a Jewish boarding school near Frankfurt and, when it was forced to close down, he moved in with his grandparents. In 1938, when they became too old to take care of him, Schuster said goodbye to his family — with a commitment to see each other again — and went to live in an orphanage in Frankfurt.
Just before his 14th birthday, Schuster and other children at his orphanage were sent to Switzerland via the Kindertransport. On the train, he met a girl named Karola (middle name Ruth), who went on to become the famous sex therapist and talk show host Dr. Ruth Westheimer.
“I always say, of the group there, Dr. Ruth went into the sex business and did very well. And I went into the cheesecake business and didn’t do too badly myself,” Schuster joked.
In Switzerland, Schuster “developed a passion for baking and worked in kitchens and bakeries there,” he said. He arrived in New York in 1941, where he reunited with his parents and sister. (His father had arrived in the United States via England around 1939, and his mother and sister via France, Spain and Portugal in 1940.)
“Thank God, my parents and everybody made it here,” he said. “We are very happy here. The United States was very good to us.”
And yet, even though many of his family members survived — and Schuster is blessed with four grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren — Schuster still thinks about what the Holocaust took from him, especially his own grandparents. “I’ll never forget it,” he said. “I am very proud of what I have built in spite of that.”
In the 1940s and 50s, Schuster lived in Washington Heights — home to a sizable German Jewish community, including Dr. Ruth, who is still a fixture in the neighborhood at 94 — and worked as a general baker at various restaurants, where he learned to make all types of pastries. However, “cheesecake was always on my mind,” he said. “I said to myself, ‘There isn’t a good cheesecake here. Let me see what I can do.”
Yair Ben-Zaken joined the team in 1986 and works every day except for Shabbat. Pictured in the bakery in New York City, May 22, 2023. (Julia Gergely)
The recipe he landed on — a combination of eggs, vanilla, sugar, butter and heavy cream — is something Schuster calls “absolutely perfect.”
Though cheesecake may be an ancient food, Jews took to cheesecake the way a fish might take to water, according to The Nosher. Though its varieties are numerous — from light and fluffy to dense and sweet — it was Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants who came to the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries who originated the ultra-rich dessert that’s known as New York-style (or Jewish-style) cheesecake.
That’s Schuster’s specialty, though when Schuster and his wife Sidi opened S&S Cheesecake, he baked all kinds of pastries and cakes. Quickly, however, he narrowed down the menu to only cheesecakes, the bestsellers. These days, S&S sells a chocolate mousse cheesecake, as well as strawberry-, pineapple- and cherry-topped versions of the classic original, which is flavored with vanilla. The OG — which retails in-store for $40 for an 11-inch cake and $20 for a 7-inch one — is his favorite, Schuster said, adding that he always keeps a cheesecake in his fridge for snacking on.
As for Ben-Zaken, after serving in the Israeli Defense Forces as a combat soldier, then working at various food labs in Israel, he began working at the bakery in 1986. Has he dared to change the recipe? “God forbid,” said Ben-Zaken. “Once you know it’s done right, that’s it.”
Schuster, whose wife died in 2017, moved into the Ben-Zakens’ Riverdale home around eight years ago. These days, the two men spend the majority of their time together, baking and talking. “We’ve worked together for many, many years shoulder to shoulder,” said Ben- Zaken, who affectionately calls Schuster “Opa,” which is German for grandfather. “But he is still in charge, I still learn from him.”
During the course of the New York Jewish Week’s visit to the bakery, a handful of customers came in to pick up the cheesecakes for Shavuot. “It’s always worth a trip,” said a man, who was picking up half a dozen cheesecakes for his synagogue in Pelham Parkway, who declined to provide his name. “It’d be worth the trip even if I lived in Atlantic City.”
For Ben-Zaken, his favorite part of the job is working alongside Schuster. Running S&S Cheesecake has been life-changing, he said, particularly following his recovery from post-traumatic stress disorder he suffered as an Israeli soldier. “I think if there’s anybody that I love more than anything in the world, it is this guy. I owe him everything,” Ben-Zaken said. “But I don’t just owe him, I also just enjoy being with him all the time. He’s still young. In spirit, he’s younger than all of us.”
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Beyond the Headlines: What Is Actually Happening in Gaza Right Now
A Red Cross vehicle, escorted by a van driven by a Hamas terrorist, moves in an area within the so-called “yellow line” to which Israeli troops withdrew under the ceasefire, as Hamas says it continues to search for the bodies of deceased hostages seized during the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, in Gaza City, Nov. 12, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alk
After Israel recovered the remains of Ran Gvili, the last hostage in Gaza, the Gaza-Egypt border crossing at Rafah has been re-opened.
Gvili’s body was found by Israeli forces buried in a Palestinian cemetery. Though Hamas claims its assistance was critical to finding the body, it in fact did nothing whatsoever to assist. The body’s location was discovered by Israeli intelligence after it was determined that several members of Palestinian Islamic Jihad knew where it was, one of whom was captured in a special operation.
The cemetery was adjacent to the Yellow Line in Gaza, separating Israeli-controlled territory and Hamas-controlled territory. Operating there required the Israelis to cross the Yellow Line, and it took approximately one month to reach an agreement with Hamas to allow this to happen without fighting. Approximately 250 bodies were collected and checked before Israeli troops found the body of Gvili, an Israeli policeman. He was killed on October 7, 2023, while fighting to protect the Israeli community of Alumim near the Gaza border. He lived in a village in the central Negev, heard about the Hamas attack, and on his own initiative rushed to the nearby police station, armed himself, and drove to Alumim, where, despite being wounded shortly after his arrival, he fought the terrorists until he ran out of ammunition. He was captured and died of his wounds some days later in captivity.
Militarily speaking, skirmishes along the Yellow Line have continued daily.
Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad personnel constantly attempt to infiltrate into the Israeli-controlled area to scout, salvage weapons, or attack Israeli positions and patrols. A few Israeli soldiers have been wounded in the last month, and one who was severely wounded during such an incident a few months ago died from his wounds.
A few dozen Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad personnel have been killed or wounded. Most incidents are brief exchanges of stand-off fire across the Yellow Line. In one case, six Hamas personnel dug a shaft from an undiscovered tunnel adjacent to an Israeli position and wounded two Israeli soldiers before being killed by Israeli return of fire. Given the soft soil composition in the area, digging new tunnels or new shafts from existing tunnels is a fairly quick process. In another case, a rocket was launched from Hamas-controlled territory, but it failed and fell inside Gaza. Israeli troops respond to stand-off fire in kind and shoot at infiltrators. After major incidents, Israel retaliates by striking specific Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad commanders in Hamas-controlled territory.
Israeli forces continue to scour the territory in Israeli hands, and almost every day find new caches of weapons hidden in buildings or other sites, as well as new tunnel entrance shafts and tunnels. The weapons are collected, and the buildings and tunnels demolished.
Meanwhile, the flow of trucks carrying supplies into Gaza continues at approximately 800 per day, though a quarter of that is sufficient to meet the needs of the population. A large portion of these supplies continues to flow to Hamas itself. A video report by an anti-Hamas Palestinian showed a store of baby food that has been held back by Hamas rather than supplying it to the population. He claims the film was made during the period when Israel was falsely accused of deliberately starving Gaza’s population.
A report published by the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria did not go so far as that, but did state that Hamas controlled both the import and the dissemination of humanitarian assistance and used that control to fund itself at the population’s expense.
The wealth of supplies entering Gaza is enabling Hamas to continue to solidify its control over the population, enlist new troops, and build up its arsenal of weapons. Currently, this arsenal consists primarily of light weapons and explosives salvaged from destroyed storage sites and unexploded aerial bombs dropped by the Israelis during the war.
The number of small explosive devices that can be created from a salvaged bomb depends on its size, ranging from a dozen to several dozen. There are probably a few hundred such unexploded aerial bombs scattered throughout the area controlled by Hamas. In addition, the Israelis have intercepted quadcopters carrying weapons from Egypt into Gaza. How many of these have already managed to get through is not known. In the past, Hamas has also smuggled in weapons by sea, exploiting the natural current directions to float waterproof barrels from Egyptian Sinai to Gaza. Israeli naval patrols have intercepted some but not all of these barrels. Since the beginning of the war and the increased presence of Israeli naval patrols, naval smuggling has been more difficult for Hamas to accomplish, but it might still be happening.
In Phase 2 of the Ceasefire, Hamas is supposed to disarm, a technocratic government is to be established in Gaza, and an international force is meant to take over “peacekeeping,” enabling Israel to withdraw its forces closer to the border. Hamas continues to declare it will not disarm, and some of the mediators (Egypt, Qatar, and, according to a recent unverified report, the British government) are attempting to change this requirement. In theory, the technocratic government has been set up and is ready to begin work, but as long as Hamas remains armed, this government will be only a façade behind which Hamas will continue to control Gaza. This is especially true in view of the fact that most of the administrative personnel in this government previously worked for Hamas. This includes a 10,000-man armed police force that is meant to enforce the policies of the new government but that is actually manned almost entirely by Hamas personnel.
Furthermore, there is still no international force willing to replace the IDF in compelling Hamas’ disarmament. This could lead to a swift reigniting of the fighting.
Meanwhile, the IDF has completed preparations for at least one site on which to build a new tent/hut city for Gazans who will be transferred to live there, via security checkpoints to filter out Hamas personnel, and receive humanitarian support. More such sites are under discussion. If this works, it will reduce, possibly dramatically, the number of civilians living under Hamas authority. This would give the IDF a freer hand for operations against Hamas and the other organizations.
On the Israeli side of the border with Gaza, the rebuilding and return of the population forced to evacuate because of the October 2023 attack and subsequent war has continued, with most of the Israeli refugees now returned to their homes. In the town of Sderot, seven kilometers from the border, there has been a large-scale operation to build new neighborhoods. In addition to nearly all the original residents having returned, at least 3,000 new residents have moved to Sderot from other parts of Israel.
Dr. Eado Hecht, a senior research fellow at the BESA Center, is a military analyst focusing mainly on the relationship between military theory, military doctrine, and military practice. He teaches courses on military theory and military history at Bar-Ilan University, Haifa University, and Reichman University and in a variety of courses in the Israel Defense Forces. A version of this article was originally published by The BESA Center.
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When ‘Bearing Witness’ Collides With Neutrality: Doctors Without Borders in Gaza
Trucks carrying humanitarian aid and fuel line up at the crossing into the Gaza Strip at the Rafah border on the Egypt side, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, in Rafah, Egypt, October 17, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Stringer
Médecins Sans Frontière (MSF) — known in English as Doctors Without Borders — is a large humanitarian organization that provides medical assistance around the world.
While much of its work is with victims of natural disasters, disease outbreaks, and internally displaced people, one fourth of the group’s activity is helping people affected by armed conflict.
In order to do this work, MSF pledges neutrality and impartiality, as only on that basis can it demand that parties to conflicts allow it unimpeded access to help those in need.
But Israel is concerned that humanitarian non-profits are exploiting their Gaza access to shield militants and work against Israel politically.
Therefore, the Israeli government decided last March to require these organizations to provide detailed information about their activities and the identities of their employees, giving them a generous 10 months to comply. This information will enable Israel to make sure these organizations are exclusively humanitarian, and that their employees are not Hamas members or anti-Israel activists seeking to enter Gaza in disguise.
MSF loudly protested, claiming that revealing the identity of its employees to Israel would put them in danger, and that these requirements are really a cynical attempt by Israel to force MSF to abandon its mission.
But MSF has made numerous anti-Israel statements, on social media and on its website, which the Israel government has compiled in a report.
MSF has repeatedly claimed that Israel is guilty of ethnic cleansing, genocide, and systematic extermination. It has called for an arms embargo against Israel, while praising and supporting the BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) movement. MSF also says that Israel is guilty of colonization, systemic oppression, and apartheid.
To be clear, the issue is not whether one agrees with these views (which are greatly disputed). The question is whether an organization that publicly accuses Israel of genocide, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing — and campaigns for boycotts and arms embargoes against it — can still claim to be neutral in any ordinary sense of the term.
MSF claims that this is the case. It says “Bearing Witness” is also one of its core values. It states that, “The principles of impartiality and neutrality are not synonymous with silence … we are duty-bound to raise our voices and speak out on behalf of our patients.”
In their view, as long as they provide medical care without discrimination and keep actual military combatants off their payroll, no amount of political action compromises their neutrality and the privileges it entails.
Of course, there is a vast chasm between the statements MSF and its employees are making and what “bearing witness” requires. MSF and its staff could describe the problems they face in fulfilling their medical mission, such as lack of supplies, equipment, and the like, without assigning blame or taking sides. Whether the tragic Gaza situation is the fault of Israel, Hamas, or others is a matter of opinion, which a neutral party should not voice.
Genocide is a legal determination that hinges on intent and military necessity, neither of which can be inferred from treating the wounded. When a humanitarian organization claims otherwise, it oversteps its bounds.
That is the position of the Red Cross, another humanitarian organization pledged to neutrality. The Red Cross does not make public accusations, specifically in order to maintain trust and keep the working relationships that enable it to fulfill its mission. And even though many in Israel believe the Red Cross should have pressed harder to visit the hostages, the Israeli government has made no effort to stop the Red Cross from operating in Gaza — and in fact, even cooperated with the Red Cross to facilitate hostage exchanges.
The MSF has become so critical of Israel that even former MSF Secretary General Alain Destexhe says the organization is now “biased, partial, and militant,” and accuses it of effectively siding with Hamas.
Israel has every right to tell MSF that the anti-Israel political campaign it tries to pass off as “bearing witness” is in direct conflict with its obligation to neutrality. If MSF wants to campaign against Israel, it has no right to expect Israel’s cooperation and help.
If Israel ultimately forces MSF to leave Gaza, MSF will likely portray this as proof that Israel is attempting to cut off humanitarian aid. But Israel has made clear through its continued cooperation with other neutral organizations that it welcomes bona fide humanitarian assistance. The predicament MSF now faces follows directly from its decision to mix humanitarian work with political campaigning. In doing so, MSF has put both its access to Gaza and its patients’ care at risk.
Shlomo Levin is the author of the Human Rights Haggadah, and he uses short fiction to explore human rights at https://shalzed.com/
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Trying to influence progressives in New Jersey, AIPAC may actually help one get elected
Politics has always been a dirty business – just ask King David, Socrates or Confucius. But AIPAC’s latest reckless move should raise even the most cynical of eyebrows.
It’s happening here in my home district, New Jersey’s 11th, which has had a vacant congressional seat since former congresswoman Mikie Sherrill became governor last month. The primary election is Thursday, and since this is a deep blue district, it’s almost certain that the Democratic nominee will go to Washington in a few months.
Not surprisingly, the field is crowded, but four front-runners have emerged: former congressman Tom Malinowski, who narrowly lost his seat in 2022 after his district was redrawn; Essex county commissioner Brendan Gill; former lieutenant governor Tahesha Way; and progressive Analilia Mejia, who has been endorsed by Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and seemingly the entire left wing of the party.
In the last month, a group called the United Democracy Project has been attacking Malinowski from the left, alleging that he supports ICE. Factually, this is poppycock: Malinowski has vociferously spoken out against ICE’s excesses. But he did vote for an omnibus, bipartisan DHS funding bill in 2019, which included funding for ICE.
Unfair, perhaps, but also fair enough — this is politics as usual.
What’s unusual is that the “United Democracy Project” is actually a Super PAC affiliated with AIPAC, as reported in this publication a few weeks ago. Even more unusual is that AIPAC has poured over $2.2 million into this primary election, according to FEC data. And even more unusual than that is the fact that AIPAC, which has embraced Republicans and the Trump administration for their support of the Netanyahu government, is suddenly taking a progressive, anti-Trump line by targeting a candidate for supporting ICE.
Except, of course, that is all a shell game.
AIPAC isn’t running ICE ads because they care about immigrants; they’re attacking Malinowski for his temerity to defy AIPAC’s demand that aid to Israel be completely unconditional, which no other foreign aid ever is. A spokesman for “United Democracy Project” told Punchbowl News that the organization turned on Malinowski because “he talks about conditioning aid — that’s not a pro-Israel position, and he knows it.”
AIPAC also knows that, because of a quirk of congressional rules, Malinowski would become a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, because previous stints in Congress count for seniority purposes. And because, before serving in Congress, Malinowski was the assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor under President Obama, he is widely respected as a foreign policy expert and would surely become a key member of the committee.
So, why is AIPAC making a target of a potential ally? Notice how the goalposts have shifted: Malinowski is not an anti-Zionist. He’s not even a critic of Israel, like Rep. Jamaal Bowman, who AIPAC spent $14 million to defeat in 2024. He espouses the same views as a majority of the American Jews: supportive of Israel as a Jewish state with a right to defend itself, but critical of the Netanyahu government’s actions in Gaza, which killed over 70,000 people. (The government recently accepted the Gaza/Hamas Health Ministry’s casualty numbers, after Israel’s right-wing supporters spent two years attacking journalists who cited them. No apologies for said attacks have been issued.)
On this issue, Malinowski is a centrist Democrat, not a progressive firebrand. Yet, Malinowski said at a recent event I attended in Montclair, AIPAC wants to make an example of him. Cross us, and we will come for you – no matter how moderate you are.
Rep. Ilhan Omar was excoriated for an offhand remark she made in 2019 that AIPAC’s power is “all about the Benjamins,” using a common slang term for hundred dollar bills. But AIPAC has dropped more than 22,000 Benjamins on one primary race to warn everyone not to cross them. Though she later apologized (under duress) for invoking antisemitic tropes about Jews and money, in terms of AIPAC’s political power, Omar was right.
Presumably, AIPAC is hoping that its efforts will turn voters away from Malinowski, who currently has a small lead, and toward Way or Gill, who, disappointingly, have declined to condemn the ads.
But if you’re paying attention to the NJ-11 race, you might suspect that their efforts will have an unintended effect: boosting Mejia, who, unlike Malinowski, is a strong critic of Israel in the familiar Sanders/Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez/ZohranMamdani mode.
Think about it: Who benefits from AIPAC’s ads? Yes, Gill, like Malinowski, has spoken out against Trump and ICE – I saw him give an inspiring speech at a ‘No Kings’ rally a few months ago. But after a year of mainstream Democrats being perceived as ineffectual in their opposition to Trump, no one’s going to be motivated by an anti-ICE ad to vote for either of the Democratic machine’s candidates.
No, they’re going to vote for the strongest progressive in the race, and that is clearly Mejia, who is running in second place and has Rep. Ro Khanna visiting the district. (Khanna is fighting his own battle with AIPAC, which is spending to defeat him this year.) Along with Khanna, legions of Indivisible activists are doing Get Out The Vote work for Mejia. The wind is at her back, and AIPAC just gave her a squall.
To be sure, Mejia is not running on Israel, Gaza or support for Palestinians. She is following the successful progressive ‘affordability’ playbook, highlighting her support for a $15 minimum wage, free child care, Medicare for All and so on. Israel does not appear on her campaign website at all.
But she’s not hiding her views either. At a candidates forum last week, she affirmed that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza, and pledged not to visit Israel on a trip sponsored by AIPAC. (No other candidate in this race took those positions.) And she has spent many years as a progressive activist expressing similar views.
The irony would be rich: AIPAC defeats a supporter of Israel, and puts another Squad member in the House instead. Talk about instant karma.
And then there’s the bigger picture. As everyone knows, the last two years have seen an unprecedented rise in antisemitism, along with conspiratorial thinking of all kinds – especially because, as we now see from the latest Epstein Files release, some of the conspiracies are real. And it’s at this moment that the leading organization of the “Israel Lobby” covertly tries to bait progressives into voting a certain way? Do they not see that this kind of secretive manipulation is exactly what the antisemites say about us?
Obviously, AIPAC is not responsible for antisemitism, and even if they played fair, bigotry would not go away. And again, politics is a dirty business. But did no one in the room even raise this as a concern? That it might be problematic for the Israel Lobby to hide its identity, lie to progressives (many of whom, of course, would be repulsed to learn that AIPAC is targeting them), and, under false pretenses, persuade them to vote for AIPAC’s agenda? Do they have no concern for how this conspiratorial chicanery might enflame antisemitic sentiments, or, God forbid, actions?
At this point, I can’t tell who I’m rooting for more: Malinowski, to show AIPAC that not every politician can be intimidated, or Mejia, to hand them a massive self-own. Either way, AIPAC would get what it deserves. I just hope no one else pays the price.
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