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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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The post Founded by a Holocaust survivor, a Bronx bakery’s kosher cheesecake is as tasty as ever after 6 decades appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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New Report Reveals Rampant Human Rights Abuses in Iran as Activists Warn of Another Wave of Mass Executions
People attend Eid al-Fitr prayers, marking the end of Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan, amid the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, in Tehran, Iran, March 21, 2026. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
A new report reveals the widespread scale of human rights abuses in Iran over the past year, as activists warn the regime may carry out another wave of mass executions to suppress growing opposition amid deepening unrest.
The Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), an independent group monitoring Iran, released a report last week, timed for Nowruz, the Persian New Year, outlining a deeply concerning human rights situation over the past 12 months, citing crackdowns on protesters, harassment of activists, threats to minorities, executions of children, violations of women’s rights, and dire prison conditions.
According to HRANA’s Statistics and Documentation Center, 78,907 people were arrested on ideological or political grounds from March 2025 to March 2026, highlighting a pervasive climate of repression across the country.
But the report warns that the number of arrests is likely much higher, given the difficulty of tracking such cases — especially earlier this year during recent nationwide anti-government protests, which security forces violently crushed, leaving thousands of demonstrators tortured or killed.
HRANA reports that at least 6,724 protesters, including 236 children, were killed during these protests, with an additional 11,744 cases still under verification. Multiple reports have put the death toll at over 30,000.
During the regime’s violent crackdown, the group also recorded 25,877 people sustaining serious injuries, with 53,777 arrests occurring on just Jan. 8 and 9 alone.
On women’s rights, HRANA reports that 105 women were murdered, including seven so-called “honor killings” — murders committed under the pretext of preserving family honor — and documents 68 cases of rape or sexual abuse.
Recent media reports indicate that Iranian security forces raped and tortured medical staff who treated wounded anti-regime protesters during the country’s nationwide uprising in January, targeting them in a campaign of intimidation against those aiding demonstrators.
As in past years, executions remain one of the starkest manifestations of human rights abuses in Iran, with at least 2,488 people executed last year, including 63 women and two children, 13 of them carried out publicly.
According to a report by Harm Reduction International (HRI), a global organization tracking drug policy and human rights, 955 people were executed for drug-related offenses in 2025 — an average of roughly three per day — with over 1,000 more currently on death row.
Nearly one in four of those executed were from ethnic minority groups, more than one in five were foreign nationals, and the majority were poor, accused of minor drug offenses, and denied proper legal protections, the report notes.
As the regime continues its campaign of executions, the report says at least 222 children have been left without parents.
United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iran Mai Sato denounced the regime’s brutal treatment of individuals accused of drug crimes, highlighting the disproportionate impact on vulnerable families.
“Many of the drugs-related cases in Iran involve young fathers from minority ethnic backgrounds experiencing economic hardship who face not only execution but also confiscation of their limited assets – including family homes and farmland – devastating their families long after their execution,” Sato said in a statement.
According to HRI’s latest report, at least 65 executions were carried out in secret without prior notice, denying families the chance to say goodbye, and some occurred despite ongoing legal proceedings.
Iranian security forces also systematically used coercion and torture, while denying prisoners access to legal counsel, to force illegitimate confessions.
HRI also reports that under Iran’s Islamic Penal Code, the principle of elm‑e‑qazi — which allows judges to determine guilt based solely on circumstantial evidence without confessions or witnesses — is frequently applied arbitrarily.
With an increasing number of reports exposing the scale of systematic abuses across the country, human rights groups are warning that the death toll may climb sharply, with over 100 detainees at risk of execution.
Last week, three young Iranian men, including 19-year-old wrestling champion Saleh Mohammadi, were executed as the regime intensifies its crackdown on dissent, The Associated Press reported.
Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, head of Oslo-based Iran Human Rights, told the AP the executions are “intended to instill fear in society and deter new protests” amid deepening unrest.
On Monday, Iran’s judiciary confirmed that cases tied to the January protests have reached final verdicts and warned that those convicted would face no leniency.
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‘Verbal sparring’ at a conference for religious Jews breaking from Israel orthodoxy? That’s not what I experienced
To the editors:
The Forward‘s article about the recent Smol Emuni conference seems to describe a different event than the one that I attended. There were certainly different viewpoints among the people assembled at the gathering for religious Jews who, per the organization’s mission, seek “justice, equality, and dignity for Jews and Palestinians.” And there were views and perspectives shared that felt challenging or even difficult to hear.
But to assert, as the Forward‘s article did, that the conference was riven by strife and anger is simply not true.
The basis of the article’s claim, and the focus of a flurry of subsequent op-eds and blog posts, was Rabbi Saul Berman’s address to open the afternoon session. Berman used his remarks to criticize the Palestinian activist who had spoken in the morning; in doing so, he invoked a broad, monochromatic description of Islamic theology that felt out of place to some of us, including me.
Berman argued that Islamic Law prohibits any territorial concession, suggesting that Islamic law, but not Jewish law, continues to make peace impossible. The implication that Jewish theology has not blocked work toward peace is quite problematic, given the central role of religious leaders and communities in building settlements and in right-wing politics in Israel.
It is precisely this line of argument that many came to this conference to escape. In too many Jewish communities, it feels impossible to acknowledge the ways in which Judaism has contributed to Palestinian suffering and injustice. Smol Emuni was created in part to end that silence. That is why Berman’s words felt jarring.
But reading the Forward‘s article, one might think that Berman spoke with anger or that the audience actively derided him.
In fact, Berman spoke for close to 20 minutes. As far as I could see, everyone listened to him attentively. Most of the audience applauded when he concluded; I heard no boos. While a few people came and went during his remarks, as is the case at any such event, I saw no evidence that anyone “walked out in protest.”
One of the organizers did feel the need to note, after Berman concluded, that the conference organizers specifically did not share all of his views. She did so gracefully, while thanking him warmly for speaking and affirming her deep respect for him. I do not know how Berman felt, but he was not visibly angered and he stayed for the remainder of the program.
It was an awkward moment, to be sure, but not one of rancor or disrespect. It certainly did not define the conference, which elevated a range of important voices and viewpoints that I found both thoughtful and thought-provoking.
The post ‘Verbal sparring’ at a conference for religious Jews breaking from Israel orthodoxy? That’s not what I experienced appeared first on The Forward.
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Iran Launches Missile Featuring Poster Thanking Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez
An Iranian missile carries a poster of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, featuring a message in Farsi and English thanking him for condemning the war and praising Tehran. Photo: Screenshot
Iran has launched a missile toward “US-Israeli assets” bearing a poster thanking Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez for what it portrayed as his support for the regime and condemnation of the ongoing US-Israeli military campaign in the Middle East.
According to Iranian state-owned and semi-official media, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on Sunday released footage of a missile carrying a poster of the Spanish leader, thanking him for his message of solidarity as part of one of the regime’s latest propaganda moves.
“We praise the Spanish minister who calls this war illegal. We say: not only is this war illegal, it is also inhuman. Thank you, Prime Minister,” the poster reads, featuring a portrait of Sánchez in both Farsi and English.
Iran released footage of the 75th wave of missile attacks against US-Israeli assets.
Follow: https://t.co/B3zXG73Jym pic.twitter.com/Z1aY7cRT5M
— Press TV
(@PressTV) March 22, 2026
Ahead of a European Union summit in Brussels last week, Sánchez once again denounced the ongoing war against Iran, saying Madrid “has condemned the war from the very first moment” and describing the US-Israeli operations against the regime as “illegal.”
As diplomatic ties between Madrid and both Washington and Jerusalem fray over Spain’s refusal to back the US–Israeli offensive and its increasingly outspoken posture on the conflict, Israel’s Foreign Ministry blasted the move as a troubling alignment with Tehran’s narrative.
“Pedro Sánchez – Iran’s mullah regime is thanking you by putting your words on the missiles it fires at civilians in Israel and the Arab world,” the statement read.
“How does it feel knowing your face & words are on these missiles?” it continued. “Keep in mind that Europe – including Spain – is within range of these missiles.”
Pedro Sánchez – Iran’s mullah regime is thanking you by putting your words on the missiles it fires at civilians in Israel and the Arab world.
How does it feel knowing your face & words are on these missiles?
Keep in mind that Europe – including Spain – is within range of… pic.twitter.com/emDyJPokkh
— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) March 23, 2026
In one of its most recent moves, the Spanish government blocked the United States from using its bases for military operations against the Islamist regime, prompting US President Donald Trump to threaten Madrid with the suspension of trade ties.
Iran earlier this month praised Spain for its decision.
Since the start of the war in Gaza in October 2023, Spain has become one of Israel’s fiercest critics, a stance that has only intensified in recent months, coinciding with a shocking rise in antisemitic incidents targeting the local Jewish community — from violent assaults and vandalism to protests and legal actions.
From unilaterally recognizing a Palestinian state to repeatedly branding the war in Gaza a “genocide,” Sánchez has spearheaded an aggressive diplomatic campaign aimed at undermining and isolating the Jewish state on the international stage.
Most recently, Spain permanently withdrew its ambassador from Israel, further straining relations and garnering the praise of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.
Last year, the Spanish government announced a ban on imports from hundreds of Israeli communities in the West Bank, eastern Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights.
In September, Spain passed a law to take “urgent measures to stop the genocide in Gaza,” banning trade in defense material and dual-use products from Israel, as well as imports and advertising of products originating from Israeli settlements.
Spanish officials also announced that they would bar entry to individuals involved in what they called a “genocide against Palestinians” and block Israel-bound ships and aircraft carrying weapons from Spanish ports and airspace.
As the local Jewish community continues to face an increasingly hostile climate and targeted violence, Sánchez has drawn mounting criticism from political opponents and Jewish leaders who accuse his rhetoric of fueling antisemitic hostility across the country.