H eadlines
Philly Faces: Rhonda Saltzman and Mercedes Brooks
P H I LLY FACES
JESSE BERNSTEIN | JE STAFF
IT MAY APPEAR that the
Jan. 12 opening of Second
Daughter Baking Co., an
online bakery that draws on the
Black and Jewish heritage of its
founders, was just the begin-
ning for Rhonda Saltzman and
Mercedes Brooks.

But to know their story is
to know that it’s just another
chapter of a winding tale.

Saltzman, 29, and Brooks,
27, sisters who grew up together
in Delaware County, had talked
for years about the possi-
bility of such a venture before
launching last month. Though
their goal is to eventually
open a brick-and-mortar store,
Saltzman and Brooks are ready
for the uncertain path that lies
ahead. After all, the trials that
the pair have already endured
together — a devastating fire,
the loss of a husband, layoffs at
the beginning of the pandemic
— haven’t stopped them yet.

“I feel like Rhonda brings
out the best in me,” Brooks said.

“Mercedes and I are best
friends,” Saltzman said.

Saltzman, a graduate of
the The Culinary Institute of
America, and Brooks, who has
worked in hospitality while
pursuing a degree in accounting,
knew that their personal-
ities would complement each
other as much as their skills
(Saltzman is the baker, while
Brooks handles marketing,
design and taste-testing).

Brooks and Saltzman live
together and work together, a
difficult proposition for any
siblings. But their love for the
project itself and their inter-
secting interests — Brooks has
brought Saltzman closer to
photography, while Saltzman
brought her sister closer to
food — has made keeping the
peace a cinch.

“I don’t want to spend time
with anyone else,” Saltzman
said. Saltzman and Brooks had
one Jewish grandfather, who
passed certain traditions on to
their father. Those practices,
often food-centric, were
reinforced for the sisters by
their grandmother, who took
to her husband’s Jewish life.

Though they
weren’t raised Jewish, Saltzman and
Brooks watched as their father
worked in Jewish delis around
Philadelphia. Later, after
she’d graduated from CIA,
Saltzman worked in Hymie’s
and Izenberg’s between other
gigs as a line cook and a baker.

When she was “courting” her
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JEWISH EXPONENT
From left: Rhonda
Saltzman and
Mercedes Brooks
Courtesy of
Rhonda Saltzman
future Jewish husband, as
Saltzman put it, freshly baked
babka and bagels made for an
effective means of persuasion.

Saltzman and her husband,
Lee Saltzman, a cook and
graduate of the CIA himself,
dreamed of opening a Jewish
bakery together as she made
her conversion to Judaism.

In 2015, Lee Saltzman died
at 29 from pancreatic cancer, an
episode that Saltzman recently
recounted in an interview with
KYW Newsradio. His death
dealt a heavy blow to Saltzman
and Brooks, and Brooks moved
in with her sister the next year.

Painful as it was to contem-
plate, the dream of the bakery
stayed vivid.

In January 2020, Saltzman
and Brooks suffered a severe
fire at their home. They moved
into their mother’s house,
where they expected to be
until June. Then, March came
around, and both sisters were
laid off from their jobs.

It’s a familiar tale at this
stage of the pandemic: With
more time on their hands than
ever before, and a moment to
catch their breath, the sisters
decided that the time had come
to make their dream into a
reality. As the second of three
sisters, “Second Daughter” is
solely Saltzman’s title to claim
in this family, but in the minds
of Saltzman and Brooks, the
name is a nod to the fact that
the store is owned by the two of
them. In the fall of 2020, they
began to offer baked goods out
of their home.

Before the pandemic, and
before Second Daughter, they’d
sold baked goods through Etsy
under a different name. The
beginning stages of Second
Daughter followed a similar
pattern, as they advertised their
tastefully photographed wares
online, courtesy of Brooks, and
baked everything from their
kitchen. But it soon became
apparent that a home kitchen
couldn’t handle the volume of
orders that their cakes, cookies
and focaccia breads attracted.

In January, they moved into
a commercial kitchen at the Bok
Building in South Philadelphia,
debuting a new website and
social media presence. As of
now, the sisters offer their baked
goods via pickup and delivery
as the dream of a storefront —
and a few more Jewish pastries
for the menu — shimmers in
the distance.

“I dare say, ‘I plan’ or ‘I
hope’ to that,” said Saltzman,
“but that’s something I would
like to do.” l
jbernstein@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0740
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM



H EADLINES
French Chief Rabbi Clashes with Fellow Communal
Leaders in Debate Over Nation’s Jewish Future
WORLD CNAAN LIPHSHIZ | JTA.ORG
FRENCH CHIEF Rabbi Haim
Korsia has long argued that
his community is inseparable
from the wider French society,
which he insists will overcome
its many challenges, including
the anti-Semitism that has
driven thousands of French
Jews to seek a more secure
existence in Israel.

But this hopeful message,
a Korsia trademark, is for the
fi rst time coming under fi re
from prominent French Jews
who accuse the chief rabbi of
failing to recognize a bitter
reality and unfairly faulting
those who choose to leave.

In op-eds and social media
posts in recent weeks, French-
speaking Jews in France and
Israel have pushed back against
Korsia’s optimistic take and
his assertion that fear should
not be the basis for emigra-
tion by French Jews. Th e debate,
set off by a controversial and
deeply pessimistic op-ed in the
mainstream community weekly
Actualité Juive, has dragged
into the open a conversation
about the fate of French Jewish
life that more commonly takes
place behind closed doors.

“It may actually be time to
say aloud what many think
inside: France is overrun,”
wrote the op-ed’s author, Ariel
Kandel, the Jerusalem-based
director of an organization
promoting French immigra-
tion to Israel and the former
head of the Jewish Agency’s
France operations.

“It’s overrun in the fi ght on
COVID-19, in the distribution
of vaccines, but also in the
fi ght against radical Islam and
anti-Semitism,” wrote Kandel,
who is well-known in the
community. Kandel cited the common
concerns of Jews in France
for their security, recalling
being harassed for wearing
a yarmulke as a teenager on
the Paris subway. But he went
further in suggesting that
French-Jewish patriotism
amounts to little more than
cheap symbolism.

“Jews live in France for
practical reasons. Th ey love
French culture, but their
support for France is mostly
on the pitch at soccer matches,”
Kandel wrote. “It’s no coinci-
dence that so many children
of our community leaders live
in Israel.”
Despite years in which
French Jews have been the target
of terrorist attacks and hundreds
of violent assaults, Jewish leader-
ship and notable fi gures have
rarely voiced hopelessness about
the future. Korsia has taken the
lead in combating perceived
defeatism. He called Kandel’s piece
“biased, bitter and one that
caricaturizes a whole society.”
Noting the French Jews who had
died fi ghting for France in the
20th century, Korsia, a former
military chaplain and self-
described French patriot, wrote
in Actualité Juive that they “died
because they were French, not
because they were Jews!”
Korsia has consistently
argued positions to this eff ect,
insisting that French Jews
assert their rightful place in
French society and immigrate
to Israel only as “an ideolog-
ical and spiritual choice,” not
because of fear for their safety.

In 2015, he pushed back
forcefully aft er Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
told European Jews to come
“home” to Israel following a
deadly terrorist attack on a
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