Connect with us

Uncategorized

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.”

—
The post Panettone, the Christmas cake, is having a moment — and a Jewish chef has carved off a big slice appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Post Views: 1,836
Related Topics:
Continue Reading

Uncategorized

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.

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.”

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.

Post Views: 20
Continue Reading

Uncategorized

US Bishops Call for Catholics to ‘Stand Clearly’ Against Hate, Violence Toward ‘Our Jewish Brothers and Sisters’

Carrie Prejean Boller, who was ousted from the White House Religious Liberty Commission in February 2026 following outrage over her repeated downplaying of antisemitism. Photo: Screenshot

As antisemitism in online Catholic discourse has accelerated under influencers Candace Owens and Carrie Prejean Boller — both recent converts to the religion — US Catholic leadership has again spoken out firmly by releasing a video condemning hate targeting the Jewish people as heretical to the faith.

“Sadly, the celebration of Easter has at times been the occasion for outbursts of hatred and even violence against Jews,” said Archbishop Alexander K. Sample of the Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon. “The Catechism of the Council of Trent teaches that the Jews do not bear the collective guilt for the death of Jesus. The church made this teaching explicit at the second Vatican council in Nostra Aetate.”

The 1965 Nostra Aetate teaching instructs Catholics that “indeed, the Church believes that by His cross Christ, Our Peace, reconciled Jews and Gentiles, making both one in Himself.”

Sample said in the video posted last Wednesday that “Good Friday ought to be an occasion for us to return to the Lord, not to scapegoat others. Holding the Jews collectively responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus represents a profound misunderstanding of what took place on Good Friday.” He warned that this theological belief has caused “a great deal of the hatred for the Jewish people that we have seen in history and continue to see today.”

Deicide, the concept of collective Jewish guilt for the execution of Jesus, inspired the antisemitic epithet “Christ killer” and justified centuries of pogroms and forced conversions throughout Europe. This conspiratorial view of Jews scheming to crucify Jesus often went in tandem with the Medieval blood libel, which asserted that Jews would plot in secret to murder Christian children to collect their blood as an ingredient in Passover matzos.

Sample called out this history of conspiracism and its ties to antisemitic theology. “As Catholics, we are called to walk in the truth and so to reject the conspiracies and lies that lead to harassment and even violence against our Jewish brothers and sisters. There is a strong connection between religious freedom and working to counter antisemitism,” he said.

Noting that “the Jewish community is attacked at a far higher rate than any other religious group in the United States,” Sample asserted that “if we Catholics, in truly living out the gospel, are to defend religious freedom with integrity, we must clearly speak out against antisemitism.”

The ongoing tensions among Catholics over Israel, antisemitism, and the impact of far-right podcasters boiled over on Feb. 9. when Carrie Prejean Boller, a conservative activist and former Miss California, chose to hijack a hearing of the White House Religious Liberty Commission to question panelists about their views on the war against Hamas in Gaza, religious beliefs about Zionism, and opposition to Owens.

This provoked Dan Patrick, lieutenant governor of Texas and chair of the commission, to announce Prejean Boller’s removal from the group. She responded in a statement on X addressed to President Donald Trump where she wrote, “You knew exactly who I was when you appointed me,” and declared her “unwavering commitment to the Christian principles I stand for.”

Prejean Boller’s “unwavering commitment” to her newfound theological beliefs inspired the anti-Zionist political group Catholics for Catholics to present the former beauty pageant contestant a “Catholic Champion” award during Thursday’s Catholic Prayer for America Gala.

Speakers at the event included retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Owens, her former Daily Wire podcasting colleague Matt Walsh (who supplied a video address,) and Joe Kent, the recently-resigned director of the National Counterterrorism Center who stepped down from his position on Tuesday before beginning to publicly blame Israel for drawing the United States into the ongoing conflict with the Islamic regime in Iran.

In a discussion last week with far-right podcaster Tucker Carlson, Kent promoted the longstanding antisemitic trope that Israel controls the US government. He asked rhetorically, “Who is in charge of our policy in the Middle East? Who is in charge of when we decide to go to war or not?”

Kent also suggested a potential Israeli hand involved in the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. While refusing to blame the Jewish state outright, he said, “When one of President Trump’s closest advisers who was vocally advocating against a war with Iran is suddenly publicly assassinated, and we’re not allowed to ask questions about that — it’s a data point. A data point that we need to look into.”

On Monday, John Grosso, the National Catholic Reporter‘s digital editor, analyzed the anti-Israel sentiments as “a major rift in the coalition that elected Donald Trump, split between traditionalist Catholics and evangelicals.” Grosso noted a similar online incident, pointing out that “shortly after Israel and the United States started a war with Iran, a viral post on X by user ‘Insurrection Barbie’ amassed more than 5 million views, bringing the conflict into the mainstream — earning the endorsement of Cruz.”

On March 15, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) — one of the Republican Party’s most vocal opponents of far-right antisemitism — shared a post from the anonymous user titled “The Long Game and the Conservative Right,” which has since received 4.1 million views, and wrote, “READ every word of this. It’s the best & most comprehensive explanation of what we’re fighting.”

The essay on X is more than 8,000 words and says it seeks to expose “How a Network of Political Catholic Integralists, Russian Ideologues, and Media Provocateurs Are Systematically Dismantling the Evangelical Foundation of the American Right.”

“I am going to map out what I think is the most sophisticated attack in modern political history and all of its corresponding vectors — institutional, intellectual, theological, generational, and media — and explain how each one feeds into a single ten-year project: the replacement of evangelical Protestant political theology with a Catholic integralist or ethnonationalist framework that views Jews, Israel and Protestants not as covenant partners but as adversaries of Christian civilization,” the essay states.

Before laying out the map, the author makes clear the distinction between mainstream Catholics and Catholic Integralists, the latter of which seek to impose a theocratic government on the world. “The political integralist Catholicism being deployed in this operation bears no relationship to the ordinary American Catholic faith — it uses the vocabulary and symbols of a faith tradition as a vehicle for a power project that most practitioners of that faith would find alien and alarming,” Insurrection Barbie explains.

The essay identifies Russian political theorist Aleksandr Dugin and his 1997 textbook The Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia as a key influence on these efforts with his ideas passing through former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, a Tridentine Catholic who advocates for the Latin mass. The two reportedly met secretly in Rome for eight hours in 2018.

“Trump’s voters deserve better than to be used as raw material for a project imported from Russian geopolitical theory and pre-Vatican II European political theology,” Insurrection Barbie writes.

Podcaster Nick Fuentes is a key influencer in this network, with the essay describing how on his shows, which reach more than a million viewers each episode, “every weeknight, before streams begin, viewers see scrolling text from the Apostles’ Creed alongside images of Christ and Scripture passages. Catholicism — specifically the SSPX-adjacent traditionalist Catholicism the Vatican has repeatedly disciplined — is at the heart of his presentation. He actively recruits viewers into his version of the faith. He is building a movement, not just an audience.”

Post Views: 20
Continue Reading

Uncategorized

Catholic Church urges clergy to address ‘misleading statements’ about Jews by far-right influencers

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops cautioned its members in a recent memorandum that Catholic “media personalities” are distorting the church’s position on Jews and Israel, and said that priests should use Holy Week and Easter sermons to clarify these stances.

Bishop Joseph C. Bambera, who chairs the conference’s committee on interreligious affairs and authored the March 13 letter, specifically named Carrie Prejean Boller, a recent convert to Catholicism who was removed from the White House’s Religious Liberty Commission after a combative hearing in which she attacked Zionism, declaring it incompatible with Catholicism. In the same hearing, she also defended Candace Owens, the far-right influencer and a fellow Catholic with a long track record of offensive comments about Jews and Judaism.

The move comes amid growing alarm by many Jews over far-right Catholic influencers who have paired hostility toward Jews with opposition to Israel

Prejean Boller stated that devout Catholics were required to be anti-Zionist and should not be slandered as antisemites on that basis, and has argued elsewhere that Catholics have replaced Jews as “the new people of God.”

“There were witnesses at the hearing who rebutted Ms. Prejean Boller’s assertions about Catholic teaching, but it was her claims and not the rebuttal that have circulated in the media,” Bambera wrote in the confidential letter, which was first reported last week by Joe Enders, a conservative Catholic podcast host.

Rev. Russell McDougall, director of ecumenical and interreligious affairs at the conference of bishops, said that the memo was intended to help clergy facing questions from local members or journalists about the Catholic position on Jews and Israel.

It was accompanied by a public-facing video released last Wednesday that declared “Catholics must reject antisemitism.” McDougall said in an interview that the video was originally scheduled to be published at the start of Holy Week next Monday but was rushed out after Bambera’s memo was leaked and met with a hostile reaction from some right-wing Catholics.

“Media influencers are out there claiming to be speaking on behalf of the church,” McDougall said. “But practicing Catholics know that within the church it’s the Pope, in union with the College of Bishops, that are the teachers of the church.”

Related

Carrie Prejean Boller at Trump Tower in 2009. She was removed from the White House’s religious freedom commission after clashing with witnesses at a hearing on antisemitism. Courtesy of Getty Images

The controversy over Prejean Boller’s remarks came amid growing alarm by many Jews over far-right Catholic influencers, including Owens and Nick Fuentes, who have paired hostility toward Jews with opposition to U.S. government support for Israel, and often suggested their faith motivates both positions.

Joe Kent became the latest prominent figure to be caught up in the maelstrom when he resigned last week as director of the National Counterterrorism Center with a letter claiming that Israel had caused both the current U.S.-Israel war against Iran and the previous Iraq War.

He was quickly feted at a gala in Washington, D.C. hosted by Catholics for Catholics, a right-wing group, where he said he “was able to hear God’s voice” while deciding whether to resign from the Trump administration. Prejean Boller and Owens also spoke at the gala.

Bambera, who sent his memorandum to bishops three days before Kent’s resignation, wrote: “The misleading statements made by media personalities” about the Catholic position on Jews and Israel “have been troubling not only to us, but to our brothers and sisters in the Jewish community.”

The letter emphasized the positions detailed in Nostra aetate, a declaration made as part of the Second Vatican Council in 1965, a years-long assembly to modernize the church. Nostra aetate, one of the most significant parts of Vatican II, as the council is known, redefined the Catholic church’s relationship with Jews, holding that “the Jews” as a group are not responsible for killing Jesus Christ, that the Jewish people have a legitimate relationship with God even without accepting the salvation of Jesus and that Catholics should oppose antisemitism.

Bambera also cited a resource on countering antisemitism created in conjunction with the American Jewish Committee two years ago called “Translate Hate.”

Rabbi Noam Marans, the AJC’s director of interreligious affairs, praised the letter in a statement to the Forward: “With the growth of influencers who mistakenly use their Catholicism to spread antisemitic tropes, we need and appreciate responsible Catholic leaders who distance Catholicism from this hate.”

Theological spat over Zionism

Prejean Boller said during the religious freedom commission hearing in February that she opposed Zionism on theological grounds as a Catholic, a point that Bambera’s letter pushed back on.

It said that “Catholics can appreciate the religious attachment that the Jewish people have to the land of Israel, but interpret the reemergence in 1948 of a Jewish state in a historical rather than theological context.”

Some critics of the letter — including Enders, the podcaster who first posted a copy on X — argued that by acknowledging that Catholicism rejects “theological claims” related to Israel’s establishment, Bambera was essentially validating Prejean Boller’s statement that Catholics are required to be “anti-Zionist.”

“With all the preceding indignation toward Mrs. Prejean Boller earlier in this directive, it seems out of place to take this long to say she was right about the political state of Israel having “no biblical prophecy fulfillment,” Enders wrote before calling the letter “totally insane.”

McDougall said those who argued that the letter effectively endorsed Prejean Boller’s views on Israel were misguided. He noted that many, including Enders, also complained that the letter had rejected “supersessionism,” a doctrine that Prejean Boller has also expressed support for that holds Christianity had replaced God’s covenant with Jews.

“That’s something the church has repudiated — and quite clearly,” McDougall said. “The Catholic Cchurch may not take a theological position about the State of Israel but it does take a theological position about the people of Israel, and mentions that the permanence of Israel — when so many other ancient people have disappeared without trace — is to be considered part of God’s design.”

Prejean Boller referred the Forward to a social media post she’d made about the memorandum in which she wrote that “individual bishops do not enjoy the prerogative of infallibility every time they issue a statement” and suggested that Bambera’s letter was at odds with Catholic doctrine.

The dispute offers a peek into a roiling intra-Christian debate over Christian Zionism and whether the Bible contains support for Israel’s modern existence. It’s a debate obscure to most American Jews, who often think of Zionism as pertaining to political support for a Jewish state in Israel based on arguments like the need to prevent another Holocaust, rather than on religious grounds like God’s promise to Abraham, which Bambera’s letter references.

The letter was intended to inform sermons across the country during Holy Week, which begins on March 29, and asked bishops to share the contents of the memo with clergy in their respective diocese.

McDougall said the memorandum and letter were intended to reach the church’s core membership, even if they were unlikely to change the views of figures like Prejean Boller and Owens. “I’m not sure that there’s much the leadership of the church can do to reach some of these individuals and groups that think of themselves as more Catholic than the Pope,” he said.

The post Catholic Church urges clergy to address ‘misleading statements’ about Jews by far-right influencers appeared first on The Forward.

Post Views: 18
Continue Reading

Copyright © 2017 - 2023 Jewish Post & News