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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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Trump just used journalists as human shields — Jewish ethics has thoughts about that
Everyone has been talking about The Odyssey this summer. So much so that, apparently, the president of the United States felt the need to act out a famous piece of Greek mythology, namely the story of the Trojan horse. When an Iranian assassination threat in July seemed credible enough, the Secret Service spirited Trump off of Air Force One in a catering truck after a NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey.
The plane then took off as usual, loaded with top government officials including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, as well as the usual cast of aides and journalists who often accompany the president. Most believed they were on the plane with Trump, and weren’t aware of any threat. And had Iran actually attacked, and Air Force One been shot out of the sky, they would have gone down in the president’s place.
It is not unheard of for presidents to change plans suddenly for safety reasons, or otherwise use some amount of subterfuge to obscure their location; when Bill Clinton flew to Pakistan, for example, there were several decoy planes. But it is highly unusual for the plan to involve risking numerous other people, including civilians. Several journalists have accused Trump, who has long picked fights with the press, of using the media as an expendable human shield.
Much has been made, particularly in the Jewish world, of the idea of human shields, particularly because Hamas is often accused of the practice. Human shields can refer to putting civilians in harm’s way as part of a military strategy, or using them as decoys or to protect soldiers. (Hamas purportedly has used civilian sites such as hospitals or schools to protect their weapons stores and headquarters.)
There are numerous stories in Jewish texts in which innocent lives are sacrificed for ulterior motives, and the perpetrators are roundly condemned. King David sends his general Uriah to the frontlines so he will die and never realize that David had slept with his wife; God sends the prophet Nathan to rebuke David for his selfishness and Batsheva loses the pregnancy as punishment. When Simon and Levi destroy Shechem in retribution for the rape of their sister Dina, the patriarch Jacob censures their actions.
Though there is plenty of warfare in the Bible, and God at times orders the destruction of entire cities or groups, most Jewish sages interpret this to only apply to combatants because other commandments, such as to leave the gates of a besieged city open to allow people to flee, instruct that innocent civilians must be protected.
Beyond general ethics, the laws of war laid out in the Geneva Convention protect civilians and forbid the destruction of pivotal resources such as hospitals. But the strategy is, in many ways, a successful one precisely because it is so contemptible; everyone agrees that killing civilians not involved in war is morally wrong, which means that there is an international uproar if combatants do kill civilians to get to an enemy stronghold.
The U.S. and Israel both hold themselves apart operating uniquely moral armies — ones that follow the laws of war and protect civilians. Both nations publicly boast of fighting only necessary, noble wars. Reality, however, often differs. During the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, tens of thousands of American soldiers were discharged for misconduct. And after Oct. 7, Israel also began using human shields, forcing Palestinian civilians to go ahead of Israeli soldiers to check for traps or mines.
When Trump landed, the White House press pool asked him, on the tarmac, what the threat was, and whether the journalists and aides on board the original plane were in danger. Trump responded that he simply did what the Secret Service told him to; “I get a lot of threats,” he said, and said he believed that the plane he actually flew on — a plane no one knew he was on — was in more danger than Air Force One.
But it’s clear to everyone else — including many members of the media who were on the plane — that the civilians left on the plane targeted by the Iranian threat were human shields. Trump may have long defamed the media, but putting them knowingly in harm’s way is still a bad look. Such a bad look that, after The New York Times reported on Trump’s planes, FBI agents went to the journalists’ homes to subpoena them for their reporting.
Thankfully, neither plane was shot down. But that doesn’t make Trump’s decision to protect himself any more moral.
The post Trump just used journalists as human shields — Jewish ethics has thoughts about that appeared first on The Forward.
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Apple pays $150k to settle federal antisemitism lawsuit
(JTA) — Apple has agreed to pay $150,000 to settle a federal lawsuit alleging that the company failed to accommodate a Jewish employee’s observance of Shabbat, and later fired him after he complained of religious discrimination.
The lawsuit, which was filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in September 2025, accused Apple of discriminating against Tyler Steele, a longtime employee of one of its stores in Reston, Virginia.
Steele converted to Judaism in the spring of 2023, and while his manager initially approved his request not to be scheduled on Fridays and Saturdays due to his observance of Shabbat, another manager that replaced the previous one later rescinded the accommodation.
According to the complaint, Steele’s new manager, Anthony Dosch, denied his requests to have the days off in September 2023, allegedly telling him that month that he “could become a rules Nazi with regards to our policies.”
Days after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel, Dosch also warned Steele not to get into politics or debates about the conflict at work, and a month later issued him a misconduct warning claiming that Steele had body odor that violated the store’s policies.
The EEOC alleged that Steele later complained to Apple officials in November 2023 about antisemitic behavior and the denial of his religious accommodation. Steele was fired from the store in January 2024, after reminding Dosch that he could not work on a Friday the following month for religious reasons.
“Employees should not have to violate their religious beliefs to keep their jobs or live in fear of retribution because they requested an accommodation,” EEOC Philadelphia Regional Attorney Debra Lawrence said in a statement at the time the lawsuit was filed.
In its lawsuit, the EEOC accused Apple of religious discrimination and retaliation in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Apple and the EEOC unveiled the settlement in an Aug. 7 filing in federal court in Virginia, nearly a year after the initial complaint.
Apple denied the allegations and did not admit wrongdoing as part of the settlement, which required the company to award Steele $80,000 in back pay and $70,000 in compensatory damages and interest.
Under the settlement, the company will also be required to update its religious accommodation policies and conduct trainings with some employees in its Virginia operations within 90 days.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Apple pays $150k to settle federal antisemitism lawsuit appeared first on The Forward.
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Judge throws out Trump’s Harvard antisemitism lawsuit, citing lack of evidence
(JTA) — A federal judge threw out the Trump administration’s lawsuit that had accused Harvard University of having “turned a blind eye” to Jewish and Israeli students, ending for now the most high-profile campus antisemitism case in the legal arena.
The judge, Richard Stearns, ruled Thursday that the government’s evidence for Harvard having committed Title VI civil rights violations were “too isolated and episodic to support a plausible inference that any institutionalized noncompliance with Title VI persists at Harvard to this day.”
In a statement, U.S. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the government disagrees with the ruling and is “assessing next steps.”
Trump’s suit against the Ivy League school, first filed in March, was a cornerstone of his administration’s aggressive and contentious fight against campus antisemitism. Harvard was among the most prominent schools to have experienced severe tensions, including incidents directly targeting Jewish students and “Zionists,” in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks in Israel. The school settled cases with some Jewish students and put forward its own plans to fight antisemitism.
Yet unlike some other schools, Harvard resisted the government’s efforts to make concessions and pay a fine in order to resolve Title VI cases. The school also fought the Trump administration’s 2025 freezing of more than $2 billion in federal funds to Harvard, which the government argued was punishment for failing to address campus antisemitism.
Sterns wrote that the government’s case in the Title VI suit was flawed because it relied on incidents almost entirely from the 2023-24 school year and couldn’t be considered “ongoing.”
He also criticized the Trump administration’s practice of withholding funds from schools accused of Title VI violations, writing, “Congress’s intent was not to penalize a wayward funding recipient but instead to incentivize it to bring itself into compliance with TItle VI.” Title VI is the section of the Civil Rights Act requiring institutions that receive federal funds not to discriminate on the basis of race, color or national origin.
A spokesperson for Harvard did not immediately return a request for comment.
Shabbos Kestenbaum, a Harvard alum who has become a prominent conservative campus activist on antisemitism issues since Oct. 7, criticized the ruling to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“Harvard insists on violating the civil rights of American Jewish students while holding the American people hostage in paying for it,” he wrote in a message. Kestenbaum encouraged the government not to issue any further grants to the university.
The case has been seen as a barometer of academia’s ability to fight the Trump administration in court over federal incursion efforts, many of which the administration cited campus antisemitism to justify. The day before the suit’s dismissal, three dozen universities — including fellow Ivy League schools Brown, Columbia and Cornell, all of whom had signed agreements with the Trump administration in exchange for dropping antisemitism charges — filed an amicus brief supporting Harvard in a separate case that had restored the school’s federal funding by court order.
The legal brouhaha had divided Jewish groups. Weeks before the judge’s ruling, Hillel International filed, then immediately withdrew, its own amicus brief supporting Harvard in the separate case. Hillel’s brief had argued the school was already adequately addressing antisemitism and that the government’s actions “do not help Jewish students.” Hillel withdrew the brief hours later, after activists including Kestenbaum criticized the organization on social media and urged donors to withhold funding.
Hillel International declined to comment on the latest development to JTA. A request for comment to Harvard Hillel, which operates independently of the parent organization, was not immediately returned. A request for comment to Harvard Chabad, whose director has also been outspoken about fighting campus antisemitism, was also not immediately returned.
Harvard’s Jewish community has also split over the school’s handling of antisemitism and the merits of the lawsuit. A March open letter signed by 120 Jewish Harvard faculty and staff after the lawsuit’s initial filing said the government “cynically exploits concerns about antisemitism to justify what can only be described as an authoritarian assault on institutions of higher education.”
In contrast, a July open letter signed by 170 Jewish and non-Jewish Harvard faculty and staff said that “challenges remain” on campus, while acknowledging “the situation has improved to some extent recently.”
“We understand why colleagues question the merits and motives of the Title VI lawsuit,” the second letter states. “But one should not turn a blind eye to the fact that many Jewish and Israeli students have suffered harassment and discrimination over the last few years, degrading their Harvard experience.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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