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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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The Gaza International Stabilization Force Can Be the IDF
A Red Cross vehicle, escorted by a van driven by a Hamas terrorist, moves in an area within the so-called “yellow line” to which Israeli troops withdrew under the ceasefire, as Hamas says it continues to search for the bodies of deceased hostages seized during the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, in Gaza City, Nov. 12, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alk
On December 29, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet with US President Donald Trump to weigh options for implementing Phase 2 of the Gaza ceasefire plan, which was endorsed by UN Security Council Resolution 2803.
The most urgent task in Phase 2 is addressed by the resolution at Section 7. The provision urges the many interested parties — called Member States — to organize an International Stabilization Force (ISF) that will disarm Hamas and demilitarize Gaza.
It won’t be easy. Most Member States are unwilling or reluctant to commit troops to the ISF. Others suggest the ISF should be a mere monitoring group similar to the UN peacekeepers in Lebanon. However, those “blue helmets” did nothing to disarm the Lebanese-based Hezbollah terrorist group, or to demilitarize its zone of operations.
The only fighting force with the demonstrated motivation and ability to execute the mandated mission of disarmament and demilitarization is the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). The IDF nearly defeated Hamas in October, but stopped at Hamas’ last stronghold when the ceasefire deal was signed.
Section 7 does not mention whether the ISF may be composed of just a single state. The authors expected a multinational ISF, perhaps because they believed the involvement of a few Muslim states would act as a buffer against perceived IDF aggression. On the other hand, the text of Section 7 may be reasonably interpreted to permit a delegation of the ISF’s entire workload to the IDF.
To begin with, Section 7 requires the ISF to “use all necessary measures” to achieve the military objectives of Phase 2. Member States may comply with this clause by empowering the IDF to disarm Hamas and demilitarize Gaza. The wording does not require the use of force to be conducted by a minimum number of Member States.
Next, Section 7 compels the ISF to work “in close cooperation” with Egypt and Israel. Assembling the ISF from the ranks of Israel’s own army would help cement such cross-border cooperation.
The section also instructs the ISF to “train and support vetted Palestinian police forces.” No military unit is more fit for that function than the IDF, based on its decades of interactions with the Palestinian police.
A related operational factor supports the concept of an ISF staffed by IDF troops. The IDF maintains crucial contacts with anti-Hamas militias in Gaza. Those resistance fighters know the complex urban terrain, and they command respect among area civilians. Including them in the ISF mission would be a strong force multiplier.
In an IDF-as-ISF model, the funding mechanism of Section 7 would remain unchanged. Member states and other donors would simply direct their “voluntary contributions” to Israel instead of some other ISF incarnation. A Member State that refuses to contribute funding could be excluded from the multinational Board of Peace, which the UN resolution envisions as Gaza’s transitional government.
Section 7 states that when Gaza reaches the point of “control and stability,” the IDF must withdraw to a designated “security perimeter presence” in the enclave. Some may fear that awarding the ISF function to the IDF would incentivize Israel to occupy all of Gaza, and potentially extend sovereignty to the domain, with no admission of control or stability. However, Section 7 already stipulates that the withdrawal milestone must be determined jointly by a diverse group of decision-makers, including not only the IDF but the US, Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey.
Finally, giving the ISF role to the IDF would help ensure the Phase 2 goals are met “without delay,” as demanded by the resolution at Section 1. Hamas has already caused weeks of delay by dragging out the hostage return process required by the first phase of the ceasefire plan. The procrastination enabled Hamas to consolidate its power. For example, the terror group recruited more fighters, converted al-Nasser Hospital into a prison to torture dissidents, and wrangled more funding from its terrorist patron, Iran. Consequently, it will now take more time to disarm the group and demilitarize the enclave. Waiting even longer to attain the unrealistic dream of a multi-state ISF would cause even more delay. The setback would not only embolden Hamas but prolong the suffering of Gaza’s war-torn civilian population.
It’s likely that many UN member states would reject this plan, because it’s not what they believed they signed onto. But so far, none of them has put forth a better or more realistic alternative. Moderate states don’t want to send troops, and extremist states like Turkey (which supports Hamas) cannot be allowed to.
No amount of UN resolutions will help Gaza recover from the Hamas-initiated war until Hamas is defanged and its terrorist stronghold is demolished. That dirty work may not be popular, but it must be done. Otherwise, Hamas will continue to exploit Gaza as a launching pad for its ruinous attacks.
Joel M. Margolis is the Legal Commentator, American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, US Affiliate of the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists. His 2001 book, “The Israeli-Palestinian Legal War,” analyzed the major legal issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Previously he worked as a telecommunications lawyer in both the public and private sectors.
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A Gazan Warehouse of Baby Formula Exposes Hamas Was Withholding Food From Children
The New York Times building in New York City. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Throughout the summer of 2025, doctors in Gaza repeatedly warned that babies were going hungry due to a shortage of infant formula. These claims were amplified across global media and social platforms, often delivered in dramatic appeals for urgent international intervention. Over time, the narrative became one of the most prominent humanitarian storylines of the season.
The New York Times wrote that “Parents in Gaza Are Running Out of Ways to Feed Their Children,” and The Guardian urged action as babies were “at risk of death from lack of formula.”
Perhaps most widely known were the stories of malnourished children in Gaza whose gaunt images dominated front pages around the world. Families of these young children pleaded for international intervention, saying they had “no formula, no supplements, no vitamins” to feed their babies.
Although some of these children were later reported to have had pre-existing medical conditions that contributed to their malnourishment, much of the media continued to advance a narrative suggesting that Israel was deliberately targeting children by restricting adequate humanitarian aid to Gaza.
Israel, however, consistently maintained that there was a steady supply of infant formula entering Gaza. At the height of the media frenzy over alleged starvation, Israeli records showed that more than 1,400 tons of baby formula, including specialized formulations for infants with medical needs, had been delivered into the Strip.
So where was all the formula?
In Hamas-controlled warehouses.
This week, anti-Hamas activists exposed a storage facility operated by the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health stocked with large quantities of baby formula and nutritional supplements intended for children — supplies that had never reached the families featured in international headlines.
This is the terror organization Israel has been fighting for the past two years, and precisely why its removal from power in Gaza remains a central condition of any lasting ceasefire.
Hamas’ campaign is not driven solely by hostility toward Israel, but by a calculated willingness to endanger its own civilians to advance its goal of dismantling the Jewish State. That strategy has included obstructing or diverting humanitarian aid when it suited its aims — even when the victims were children.
By placing Gazan lives in harm’s way and exploiting their suffering, Hamas weaponized heartbreaking images to sway global opinion against Israel. In the process, it manipulated media narratives while evading responsibility for the humanitarian consequences of its own actions. Tragically, it did so with considerable success.
The same outlets that aggressively promoted the claim that Israel was withholding aid and deliberately starving children by blocking access to infant formula have since gone conspicuously silent. A story that once dominated front pages around the world has virtually disappeared now that evidence has emerged showing that Israel was not the perpetrator.
Hamas manipulated the media — and it worked. By laundering terrorist propaganda through headlines, imagery, and selective outrage, then declining to correct the record once that narrative unraveled, major outlets exposed how vulnerable they are to manipulation when facts complicate preferred storylines.
Hamas has been the agitator all along, recklessly endangering both Palestinian and Israeli lives. It is time the media confront that reality and their role in falsely accusing Israel of starving innocent Palestinians.
The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
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An Emerging Crisis: Fighting Antisemitism in the Mental Health Professions
The personal belongings of festival-goers are seen at the site of an attack on the Nova Festival by Hamas terrorists from Gaza, near Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip, in southern Israel, Oct. 12, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
In a mental health professional network, an article was posted about how Jews faced discrimination in the profession.
There were over 250 comments in less than 8 hours, mostly attacking Jews and/or Zionists.
In an announcement for a training session being led by one of us, there were over 500 explicitly antisemitic comments in an hour on Reddit.
An article published about the impact of antisemitism on the mental health of Jews in America received hundreds of political comments about the Israel-Hamas war, rather than any discussion of clinical implications
An Orthodox Jewish psychologist organized a series of speakers, and one invited professional demanded that all attendees sign a declaration condemning the current Israeli government.
And, at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association (APA), professional listserv postings urged attendees to wear keffiyehs and read a “land and genocide statement” before their presentations. Some presentations included Hamas propaganda.
These examples are not indicative of legitimate academic rhetoric — they are evidence of the field’s growing animus towards Jews.
Two factors help explain how mental health professionals feel comfortable discriminating against Jewish colleagues.
The first is the rapid embrace of a widely endorsed but empirically unsupported treatment model, decolonial therapy (DT). DT emphasizes the role of historical oppression on the development and perpetuation of intergenerational trauma. It explicitly blends clinical work with activism, urging clinicians and clients to engage politically in and out of therapy.
The activism in DT frames Zionism as oppression and psychopathology. For example, one of the leading proponents of DT has tied Zionism to genocidal intent, misogynoir, and fascism. Another prominent figure has referred to Zionism as psychosis and defended the murder of two Israeli Embassy employees in May.
Instead of condemnation from members of the profession, these practitioners have been celebrated by the leaders of the DT movement, hold leadership positions, and receive speaking invitations.
Left-wing identitarianism has also led to the explosion of antisemitism in the mental health professions. Unlike the purity demands of white European identity that are the basis of right-wing identitarianism, left-wing identitarianism demands strict ideological purity. This includes framing Jews as oppressors and Zionism as a form of mental illness and oppression.
This framework justifies aggression against Jews while also valorizing violence and terrorism committed by Hamas. These patterns within the mental health field prompted a sitting Democratic congressman to condemn the APA. It was also the impetus for a complaint filed with the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights during the Biden administration against an anti-Zionist DT leader who characterized Zionism as psychosis.
Mental health professionals who are anti-Zionist, including Jewish members of the profession, are embraced as ethical scholars and professionals, damaging collegiality and harming the profession. But when a professional defends the right for Israel to exist, regardless of their view of the current Israeli government, they are met with condemnation and scorn.
Left-wing identitarianism in the mental health professions extends to the demand that practitioners accept DT. While DT lacks empirical support, it is presented as if it were settled psychological science, to be applied to all individuals from historically marginalized backgrounds, while identifying specific other groups deemed responsible for these intergenerational woes.
This guiding philosophy commits rhetorical, interpersonal, political, and in some cases physical violence against Jewish members of the profession. It contributes to traumatic invalidation, wherein a Jewish client’s grief or fear is mocked, minimized, or made contingent on denouncing aspects of their identity. It is associated with avoidance, hypervigilance, shame, and ruptured help-seeking. As clinicians, we would never tell a survivor, “You’re safe here — as long as you recant a core part of who you are.”
We must not say it to Jews either. Whatever one’s politics, professional codes are clear: avoid discrimination and harm, be accurate in teaching, and avoid false or deceptive statements
The new identitarianism poses a serious public health risk. Clients have been rejected by professionals simply for being Jewish or expressing distress over the war between Israel and Hamas.
This risk extends beyond Jewish clinicians and clients. Fusing treatment with politics creates a profound public health crisis, as more clients will receive care that is based on activism and invalid conceptualizations of mental illness. Given the influence mental health professionals have on the public, this movement actively contributes to the rise of left-wing antisemitism
This is not a plea to shield Israeli policy from critique, nor erase Palestinian trauma. Patients and trainees deserve freedom from ideological coercion and discrimination because of their Jewish and/or Zionist identity. Good care is rigorous and grounded: validate distress, explore meaning, and apply tested tools. Keep the hour centered on patient goals, not clinician activism. We can hold multiple truths: Palestinian suffering, Israeli suffering, diaspora Jewish fear — without coercing political statements from patients, trainees, or colleagues.
We recommend professional reforms at every level. Mental health associations must require continuing education (CE) providers to disclose when the content is advocacy versus evidence-based clinical training. Safeguards must be instituted for reporting discrimination based on Jewish/Zionist identity, with clear remedies.
Antisemitism literacy must be adopted at every level of professional education. Assessment of traumatic invalidation needs to be incorporated into intake procedures when identity-related stressors are evident. When teaching emerging and untested methods (such as DT), clear disclaimers about the available evidence must be made explicit. And regulatory bodies need reform to swiftly and transparently address claims of retaliation against trainees and colleagues for Jewish/Zionist identity, and enforce anti-discrimination policies.
Our field knows how to hold complexity. We can grieve for Palestinians and Israelis, critique policies, and still protect patients, trainees, and colleagues from ideological coercion. Jewish clinicians and clients deserve the same ethical care we promise everyone else. Let’s replace purity tests with professional standards, and return the therapy room to what it’s for: healing.
Dean McKay is a Professor of Psychology at Fordham University and Miri Bar-Halpern is a Lecturer at Harvard Medical School.