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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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Pomona College Agrees to Settlement Over Civil Rights Complaint Alleging Antisemitism on Campus
A pro-Hamas activist posts a banner near an encampment to demonstrate at the Claremont Colleges on May 7, 2024, in Los Angeles, California. Photo: Qian Weizhong via Reuters Connect
Pomona College in Claremont, California, has settled a civil rights complaint which accused school officials of having “permitted severe discrimination of Jewish students” in the months which followed Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, and Hillel International were part of the coalition of civil rights groups that brought legal action on behalf of Jewish students. According to a statement they released this week, the settlement calls for the college’s adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, updating its non-discrimination policy to stress that antisemitism is verboten, and hiring a new official to manage the college’s compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
“After Oct. 7, Jewish and Israeli students and teachers across the country were forced to live in fear on their own campuses. But there were many, including those at Pomona, who exemplified strength and stood up to the bigotry and hatred that threatened them,” Brandeis Center founder and chairman Kenneth Marcus said in a statement commenting on the resolution of the case. “The action steps outlined in this settlement will address the blatant and egregious antisemitism faced by Pomona’s students, therefore protecting students from facing similar treatment in the future. And we hope it encourages others to take legal action against those who violate our constitutional rights.”
Pomona College president Gabrielle Starr issued her own statement on Wednesday, saying, “Antisemitism has persisted for thousands of years, and this settlement is not a one-size-fits-all toolkit. It’ll be up to our community to put it in place — and to live it. We will work with the Executive Committee of the Faculty, Staff Council, and [Associated Students of Pomona College] to navigate the complexities and challenges together. I am grateful to their leadership in these times.”
The settlement announcement comes just over a month after Pomona College, working with its sister institutions in the Claremont consortium of liberal arts colleges in California (5C), imposed severe disciplinary sanctions on some of the members of a pro-Hamas student group who attempted to raid a campus Jewish event held to commemorate the victims of the Oct. 7 massacre, which claimed the lives of 1,200 people and resulted in 251 hostages being kidnapped and taken to Gaza.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, footage of the incident showed the group, whose members concealed their faces with keffiyeh scarves, attempting to storm the event venue while screaming expletives and pro-Hamas slogans. They ultimately failed due to the prompt response of the Claremont Colleges Jewish chaplain and other attendees who formed a barrier in front of the door to repel them, a defense they were forced to mount on their own because campus security personnel did nothing to stop the disturbance.
Later, the group behind the incident issued a disturbing open letter on social media.
“Satan dared not look us in the eyes,” the note said, while attacking event guests and Oct. 7 survivor Yoni Viloga. “Immediately, zionists [sic] swarmed us, put their hands on us, shoved us, while Viloga retreated like he did on October 7th, 2023.”
Appearing to threaten murder, the group added, “We let that coward know he and his fascists settler ideology are not welcome here nor anywhere. zionism is a death cult that must be dealt with accordingly [sic].”
After an exhaustive investigation which drew in every member of the 5C, Pomona College determined that two of the young people involved in the raid are enrolled in sister schools it would not identify due to privacy laws. It has banned them from the Pomona campus. Two other individuals remain at large.
“Given the gravity of the alleged offense — and the published statement that has raised significant concerns about similar disruptions in the future — I have initiated an interim campus ban for both individuals, pending further inquiries, and in line with our policy,” Starr said in her last update on the matter. “The alleged behavior here is serious, and to ensure an appropriate adjudication is reached, the college is committed to maintaining a fair process.”
She added, “I assure you that Pomona hopes for — and will advocate for — an outcome that ensures our campuses are free of the kind of targeted harassment we witnessed.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Bill to Help Recovery of Nazi-Looted Art Passes US Senate Unanimously, Heads to House of Representatives
A drone view of the “Arbeit macht frei” gate at the former Auschwitz concentration camp ahead of the 80th anniversary of its liberation, Oswiecim, Poland, Jan. 10, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kacper Pempel
The US Senate on Wednesday unanimously passed a bill that would help Holocaust survivors and their families reclaim artwork stolen by Nazis during World War II.
The Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery (Hear) Act of 2025 updates and expands on the original 2016 HEAR Act, which created a six-year window for a Holocaust survivor or their family to file a legal claim starting from the time they discovered the location of their stolen art. The 2016 HEAR Act is set to expire at the end of 2026.
The new bill passed by the Senate this week clarifies legal protections for Holocaust survivors and their families who are seeking the return of art looted by the Nazis by making sure that their claims are considered based on factual merits and not dismissed due to legal deadlines or time-based technicalities. The new bill states that if a Holocaust survivor or their family members file a claim within six years of discovering their artwork’s location, their case cannot be dismissed just because of how much time has passed.
The bill now heads to the House of Representatives, and if it’s passed there, it will be sent to US President Donald Trump to be signed into law.
“This bipartisan effort will assist Holocaust survivors and their families who are seeking the return of artwork now held in museums and collections across the United States,” said Mark Weitzman, chief operating officer of the World Jewish Restitution Organization, which supports world Jewry in pursuing claims for the restitution of Jewish property stolen during the Holocaust.
“By clarifying and strengthening the legal framework, the bill helps ensure that these claims can be evaluated on their merits, advancing justice and accountability,” added Weitzman. “The bill now moves to the House of Representatives, and we encourage swift support to bring us closer to ensuring that claims for Nazi-looted art can be heard on their merits.”
The bill was cosponsored by US Sens John Cornyn (R-TX), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), John Fetterman (D-PA), Eric Schmitt (R-MO), and Katie Britt (R-AL). Cornyn spearheaded the 2016 HEAR Act.
“The thousands of missing pieces of art looted from Jewish families by Hitler’s regime during the Holocaust are a painful reminder of a time when cruelty and hatred reigned,” Cornyn said in a released statement. “This legislation renews our commitment to Holocaust survivors and their families by ensuring cases are heard on their merit, offering a path to restitution and assurance that such injustices are never forgotten.”
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Middle East Scholars Hope New Book on Oct. 7 Will Combat the ‘Promotion of Fallacies on Campus’
Pro-Hamas demonstrators at Columbia University in New York City, US, April 29, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Caitlin Ochs
A consortium of Middle East scholars, as well as one student, has published a new book examining the impact of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel on geopolitics, media, and the landscape of higher education, The Algemeiner recently learned.
Edited by Scholars for Peace in the Middle East executive director Asaf Romirowsky and Smith College professor Donna Robinson-Divine, the book, titled October 7: The Wars Over Words and Deeds, includes essays by esteemed thinkers such Andrew Fox, KC Johnson, and Alex Joffe and it has already been acclaimed by professors representing higher education institutions across the Western world, from the University of California, Berkeley in the US to Kings College London in the United Kingdom.
On Friday, The Algemeiner spoke with Romirowsky and Robinson-Divine for nearly two hours to discuss their hopes for the project. One hope, they said, is breaking higher education’s dialogue on the Middle East out of a conceptual prison in which the convulsions of campus activism preclude careful analysis of a region whose rich history and effect on global stability demand seriousness. Wars Over Words and Deeds, they said, achieves this objective by contributing to “the academy” sound scholarship on the Middle East which respects the complexities it has posed to statesmen, scholars, and presidents since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire following the conclusion of World War I.
“We saw constantly a dearth of information and the promotion of fallacies on campus — a kind of rapid fire of lies and disinformation. We felt that we needed to actually look at the question of Israel and the Middle East from a rigorous academic standpoint,” Romirowsky said. “As historians, politic scientists, and analysts, we came together as a group to actually look at the historical patterns of behavior and historical evidence and describe the events which led up to Oct. 7 and what has transpired since.”
As previously reported by the Algemeiner, since the Oct. 7 massacre college faculty and students have treated the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as the subject of regional order in the Middle East, as a political and ideological issue, holding rallies, occupying buildings, and demanding sweeping policy changes such as divestment from Israel and the expulsion of Jewish academics. In dozens of incidents documented by The Algemeiner, they translated their zeal into speech which drew from Nazi-era rhetoric and other classic antisemitic tropes.
These activists have created an unusual convergence of interests connecting political Islamists, classical, white supremacist antisemites, and even far-left activists who advocate non-heteronormative gender roles and sexualities, Robinson-Divine noted.
“Anti-Zionism seems to be a vehicle for cementing ties between progressives who might not otherwise share a policy consensus,” she explained. “Muslim activists might have little in common with LGTBQ activists striving freedom and expanding social rights but they can unite around the issue of Israel.”
A coalition comprising factions which are normally at odds over the biggest political questions can only arise in a climate of deception, she noted.
“The incentives for distorting terms and concepts, for pushing an agenda, have been powerful over the past 10 years,” Robinson-Divine continued. “Higher education confers valuable material and social rewards to those who join the anti-Israel movement. But there are people who want information and accuracy, and I haven’t entirely despaired.”
One of the issues explored by The Wars Over Words and Deeds is the anti-Zionist left’s denial of reports that Hamas fighters sexually assaulted men and women on Oct. 7 and continued to do so after the fact to hostages it kidnapped and transported to Gaza. The Yale Daily News, for example, helped to popularize this denialism in higher education in November 2023, when it censored a column which discussed the sexual assault, calling the accounts of victims “unsubstantiated” — an outrage for which it later apologized.
“What is interesting about some Western responses to Oct. 7 is that groups which fall on the liberal side or the political spectrum, who claim to be invested in the well-being of women and disposed peoples,’ contribute to mass dehumanization which enables conditions for horrific gender-based violence to occur on nationalistic grounds,” writes Smith College student Skylar Ball in her contribution to the book. “When we turn our backs on truth, we enable dehumanization, and we subsequently turn our backs on humanity.”
Romirowsky, Robinson-Divine, and the scholars they brought together have a tall task, as anti-Zionist extremism in higher education has proven to be infectious.
Just last month, a New York City college saw a portentous incident in which a student and local imam disrupted an interfaith event by issuing a verbal fatwa which called for imposing sharia law on Americans, defended amputating the limbs of misdemeanor level criminals and the wealthy, and denigrated a Jewish co-panelist, Baruch College professor Ilya Bratman.
“If you’re a Muslim, out of strength and dignity, I ask you to exit this room immediately,” said Abdullah Mady, who is enrolled in the Master’s in Translational Medicine (MTM) program. “Sharia … stands against the oppressor. When sharia is implemented, pornography — gone. Alcohol industry — gone. Gambling system — gone. Interest is gone, which is what they use to enslave you.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.