Uncategorized
When it comes to a classic Jewish cookie, New York bakeries go beyond black and white
(New York Jewish Week) – As far as New York Jewish desserts go, perhaps the most ubiquitous is the black and white cookie, that soft, sweet, frosted treat found at bakeries and bagel stores throughout the city.
Black and white cookies, sometimes called half-moon cookies, are understood by most to be a Jewish dessert. “Seinfeld” once dedicated an episode to singing their praises. “You see, Elaine, the key to eating a black and white cookie is that you wanna get some black and some white in each bite,” Jerry says. “Nothing mixes better than vanilla and chocolate. And yet still somehow racial harmony eludes us. If people would only look to the cookie, all our problems would be solved.”
But now, in a testament to New Yorkers’ innovation — or possibly the old adage, “everything old is new again” — bakeries across the city are riffing upon this tried-and-true classic. These days, black and white cookies are available in a myriad of colors and flavors: yellow and blue to support Ukraine, red to celebrate Valentine’s Day, brown and yellow to mark the merger of banana, chocolate and hazelnut.
The banana walnut flavored black and white cookie. (Zaro’s Family Bakery)
The latter is one of six new flavor combinations at Zaro’s Family Bakery, where brothers and fourth-generation owners Brian, Michael and Scott Zaro have wholeheartedly embraced new versions of the two-tone classic. Earlier this month, the bakery unveiled its new black and white cookie color and flavor combinations, which include orange and white (cream cheese frosted carrot cake), green and black (mint chip), as well as an M&M-topped cookie, a sprinkle-filled birthday cake flavor and a cookies and cream flavor.
“We’ve been making the black and white cookie for 95 years,” Brian Zaro, who has been working full time for his family’s business since 2006, told the New York Jewish Week. “My brother, Scott, had a vision to make an iconic item that meets innovation.”
A carrot cake flavored cookie is topped with orange and white cream cheese frosting. (Zaro’s Family Bakery)
The black and white is one of the signature offerings at Zaro’s, which is known for setting up shop in New York’s biggest transit hubs, including Grand Central Terminal, Penn Station and LaGuardia airport. The bakery’s website boasts that it sells over 90,000 black and white cookies annually, and this season’s new flavors join Zaro’s chocolate chip black and whites, which they have been offering for several years, Brian said. (Black and white on the outside, with chocolate chips baked into the dough.)
Of course, these creative interpretations prompt an obvious question: How far can a bakery stray from chocolate and vanilla before a black and white is no longer a black and white?
“It’s a valid point,” Brian Zaro admits. “But right now, yes, it’s a black and white. That could change; we always try to be as open-minded as possible.”
Shannon Sarna, author of “Modern Jewish Baker” and editor at our partner site The Nosher, agrees. “I’m not a purist,” she said. “I don’t think they have to be black and white to be a real black and white cookie.”
For Sarna, what are most important to the integrity of a black and white are the flavors and technique. “A good black and white cookie is going to have a little taste of vanilla or orange or lemon zest that might be in the dough,” she said. “It’s got to have a good quality icing. It’s not going to just taste like sugar. It’s going to have a little chocolate flavor and it’s going to have a little bit of the white, more vanilla-y taste.”
For some, the doughy cookie with its signature bi-color frosting is only as good as the sense of nostalgia it offers. As the New York Times wrote back in 1998, “Today’s black-and-whites cannot compare with the black-and-whites of yesteryear, of course, just as no mayor will ever be as good at LaGuardia and no team as beloved as the Dodgers.” Sarna, who grew up in New York, calls black and whites “the cookies of my childhood.”
The black and whites as we know them were said to have been popularized by the Upper East Side’s Glaser’s Bake Shop, which was founded in 1902 by John Herbert Glaser. Glaser reportedly brought the black and white recipe with him when he immigrated to the United States from Bavaria.
Third-generation owner Herb Glaser, who ran the bakery with his brother until it closed for good in 2018, is not able to confirm this — but, at 70, he says that they were a feature of the bakery since he was a young boy.
Though he now lives “in the country,” Glaser is well aware of the new black and white trends. “Some of the businesses are making them a little too outrageous,” he said. “They’re not really black and whites anymore.”
Still, Glaser said that his bakery did occasionally make the cookies in different colors — for graduation parties, schools and, most notably, in orange and blue when the Mets were in the World Series in 1986. “I’m a traditionalist but I understand,” Glaser added. “It’s a marketing thing and that’s fine. It’s a way to stay in business.”
“I think there’s a sort of New York pride associated with it as ‘the New York cookie,’ and it just so happens to be a really good cookie,” said Noah Aris, the baker and proprietor of The Cardamom Man, which sells its baked goods online and at street markets. Aris bakes black and whites with blue and gold frosting as a fundraiser for humanitarian relief in Ukraine. In addition to lemon zest in the dough, Aris has added lavender, leaving the dough flecked with dots of purple.
The different colors “help start a conversation for me to talk about what I’m about as a bakery and raising money for Ukraine,” he said. “Then you hear [the customers’] story about their experiences with black and whites. It’s fun.”
Breads Bakery started baking black and whites with their signature laminated dough when they opened their Upper East Side location last year. “I operate under the simple thesis that when you give people something great they’ll appreciate it regardless of what their expectation may have been.” Peleg said. (Ashley Solter)
At some bakeries, innovation starts in the dough. Last holiday season, Breads Bakery rolled out black and whites made with a laminated, croissant-like base instead of the classic doughy, cakey consistency .
“The first time I took a bite of it, it became very clear to me that we’ve elevated this cookie to a new level and given it the treatment that it deserves,” Breads owner Gadi Peleg said. “I think we have done enough to wink at the nostalgic nature of the cookie — there’s enough there to sort of connect you to the memories that you may have associated with a black and white cookie. But it’s just different enough to bring it into a more modern New York, the New York of today.”
At Kossar’s Bagels & Bialys — which now has three locations across the city and one more on the way — customers will find traditional black and whites sitting alongside all-chocolate or all-vanilla frosted versions, as well as multi-color and M&M-topped versions.
“Some people like only the chocolate, some people like only the vanilla. So we use that as our inspiration to move forward,” said general manager Sharon Bain. “People do love the fact that we’re doing something with the black and white. We’re catering to everyone.”
Kossar’s will frost the cookies with green for St. Patrick’s Day or red for Valentine’s Day, but the reboot is only skin deep. According to Bain, the “black and white refers to the chocolate and vanilla flavors of the frosting, and not the color.”
For Brian Zaro, too, the flavor and color innovations are all about customer satisfaction, and this year the new black and white varieties are also available at the Zaro’s outpost at the Bryant Park Winter Village. “It’s new for us,” Zaro said. “But so far so good.”
—
The post When it comes to a classic Jewish cookie, New York bakeries go beyond black and white appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Stephen Spielberg wins Grammy, becoming 9th Jew in elite EGOT ranks
(JTA) — The legendary director Stephen Spielberg has become the ninth Jew to secure “EGOT” status after winning a Grammy for producing a documentary about the music of John Williams.
Spielberg was awarded the Grammy for producing “Music by John Williams,” which won best music documentary, before the televised ceremony on Sunday. The win makes him the 22nd person to win the coveted quartet of Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards.
Spielberg has won three Oscars, including best picture for the 1993 Holocaust drama “Schindler’s List”; four Emmys for TV programming including two World War II dramatic miniseries; and a Tony for producing the Broadway show “A Strange Loop.”
Spielberg adds to a large proportion of Jewish artists to win all four of the top entertainment awards. Nine of the 22 EGOTs have been Jewish, including the first person to ever reach the status, composer Richard Rodgers. Rodgers and Marvin Hamlisch, who was also Jewish, are the only people to have added a Pulitzer Prize to the EGOT crown. The most recent Jewish winner before Spielberg was the songwriter Benj Pasek, who secured the status in 2024 with an Emmy.
One of Spielberg’s more celebrated recent works was a drama based loosely on his own Jewish family. “The Fabelmans,” released in 2022, earned him three Oscar nods — for best picture, best director and best screenplay — but no wins.
In promoting that movie, Spielberg said antisemitic bullying when he was a child had informed his sense of being an “outsider,” which he translated into his filmmaking.
“Schindler’s List,” meanwhile, spurred the creation of the USC Shoah Foundation, a leading center for preserving Holocaust testimonies that has also recently embraced the task of preserving stories of contemporary antisemitism, too.
“It was, emotionally, the hardest movie I’ve ever made,” Spielberg said about his most decorated movie — for which John Williams earned an Oscar for the score. “It made me so proud to be a Jew.”
The post Stephen Spielberg wins Grammy, becoming 9th Jew in elite EGOT ranks appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
A border official mocked an attorney for observing Shabbat. Orthodox lawyers say the issue is not new.
Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol official who led immigration raids in Minneapolis, reportedly mocked the Jewish faith of Minnesota’s U.S. attorney during a phone call with other prosecutors in mid-January. According to The New York Times, Bovino complained that Daniel Rosen, an Orthodox Jew, was hard to reach over the weekend because he observes Shabbat and sarcastically pointed out that Orthodox Jewish criminals don’t take the weekends off.
The call took place at a moment of extreme tension in Minneapolis, as federal agents under Bovino’s command carried out an aggressive immigration crackdown that had already turned deadly. It came between the fatal shootings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti, both killed during enforcement operations, and amid fierce backlash from local officials and residents.
Bovino made the remarks in a derisive, mocking tone, the Times reported, casting Shabbat observance as a point of ridicule. Bovino had already drawn national attention for frequently wearing an olive double-breasted greatcoat with World War II-era styling, leading some critics to call him “Gestapo Greg” and accusing him of “Nazi cosplay.” Bovino, who pushed back on those comparisons, has since been reassigned.
Rosen, a Trump nominee, was confirmed as Minnesota’s U.S. attorney in October 2025 after a career in private practice and Jewish communal leadership. He has said that rising antisemitism helped motivate his decision to take the job, and that prosecuting hate crimes would be a priority for his office.
For many Orthodox Jewish lawyers, Bovino’s alleged remarks were not surprising. They echoed a familiar challenge: explaining that Shabbat — a full day offline — is not a lack of commitment, but a religious boundary that cannot be bent without being broken.
In a profession that prizes constant availability, that boundary can carry consequences. Some lawyers say it shows up in subtle ways: raised eyebrows, jokes about being unreachable, skepticism when they ask for time off. Others say it has shaped much bigger decisions, including how visibly Jewish they allow themselves to be at work.
David Schoen, an Orthodox criminal defense attorney who served as lead counsel for President Donald Trump during his second impeachment trial, said he has long been mindful of how religious observance is perceived in the courtroom.
“I have made a conscious decision not to wear my yarmulke in front of a jury,” Schoen said, explaining that jurors often “draw stereotypes from what they see.”
Those concerns were reinforced by experience. Schoen said he has noticed a “definite difference in attitude” from some judges depending on whether he wore a yarmulke. In one case, he recalled, a Jewish judge pulled him aside during a jury trial and told him she thought he had made the right choice — a comment Schoen said he found disappointing.
For Sara Shulevitz, a criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor, the Bovino episode brought back memories from early in her career.
Orthodox and the daughter of a Hasidic rabbi — now married to one — Shulevitz said her unavailability on Jewish holidays was often treated as a professional flaw rather than a religious obligation. “It held me back from getting promotions,” she said.
In court, the scrutiny could be blunt. “I was mocked by a Jewish judge for celebrating ‘antiquated’ Jewish holidays,” she said, recalling requests for continuances for Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah. In another case, she said, a judge questioned her request for time off for Shavuot and suggested she had already “taken off for Passover.”
When another judge assumed Passover always began on the same day in April, “I had to explain the Jewish lunar calendar in the middle of court while everyone was laughing,” she said.
Not every encounter, Shulevitz added, was rooted in hostility. Sometimes judges simply didn’t understand Orthodox practice. When she explained she couldn’t appear on a Jewish holiday, judges would suggest she join the hearing by Zoom — forcing her to explain that Orthodox Jews don’t use electrical devices on Shabbat or festivals.
The misunderstanding often slid into a familiar assumption. “They think you’re lazy,” she said. “It’s not laziness. Any Jewish woman knows how much work goes into preparing for Passover.”
Rabbi Michael Broyde, a law professor at Emory University who studies religious accommodation, said that Bovino’s alleged “derogatory remarks” are “sad and reflects, I worry, the antisemitic times we seem to be living in.”
He added that the criticism of Rosen reflected a basic misunderstanding of how law offices operate, calling it “extremely rare” for a lawyer’s religious practices to interfere with their obligations, especially when senior attorneys delegate work and courts routinely grant continuances.
“No one works 24/7,” Broyde said.
The episode echoed a similar Shabbat-related incident during Trump’s first term. In his 2022 memoir, former Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro described how a group sought to undermine Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner’s role in the 2020 campaign by scheduling a key White House meeting with Trump on a Saturday, knowing Kushner — who is Shabbat observant — would not attend. Navarro titled the chapter recounting the episode, “Shabbat Shalom and Sayonara.”
The tension between Jewish observance and public life is not new. Senator Joe Lieberman, the first observant Jew to run on a major-party presidential ticket, famously walked to the Capitol for a Saturday vote and ate fish instead of meat at receptions. His longtime Senate colleague Chris Dodd joked that he became Lieberman’s “Shabbos goy.”
Still, Schoen said, visibility can cut both ways. During Trump’s impeachment trial, while speaking on the Senate floor, he reached for a bottle of water and instinctively paused. With one hand holding the bottle, he used the other to cover his head — a makeshift yarmulke — before drinking.
The moment was brief, but it did not go unnoticed. In the days that followed, Schoen said he heard from young Jewish men and businesspeople who told him that seeing the gesture made them feel more comfortable wearing their own yarmulkes at work.
The attention, he said, was unexpected. But for some in the Orthodox community, it became a source of pride.
“I felt honored,” Schoen said.
My guess in all seriousness is that he normally wears a yarmulke and this was reflex. Schoen is modern Orthodox so that would make sense. But I defer to @jacobkornbluh https://t.co/MkKx6W03v2
— Jake Tapper 🦅 (@jaketapper) February 9, 2021
Jacob Kornbluh contributed additional reporting.
The post A border official mocked an attorney for observing Shabbat. Orthodox lawyers say the issue is not new. appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Deni Avdija becomes first Israeli to be selected as an NBA All-Star
(JTA) — Portland Trail Blazers star Deni Avdija’s meteoric rise has officially reached a new stratosphere, as the 25-year-old forward has become the NBA’s first-ever Israeli All-Star.
Avdija was named an All-Star reserve for the Western Conference on Sunday, an expected but deserved nod after the northern Israel native finished seventh in All-Star voting with over 2.2 million votes, ahead of NBA legends LeBron James and Kevin Durant. Avdija’s breakout performance this season has earned him repeated praise from James and others across the league.
Avdija’s star turn began last year in his first season with Portland, when he further captured the adoration of Jewish fans across Israel and the U.S. But he took another step forward this season, averaging 25.8 points, 6.8 assists and 7.2 rebounds per game. His points and assists clips are by far the best of his career, and rank 13th and 12th in the NBA, respectively. He’s considered a front-runner for the league’s Most Improved Player award.
For close observers of Israeli basketball, Avdija’s All-Star selection is the culmination of a promising career that began as a teenage star with Maccabi Tel Aviv and made him the first Israeli chosen in the top 10 in an NBA draft.
“Deni Avdija being named an NBA All-Star reserve is an unbelievable achievement in the mind of every Israeli basketball fan,” Moshe Halickman, who covers basketball for the popular Sports Rabbi website, wrote in an essay for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “This is a dream come true for many — a dream that became realistic and even a must-happen during his breakout season — but something that in his first five seasons in the NBA never came across as something that was going to be real.”
Halickman, who has covered Avdija in Washington, D.C., and in Israel, wrote that Avdija is not only considered the greatest Israeli hooper of all time, but perhaps the best athlete to come out of Israel, period.
Oded Shalom, who coached Avdija on Maccabi Tel Aviv’s Under-15 and Under-16 teams, echoed that sentiment in a recent profile of Avdija in The Athletic.
“Even though he is only 25, I think he is Israel’s most successful athlete in history,’’ Shalom said. “We’ve had some great gymnasts — and I hope everyone forgives me for saying it, because we’ve had some great athletes — but I think Deni has become the greatest.”
Avdija’s ascension has also come against the backdrop of the Gaza war and a reported global rise in antisemitism, which he has said affects him personally.
“I’m an athlete. I don’t really get into politics, because it’s not my job,” Avdija told The Athletic. “I obviously stand for my country, because that’s where I’m from. It’s frustrating to see all the hate. Like, I have a good game or get All-Star votes, and all the comments are people connecting me to politics. Like, why can’t I just be a good basketball player? Why does it matter if I’m from Israel, or wherever in the world, or what my race is? Just respect me as a basketball player.”
Now, Avdija’s talents will be on display at the NBA All-Star Game, on Sunday, Feb. 15, in Los Angeles.
The post Deni Avdija becomes first Israeli to be selected as an NBA All-Star appeared first on The Forward.