This story comes from JFS’s social media manager Gabriella Stern, who shares it in her own voice.

Growing up, my dad would often tell my sister and me stories about his father, who was a baker. Once, after a long day at the bakery, my grandfather brought home a freshly-made banana cream pie. My dad, a kid then, wanted to sneak a slice before dinner. His older brother, Andrew, playfully teased him with it — before smashing the pie in his face, whipped cream and all. This is just one of the many vivid stories my dad shared about my grandpa Jack, the proud owner of Stern’s Bake Shop in Yonkers, New York.

Born in Brooklyn in 1916 and raised in the Bronx, Jack was one of five children. His father, Hyman, was a bread baker from Poland who moved to the U.S. in the late 1800s and opened Stern Brothers — a German-Austrian Jewish-style bakery specializing in cakes, pastries, and rye bread — in the early 1920s in the Bronx. I come from a line of outer borough bakers, Jewish bakers.   

In 1941, grandpa Jack “joined the army, and when he got out, he was drafted into the family bakery business,” my uncle Michael Stern recounts. Hyman’s children all worked at Stern Brothers as bakers, behind the counter, and delivery drivers. 

When it closed, grandpa Jack took jobs baking at well-known places in Manhattan, learning business operations and techniques along the way. When he and my grandmother Zosia had their first child, Michael, they moved from the Bronx to Yonkers, just north of New York City. Their family was growing, and Jack was still working and commuting to and from Manhattan, so he opened his own bakery in 1959, the same year my dad, Kenneth, was born. 

For the grand opening of Stern’s Bake Shop, my dad’s older brothers distributed flyers that proclaimed: “At last, in Westchester, a bakery for all your baking needs! “Don’t let cakes be your concern. Pick up the phone and call Jack Stern.” (My dad, now a marketing and finance executive, seemed to inherit my grandpa’s knack for quippy slogans.) 

Running the bakery was a family operation: Grandpa Jack was the head baker, grandma Zosia did some of the bookkeeping, and the kids helped with advertising. When Michael was a teenager, he and his girlfriend — now wife, and my aunt — Joann, worked behind the counter and assisted with deliveries. 

Grandpa Jack baked it all: fresh onion bagels, egg challah, many strudels, Danishes, babkas, marble pound cakes, fresh peach tarts, cheesecakes, ice cream cakes, Linzer torts, and many varieties of cookies. Jack’s specialty, like his father’s, was celebration cakes, specifically his bar mitzvah and birthday cakes. 

My dad’s Bar Mitzvah photos show a happy family of six, my dad beaming with pride as he blew the candles out on the Torah-shaped bar mitzvah cake his father made. But, Jack passed away shortly after in 1973, and the bakery closed. 

Baking, for me, is not only a connection to my dad but also to my grandparents, who I never met. I feel the Stern spirit whenever I cube up butter for peach tart dough or make buttercream frosting.