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Panettone, the Christmas cake, is having a moment — and a Jewish chef has carved off a big slice
(JTA) – Panettone, the fluffy, fruit-speckled archetypal Christmas cake, is this holiday season’s “it” dessert — and the creator of perhaps the most coveted version in the United States is an Israeli-American Jew.
The New York Times this week credited baker Roy Shvartzapel with spearheading “the American panettone revolution” through his business From Roy.
Shvartzapel has dedicated the bulk of his career to the airy Italian cakes, training under Iginio Massari, the undisputed master baker in Italy, and obsessing over each ingredient and step in the 40-hour production cycle. After a flurry of coverage in his company’s early days in 2016, and especially since being endorsed by Oprah Winfrey in 2018, Shvartzapel’s business has grown dramatically. Last year, he said he expected to sell nearly 300,000, at $75 a piece, both in stores and via mail order. This year, the price is $85, and preorders sold out by — without, Shvartzapel said on a podcast last year, any spending on marketing.
While Shvartzapel’s goal of turning panettone into a year-round treat means he has several non-traditional flavors in his repertoire, From Roy only offers a few at a time — and the company plans to keep it that way.
“There’s lots of pastry items that I love that I will never be making for my business,” Shvartzapel said on the podcast, with the chef Chris Cosentino. “I’m a big believer that less is more, generally speaking, in most things.”
Shvartzapel declined to comment to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency this month, explaining through a publicist that he was too busy before Christmas to speak. But in public comments and social media posts made before this year’s panettone “gold rush,” as the New York Times put it, he has offered details about the intersection of his Jewish identity and his Christmas baking.
From Roy’s cherry, white chocolate and pistachio panettone with almond glaze and pearl sugar as seen in the company’s California kitchen, Oct. 20, 2016. (Liz Hafalia/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)
Born in Karmiel, Israel, where a statue modeled on his mother holding him as an infant stands in a park, Shvartzapel was raised in Houston and now lives in California’s Bay Area with his children and Israeli-born wife, who also helped launch From Roy. A devoted athlete as a teenager, he played collegiate basketball and spent time on Karmiel’s Maccabi team but realized he would never make the NBA.
“Like every good Jewish boy,” Shvartzapel told David Chang, the Momofuku chef, on a 2019 podcast interview, he considered becoming a lawyer before realizing that cooking played to his passions and strengths.
After graduating from the Culinary Institute of America in 2004, Shvartzapel began looking for work in New York City. It was a cookbook by the Jewish baker Dorie Greenspan that indirectly led to his first job: He spotted a lemon tart in a new cafe that looked like one she had photographed by the master French chef Pierre Hermé, then talked his way into a job working there, at Bouley Bakery, under Hermé’s former executive chef. Ultimately, that led to him working in Paris, where he had the panettone that changed his life.
“The texture, the aroma, the chew,” he said in 2018. ”I tasted it and it was like one of those meditative lights-off moments. The crazy love affair began.”
Shvartzapel has spoken extensively about his intense work ethic, his struggles with depression and, of course, what sets his panettone apart from low-cost supermarket varieties. He has said less publicly about himself as a Jew. But last year, on Facebook, he wished his friends a happy Passover with a picture of a cheesy omelet and a side of chopped liver — both prepared with attention to the holiday’s prohibitions on leavened bread (such as panettone) but, together, not a kosher meal.
“Modern jew … I mean, gotta combine the dairy and the meat to make it particularly kosher for Passover,” he wrote, adding laughing emojis.
Although panettone is often mentioned in the same breath as its Jewish enriched-dough cousin, babka, its history is rooted in the Catholic Church. Legend has it that it was created by accident on a 15th-century Christmas Eve, and was served to Catholic students and even the pope by the 1500s, according to records from the time.
Still, it makes sense that America’s most prominent panettone maker is Jewish, according to Debbie Prinz, a food historian and author of the forthcoming book “On The Bread Trail,” which grew out of her exploration of Jewish celebration cakes.
“It’s not surprising that there’s this interchange, especially today, since the boundaries between Jews and non-Jews are even fewer than they used to be,” Prinz said.
But while Shvartzapel’s panettone path may be modern, historic patterns of cultural collision have often cut the other way, sending traditionally Jewish foods onto the Christmas table.
One notable example appears to be lebkuchen, a fruit-studded spice cookie popular in Germany. While the origins of the treat are not clear, one theory is that lebkuchen entered German cuisine through lekach, a honey cake eaten by Italian Jewish traders passing through during the Middle Ages, according to researchers at the Leo Baeck Institute, a German Jewish institution. (German Jews fleeing the Nazis imported contemporary lebkuchen recipes and, in several cases, became successful lebkuchen purveyors in New York.)
Meanwhile, in panettone’s home country of Italy, traditional Christmas menus include a host of dishes that are likely to have originated in Jewish kitchens: pezzetti fritti or mixed fried vegetables; bigoli, or buckwheat noodles, with onion and anchovies; spongata, a cake imported from Jews fleeing the Spanish Inquisition; and nociata, or nut bars.
Legendary panettone maker Iginio Massari poses in his bakery Pasticceria Veneto in Brescia, Italy, in June 2019. (Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images)
Many of those foods were historically Jewish because they made use of ingredients such as eggplant that were considered distasteful by non-Jewish Italians, or of ingredients such as anchovies that Jews used because they were not permitted to access higher-quality fish.
“There are a number of recipes that we call Jewish that came out of the fact that the Italians were really nasty to Jews,” said Benedetta Jasmine Guetta, author of “Cooking all Guidia: A Celebration of the Jewish Food of Italy.”
“Most of the time, actually I’m going to say 100% of the time, people don’t know” that the dishes were originally Jewish, Guetta added. “This is a common problem and the reason why I wrote my book.”
But while Guetta’s focus is on the Jewish foods of Italy, in December, she often turns to that famous domed Christmas cake.
“I have definitely grown up eating a great deal of panettone. My parents checked the ingredients to make sure it didn’t contain pork fat,” she said. “It’s a yummy seasonal treat.”
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Trump Confirms Conversation with Venezuela’s Maduro
Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro holds Simon Bolivar’s sword as he addresses members of the armed forces, Bolivarian Militia, police, and civilians during a rally against a possible escalation of US actions toward the country, at Fort Tiuna military base in Caracas, Venezuela, November 25, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Leonardo Fernandez Viloria
US President Donald Trump confirmed on Sunday that he had spoken with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, but did not provide details on what the two leaders discussed.
“I don’t want to comment on it. The answer is yes,” Trump said when asked if he had spoken with Maduro. He was speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One.
The New York Times first reported Trump had spoken with Maduro earlier this month and discussed a possible meeting between them in the United States.
“I wouldn’t say it went well or badly, it was a phone call,” Trump said regarding the conversation.
The revelation of the phone call comes as Trump continues to use bellicose rhetoric regarding Venezuela, while also entertaining the possibility of diplomacy.
On Saturday, Trump said the airspace above and surrounding Venezuela should be considered “closed in its entirety,” but gave no further details, stirring anxiety and confusion in Caracas as his administration ramps up pressure on Maduro’s government.
When asked whether his airspace comments meant strikes against Venezuela were imminent, Trump said: “Don’t read anything into it.”
The Trump administration has been weighing Venezuela-related options to combat what it has portrayed as Maduro’s role in supplying illegal drugs that have killed Americans. The socialist Venezuelan president has denied having any links to the illegal drug trade.
Reuters has reported the options under US consideration include an attempt to overthrow Maduro, and that the US military is poised for a new phase of operations after a massive military buildup in the Caribbean and nearly three months of strikes on suspected drug boats off Venezuela’s coast.
Human rights groups have condemned the strikes as illegal extrajudicial killings of civilians, and some US allies have expressed growing concerns that Washington may be violating international law.
Trump said he would look into whether the US military had carried out a second strike in the Caribbean that killed survivors during a September operation, adding he would not have wanted such a strike.
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said the strikes are lawful but are intended to be “lethal.”
Trump told military service members last week the US would “very soon” begin land operations to stop suspected Venezuelan drug traffickers.
Maduro and senior members of his administration have not commented on the call. Asked about it on Sunday, Jorge Rodriguez, the head of Venezuela’s National Assembly, said the call was not the topic of his press conference, where he announced a lawmaker investigation into US boat strikes in the Caribbean.
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US Sees Progress After Talks in Florida with Ukraine, but More Work Needed to Reach Deal
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, and US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner meet with a Ukrainian delegation in Hallandale Beach, Florida, US, November 30, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Eva Marie Uzcategui
US and Ukrainian officials held what both sides called productive talks on Sunday about a Russia peace deal, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio expressing optimism about progress despite challenges to ending the more than 3-year-long war.
Rubio met with a Ukrainian delegation led by a new chief negotiator in Florida, his home state, for talks that he said were meant to create a pathway for Ukraine to remain sovereign and independent.
“We continue to be realistic about how difficult this is, but optimistic, particularly given the fact that as we’ve made progress, I think there is a shared vision here that this is not just about ending the war,” Rubio told reporters after the talks concluded. “It is about securing Ukraine’s future, a future that we hope will be more prosperous than it’s ever been.”
The discussions were a follow-up to a new set of negotiations that began with a fresh US blueprint for peace. Critics said the plan initially favored Russia, which started the conflict with a 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Special envoy Steve Witkoff and US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, were also present representing the US side. Witkoff leaves on Monday for Moscow, where he is expected to meet Russian counterparts for talks this week.
“There’s more work to be done. This is delicate,” Rubio said. “There are a lot of moving parts, and obviously there’s another party involved here … that will have to be a part of the equation, and that will continue later this week, when Mr. Witkoff travels to Moscow.”
Trump has expressed frustration at not being able to end the war. He pledged as a presidential candidate to do so in one day and has said he was surprised it has been so hard, given what he calls a strong relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has largely resisted concessions to stop the fighting.
Trump’s team has pressured Ukraine to make significant concessions itself, including giving up territory to Russia.
The talks shifted on Sunday with a change in leadership from the Ukrainian side. A new chief negotiator, national security council secretary Rustem Umerov, led the discussions for Kyiv after the resignation on Friday of previous team leader Andriy Yermak, chief of staff to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, amid a corruption scandal at home.
“Ukraine’s got some difficult little problems,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Sunday, referring to the corruption scandal, which he said was “not helpful.” He repeated his view that both Russia and Ukraine wanted to end the war and said there was a good chance a deal could be reached.
Umerov thanked the United States and its officials for their support. “US is hearing us, US is supporting us, US is walking besides us,” he said in English as the negotiations began.
After the meeting, he declared it productive. “We discussed all the important matters that are important for Ukraine, for Ukrainian people and US was super supportive,” Umerov said.
The Sunday talks took place near Miami at a private club, Shell Bay, developed by Witkoff’s real estate business.
Zelensky had said he expected the results from previous meetings in Geneva would be “hammered out” on Sunday. In Geneva, Ukraine presented a counter-offer to proposals laid out by US Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll to leaders in Kyiv some two weeks ago.
Ukraine’s leadership, facing a domestic political crisis fueled by a probe into major graft in the energy sector, is seeking to push back on Moscow-friendly terms as Russian forces grind forward along the front lines of the war.
Last week, Zelensky warned Ukrainians, who are weathering widespread blackouts from Russian air strikes on the energy system, that his country was at its most difficult moment yet but pledged not to make a bad deal.
“As a weatherman would say, there’s the inherent difficulty in forecasting because the atmosphere is a chaotic system where small changes can lead to large outcomes,” Kyiv’s first deputy foreign minister Sergiy Kyslytsya, also part of the delegation, wrote on X from Miami on Sunday.
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Netanyahu’s Pardon Request: What Happens Next?
Israeli President Isaac Herzog speaks during a press conference with Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics in Riga, Latvia, Aug. 5, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ints Kalnins
i24 News – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday submitted a formal request for a presidential pardon to President Isaac Herzog, i24NEWS Hebrew legal commentator Avishai Grintzig revealed.
What happens next? The request now enters a detailed, multi-stage review process involving the Ministry of Justice, law-enforcement bodies, and the President’s Residence.
Once a request is filed, it is first transferred to the Pardons Department in the Ministry of Justice.
The department begins gathering extensive information, seeking input from the Prison Service, Israel Police, the State Attorney’s Office, welfare and medical authorities, and the Enforcement and Collection Authority.
After assembling the material, the Pardons Department submits its opinion to the Minister of Justice. The minister then issues his own recommendation. If a conflict of interest arises, the government must appoint another minister to handle the matter.
The minister’s recommendation is then sent to the legal department at the President’s Residence, where the file is reviewed, supplemented as needed, and passed on to the President’s Legal Advisor.
The Legal Advisor prepares an independent opinion and may conduct additional inquiries with the Pardons Department or other relevant bodies. Once complete, the full file — including all opinions and documentation — is presented to the President for a final decision.
If the President approves the pardon, he signs a clemency document, which is then countersigned by the Minister of Justice (or a substitute minister). The applicant is notified in writing and receives the signed document.
If the President rejects the request, the applicant receives a written notice explaining the decision.