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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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Colombian President Gustavo Petro sparks outcry over tweet reading ‘Heil Hitler’
(JTA) — Colombia’s outgoing president, Gustavo Petro, sparked fierce condemnation from Israeli and Latin American leaders after he tweeted the phrase “Heil Hitler” Sunday in response to an op-ed endorsing a candidate in the country’s upcoming presidential election.
Petro, a left-wing president in the final weeks of his term ahead of the country’s June 21 runoff election, posted the Nazi phrase in response to an op-ed supporting right-wing presidential candidate Abelardo de la Espriella.
Petro subsequently defended his use of the Nazi slogan, arguing that he was critiquing the language used by the op-ed’s author, which he said included “fascist phrases.”
His defense came after criticism from Israeli leaders and others who said the “Heil Hitler” comment was inappropriate.
Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, called on the Colombian leader to “come to your senses and apologize” before Wednesday, when he is slated to preside over a debate at the United Nations Security Council.
“President of Colombia, @petrogustavo, whatever is going on in your personal life, there are lines that must never be crossed,” Danon wrote in a post on X. “Using Nazi slogans is a disgraceful low from which there is no coming back.”
Israel’s Foreign Ministry also decried the post, writing on X that it was a “total loss of moral compass and an indelible stain on Colombia’s legacy.”
The episode comes amid shifting norms about the use of Holocaust analogies and language in political discourse. After being considered out of bounds for a long time, people on both the right and the left have increasingly shed those norms amid growing political polarization and extremism around the world.
The “Heil Hitler” post was not the first time Petro has landed in hot water for invoking the Holocaust. In the wake of Oct. 7, Petro drew backlash from Jewish and Israeli leaders for likening the actions of Israel to Nazi Germany. On social media, he has repeatedly called political rivals Nazis, including last month when he wrote in a post on X that Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, had behaved like a “true Nazi” after he posted videos taunting detained activists from a Gaza-bound aid flotilla.
In 2024, Petro also severed diplomatic ties with Israel, accusing the country of commiting genocide in Gaza, an accusation Israel has denied. Espriella, who was endorsed by President Donald Trump, has vowed to renew diplomatic ties with Israel.
On Monday, 24 Latin American lawmakers signed onto a statement condemning Petro’s rhetoric, warning that his repeated use of references to Naziism risked distorting Holocaust memory.
“The use of references to Nazism must not become a rhetorical tool to discredit political or ideological positions. Democratic leaders have a responsibility to promote a respectful public debate that is conscious of the weight of words,” the statement read.
The statement was initiated by the Coalition of Latin American Legislators Against Antisemitism, which is led by the Combat Antisemitism Movement. The signatories included lawmakers from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the Dominican Republic and Uruguay.
Shay Salamon, CAM’s executive director of Latin American affairs, said in a statement that Petro’s invocation of the phrase reflected a “troubling record of antisemitic expressions and conduct” by the Colombian leader.
“When a leader uses the authority of his office to stigmatize the Jewish people or trivialize their historic suffering, silence is no longer an option,” Salamon said.
The post Colombian President Gustavo Petro sparks outcry over tweet reading ‘Heil Hitler’ appeared first on The Forward.
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Israel looms large as Maine heads to the polls in Graham Platner’s Senate primary
(JTA) — As Graham Platner wrapped up his campaign for the Maine Democratic Senate nomination Tuesday, he ended it the way he began: by taking aim at AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby and political funder.
The Democrat’s first online ad, released in August, boasted that, unlike his competitors, he would never get AIPAC’s endorsement because he believed Israel had committed genocide in Gaza. Last week, he suggested that AIPAC funding meant his Republican opponent was “bought and paid for by Benjamin Netanyahu,” drawing allegations of antisemitism from a range of Jewish groups.
Along the way, Platner has courted multiple rounds of controversy over Israel and Jews. And in the race’s final days, new reports about Platner’s past behavior toward women have fueled anti-Israel rhetoric among some of his supporters — and further splintered Democratic support for the oyster farmer and political neophyte whose spirited run for office has alarmed many Jewish leaders.
Now, Mainers are heading to the polls with Israel and antisemitism allegations looming large.
Platner, 41, ran as a populist promising to inject progressive energy into a Senate race where both the incumbent Republican and the establishment Democratic pick, Gov. Janet Mills, are in their 70s. (Mills suspended her primary campaign as Platner soared in polls, but she remains on Tuesday’s ballot.) In an election cycle when anti-Israel rhetoric is surging on the left, Platner — who has Jewish extended family, including a stepbrother who lives in Israel and works on Israel policy issues for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies — embraced the stance by making genocide accusations a key part of his stump speech.
That has earned him support in some corners. In a viral video from a rally over the weekend, a Platner supporter dismissed concerns about his tattoo of the Totenkopf symbol, a skull-and-crossbones image worn by Nazi concentration camp guards, which Platner tattooed over earlier this year amid criticism even as he insisted that he hadn’t known it was a Nazi symbol.
Then the supporter asserted that if Platner had a different tattoo, it would have been a dealbreaker for her: an Israeli flag.
“I don’t support genocide, and he doesn’t either, and that would show that he’s being inconsistent,” the woman told the New York Sun.
The exchange exacted disbelief from some. “Are you kidding me? A tattoo of the Israeli flag is worse than a Nazi symbol?” tweeted Democratic Rep. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, who is Jewish. “This should not be welcome in the Democratic Party!”
Pro-Israel donors have responded accordingly, shoring up the war chest of Republican Sen. Susan Collins.
“Susan Collins’s latest financial report just came out. A staggering one-third of her money raised this quarter came directly from AIPAC,” Platner tweeted on June 1. “Senator Collins is bought and paid for by Benjamin Netanyahu, and she votes accordingly.”
Collins has described herself as broadly “pro-Israel” but also recently provided a crucial vote for a measure to end the joint U.S.-Israeli war in Iran. OpenSecrets, the nonpartisan campaign finance information website, confirmed to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that its analysis of public Federal Election Commission data showed that a third of donations to Collins in the previous quarter were gifts from individuals who used the pro-Israel lobby as an intermediary. Collins also received a small donation directly from the group’s super PAC.
Still, Platner’s tweet ignited sharp criticism for suggesting that AIPAC represented Israeli influence, rather than donations by American supporters of Israel.
The Anti-Defamation League said the remark “invokes classic antisemitic rhetoric” and added, “Such accusations call up the age-old dual loyalty trope that casts Jewish Americans as more loyal to Israel than their own country.”
The Nexus Project, an antisemitism watchdog that is more forgiving of some forms of criticism of Israel than the ADL, also criticized the tweet.
“The insinuation that the government of Israel is ‘buying’ or directly controlling any politician who receives AIPAC funding or any American political donor that donates through a pro-Israel conduit is reductive and wrong,” Jonathan Jacoby, Nexus’ president, told JTA in a statement.
Undeterred, Platner on Saturday again invoked AIPAC while going after a member of his own party: Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, a staunch Israel supporter. Fetterman had recently criticized Platner in harsh language, telling CNN, “When I was growing up, if someone had a clear Nazi tattoo on them, you probably could conclude that they’re a Nazi sympathizer.”
Fetterman, Platner said in response, had “become a stooge for AIPAC and the Republican party.”
Reached for comment on the phrasing of his AIPAC remarks, a Platner campaign spokesperson said, “Whether it’s private equity, billionaires, corporations, super PACs, etc., Graham is committed to getting money out of politics.”
Amid the mounting scandals, Platner met with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer last week to shore up support for his candidacy among Democratic leaders. Speaking with reporters afterward, Schumer — who is Jewish, considers himself a leader on fighting antisemitism and had said he would support Platner’s campaign after Mills dropped out — repeatedly dodged questions about his confidence in Platner.
Some anti-Israel voices claim that the criticism reflects a conspiracy by Israel to prevent Platner from taking office.
“If you want a handy list of people who work for Israel, look at everyone criticizing Graham Platner now, especially Democrats,” the progressive influencer Cenk Uygur tweeted on Friday. “I get why Republicans want to tear him down. But Democrats attacking their own candidate only happens when they are ordered to do so by their handlers.”
His supporters, meanwhile, went on the offensive after a report in The New York Times cited multiple ex-girlfriends who said he had engaged in abusive and bullying behavior during their relationships.
The story featured as its most prominent voice Lyndsey Fifield, a Republican operative and former staffer at the conservative Heritage Foundation. In the article, Fifield claimed that Platner had known about his Totenkopf tattoo when he was dating her despite the candidate’s public insistence that he hadn’t recognized its Nazi origins. Platner had called his tattoo “my Totenkopf” while with her, Fifield told the Times, sharing a text in which she referred to the tattoo as a Nazi symbol before Platner said he was aware of what the tattoo represented.
Platner “has a Nazi tattoo on his chest,” Fifield texted her friends last summer, according to the Times. “It’s a Totenkopf … I will personally go campaign for Collins.”
Speaking to Maine’s public radio after the Times story ran, Platner denied Fifield’s claim. In another interview with MS NOW, Platner struggled to sort out the timeline of Fifield’s text to her friends about his tattoo, which occurred before he said he knew about the tattoo’s origins. Reached for comment, a Platner campaign spokesperson pointed to a previous interview the candidate held with JTA, in which he noted his “direct family connection to Judaism” and positive associations with Jewish religious tradition. Platner has also cast doubt on Fifield’s account, alleging that she is the sole source for reports about his knowledge of his own tattoo.
Reached for comment, Fifield told JTA by email, “I’ve been a vocal Zionist since college. I’ve been a proud conservative since then as well. Both of those things were true when I dated Graham.” Fifield is also close with the Jewish conservative commentator Bethany Mandel, with whom she formerly co-hosted a podcast.
To JTA, Fifield added, “If not being an antisemite is enough to fuel a mob of conspiracy theorists, it says something very dark about our culture.”
Some of Platner’s defenders have suggested the Times article was fueled by pro-Israel adversaries. Online, pro-Palestinian commentator Mehdi Hasan called Fifield “an anti-Palestinian racist and bigot,” sharing a tweet of hers in which she mocked the concept of “a Palestinian museum” and wrote, “What are their accomplishments, inventions, or other notable figures apart from terrorists and bombs made from the water pipes Israel gave them to pipe in free water for their people?”
Others have pointed out that the reporter who wrote the article, Katie Glueck, was co-president of Students for Israel at Northwestern University when the chapter won an “Activist of the Year” award from pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC in 2009.
“The most shocking part of this story is that the NYT had a former AIPAC Activist of the Year (Katie Glueck) write a piece devoted to detailing unsubstantiated claims from a professional Republican activist (Lyndsey Fifield) on how a left Democratic Senate candidate who has promised to take on Israel (Platner) was a lousy boyfriend and sold it as a legit journalistic scoop,” tweeted Marcus Stanley, the director of studies at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, an anti-interventionist think tank.
In a statement to JTA, a New York Times spokesperson defended Glueck’s participation in the article.
“Katie Glueck has covered politics for over a decade and is one of the best journalists in media at producing incisive coverage of candidates and campaigns,” the Times’ Charlie Stadtlander wrote in an email. “She approached this article about Graham Platner’s past personal conduct with the same independence she brings to all of her reporting.”
Stadtlander added that the Times stands behind its reporting “of the accounts from Ms. Fifield and the other women, who provided a revealing look at the behavior of a major candidate for the U.S. Senate.”
The drumbeat of criticism has tempered excitement among some Democrats about Platner and his potential to flip a Senate seat. Even California Rep. Ro Khanna, a leading critic of Israel in Congress, offered indirect criticism of Platner and his defenders on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” over the weekend, where he said Platner’s supporters shouldn’t go after his accusers and “should not attack the New York Times reporters who wrote this story.”
“I know those reporters. They’ve written things critical of me. That’s what journalists do,” Khanna said. “Our party doesn’t attack the press. Our party believes that you treat women with equality and respect in all aspects of their lives.”
Still, he continued to signal support for Platner, saying that “he’s taken accountability for that period of his life.” Khanna also spoke at a rally for Platner in Maine over the weekend.
While Platner does not have many prominent Jewish supporters in Maine, and has seen the Jewish Democratic Council of America pointedly withhold its own support of his bid, one of his most visible Jewish allies in the state says he will stand by him.
“I’m still very much in Camp Platner,” Steven Koltai, the chair of J Street Maine who helped organize a Passover seder with the Platner campaign, told JTA following the latest revelations.
Koltai suggested that Platner’s past behavior paled in comparison to the president’s: “Thanks to President Trump, the bar for public office in America has been set at a level that even a subterranean earth worm could overcome.”
Asked about Platner’s comments regarding Collins and AIPAC specifically, he signaled a degree of difference with his candidature: “Of all Senator Collins’s votes, her votes on aid to Israel are very low on my list of complaints about her voting record.”
Platner is expected to sail through the primary. Most recent polls suggest that he and Collins are running neck and neck heading into November.
The post Israel looms large as Maine heads to the polls in Graham Platner’s Senate primary appeared first on The Forward.
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The Yiddishist Yeshiva is open for registration
ס׳האָט זיך לעצטנס געשאַפֿן אַ נײַער סאָרט לייענקרײַז דורך פֿייסבוק, וווּ מע לערנט תּורה אויף ייִדיש צוזאַמען.
אינעם לייענקרײַז, וואָס הייסט „די ייִדישיסטישע ישיבֿה“, לייענט מען חומש מיט רש״י — סײַ אויפֿן אָריגינעלן לשון־קודש סײַ אויף ייִדיש־טײַטש. „די גרופּע איז אָפֿן פֿאַר אַלע מינים מענטשן,“ האָט דערקלערט דער לינגוויסט און ייִדיש־אַקטיוויסט לייזער בורקאָ, וועלכער האָט אָרגאַניזירט די גרופּע. „פֿרויען און מענער, ייִדן און נישט־ייִדן, געי און ׳גלײַך׳. נײַע תּלמידים דאַרפֿן פֿאַרשטיין ייִדיש גוט, אָבער זיי דאַרפֿן נישט האָבן קיין תּורהדיקן הינטערגרונט.“
די גרופּע טרעפֿט זיך יעדן דינסטיק דורך פֿייסבוק. נאָך מער פּרטים אָדער כּדי זיך צו פֿאַרשרײַבן, שטעלט זיך אין קאָנטאַקט מיט בורקאָ, אויפֿן אַדרעס leyzertag@gmail.com אָדער דורך פֿייסבוק.
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