After decades, family unravels Holocaust mystery - World News

After decades, family unravels Holocaust mystery - World News

Honey Extraction Report

Here is how I extracted honey from the three combs Rhona and I took from the hive in my backyard.  Just so you know, you never take all the honey, just some.  There were about 20 combs in the hive, and about one quart of honey per comb was produced.

Rhona installed the beehive, which is of a type called a Warre hive, and the bees on the day my father in law passed away—April 8, 2012, Easter Sunday. FYI, there was no second coming.  Rhona is a beginning beekeeper, so she was willing to take advice. Her first concern is for the bees themselves, because a bee colony is like a single organism, and colonies have been collapsing all over the place.  

The first question we had to answer was “to smoke or not to smoke?” To harvest honey, you have to open the hive, and this can make the bees very angry.  Rhona opened the hive once before, months ago, and the bees chased her out of the yard and she got stung.  But she didn’t want to use smoke to pacify the bees because she thought it poisoned them and would weaken the hive.

I saw her point, but I did not want to get stung. So I read The Beekeeper’s Handbook,  by Diana Sammataro and Alphonse Avitabile, Fourth Edition. It said that the reason smoking the hive works is because bees communicate by smell. Smoke masks the alarm pheromones produced by the guard bees, so they don't attack. It’s like cutting the power to an alarm system.  So that fact, and the fact that the person we borrowed a bee suit from ALWAYS uses smoke, convinced Rhona. She had a smoker, and agreed to use it.

We had to choose a day.  The time to harvest honey is between noon and three pm, when the bees are out foraging.  The day to harvest is when there are no gardeners, neighbors, dogs, or children around.  I figured it out with the neighbors, and we met at my house on the appointed day.  We put on bee suits—I borrowedmine, as I mentioned, from another amateur beekeeper. Then Rhona lit some egg crate cardboard on fire and put it in the smoker, which looked sort of like the oil can in the Wizard of Oz. She pumped smoke into the hive, and we lifted the roof off the hive. The buzzing coming from the bees in the hive, which was loud, got even louder and changed pitch.  But we were not attacked.

Rhona used her hive tool, which was like a small crowbar, to separate the “quilt,” the top section of a Warre hive which is located under the roof of the hive and packed full of insulation, from the other sections of the hive.

Under the quilt were three other sections, which were where the bees built their honeycomb that contained their eggs, larvae, and food stores, aka honey.

Working together, we picked up one section of the hive, which was full of bees, honeycomb, and honey, and carried it some distance away, and set it the section on a  clean Rubbermaid container.  Using  the hive tool again, Rhona cut around the sides of the one of the ten hanging honeycombs, and detached it from the board it was hanging on. The comb fell into the container, and honey began to ooze from the broken honeycomb cells immediately. But it was fine, because everything we were working with had been washed.  Rhona cut two more honeycombs out, then she picked up that section of hive and carried it back to the beehive.  She and I inspected the other hive sections and saw that the bees were healthy and had a lot of larvae developing.  Then we put the hive  back together, put the lid on the container with the three honeycombs, and after posing for pictures, took our bee suits off. I put the container in the garage, where it was cool and shady.

I posted on Facebook that combs full of honey were not the same as honey in the jar. Bees build combs out of beeswax, and the cells of the combs are quite small.  I posted on my Facebook page that honey in the comb and honey in the jar are very different things, then rested.

About three hours after we had put the combs in the blue Rubbermaid container, I brought my friend Anne in and opened the lid to show her the honeycombs.

“Ooooh,” she said, “there are bees crawling around in there.”

And so there were. There were quite a few bees crawling around, covered in honey, but quite alive. So I rescued them, and this is how I did it.

I got a small, maybe 1 ½ pint sized container that I put an inch of warm water in.

I helped as many bees as possible crawl from the honeycomb onto some wooden clothespins in the container, then put more clothespins in the container so the bees could pull themselves out of the water to breathe and groom the honey off their wings.

I put the little container with water, bees and clothespins in the sun near the beehive. In the morning the container had no more bees in it.

That night, I brought the blue container into the kitchen, and scraped some more bees off the combs and put them outside too. Most of those bees didn’t make it.

Then I had the honey and wax to deal with. I cut the caps off the combs with a sharp knife and tipped the whole container up at a sharp angle-- almost vertical --so the honey would drain out of the combs and pool all at one end. That’s how I left it overnight.

In the morning, I cut the combs into little pieces, then used a metal ladle and serving spoon to scoop the honey into the paint straining bags which I put onto one gallon jars, and let drain for a couple of hours. I repeated this until the combs were all in the strainers.

 

Finally, I twisted the strainers to force more honey out of the combs, then put the leftover combs in a couple of stainless steel bowls I had, set the bowls in a low oven (160 degrees Fahrenheit) so the wax would float to the top and the honey would sink to the bottom. This worked well. I added the honey to the gallon jar, and then decanted it into smaller jars.

I traded the unrefined wax with Anita Rosen for a block of refined wax.

That morning at the farmer’s market, I bought the bees some flowers and left them in the backyard for them to feed on as a thank you.

A plan for New Year's Day

At last, a plan for New Year’s Day

My New Year’s Day Party 2014 will be like my New Year’s Day Party 2013. This means that I have already planned NEXT year’s New Year’s Day Open House, and can finally take the time to invite all the people I want, instead of forgetting half of them.

I’m not much of a planner, more of an improviser, and a panicker until the first guests arrive. I have been known to knock on neighbors doors during the party to invite them over.  But now I have a plan, so I can relax.  It only took me 28 years to settle on a party format that works.

28 years?

Oh, yeah.

I’ve been giving parties on New Year’s Day since 1986, when I moved into my first house. As the new wife in a competitive family, I wanted to claim a holiday for my own, and there wasn’t much to choose from. My husband’s mother claimed  all major holidays, birthdays and anniversaries, and my husband’s older brother’s wife claimed the Jewish holidays. The younger brother claimed New Year’s Eve. So I got New Year’s Day. 

It works because no matter how many New Year’s I have had in the Pacific Time Zone, I think that New Year begins at midnight in the timezone in which I was born.  So when the ball drops in Times Square, I want to drink champagne and go to bed at nine o’clock at night.

The last New Year’s Eve party I  stayed up late for was New Year’s Eve 1988.  I was very pregnant, the baby was due in 5 days, and I was in pre-labor. I was dancing like crazy and jumping around a lot, actually alarming some of the other guests at the party who thought I might have the baby right there by the punchbowl.

I didn’t.  I came home, got ready for bed, and when I was taking my eye makeup off, my water broke., and twenty-one hours of excruciating labor later  my eldest was born on Jan.1.  Eleven oh- five pm. 

So I can throw ANY kind of party on New Year’s Day, it’s bound to be easier than what I was doing on  New Year’s Day of1988.

It’s been a marathon of gaiety.  I  used to start with a childrens party, then I would have an open house in the afternoon for the adults. I’ve had the adult open house and  a  birthday dinner running concurrently, where I set up the dining room for my son and his friends, and cooked enough Fred’s Steak and mashed potatoes for twelve teenagers, who ate almost as much as  the 50 adults I had in the rest of the house.   I  have entertained 100 or so people in my home in the early afternoon, kicked them out and half an hour later, convened with  family at The Cheesecake Factory.

But next year, I’m not going to do any of that.  I’m going to do just what I did this year, 2013, down to the serving help and jazz combo.

What did I do in 2013? If you weren’t there, just be nice to me in this year, and you can come see me repeat everything, exactly the same way on New Year’s Day 2014.

 I’ll put you on the guest list.

Which I will start working on tomorrow.

Bus Ride of the Living or What I Did on My Summer Vacation

This article was published in JUDAISM, A Journal of Jewish Life and Thought, Issue No. 211/212/ Volume 53 / Numbers 3-4 / Summer-Fall 2004 / Pages 260-266.

Journal article from 2004

Join me as a member of The Forward

Join me as a member of The Forward

I did just become a member of The Forward, but I'm also curious:
How many of you out there keep charity spreadsheets?

Do they help?

Do you work with your spouse on giving?  How do you cut up the pie?

What happens to you budget if there is a disaster, like Sandy?

As not seen on the Jewish Womens Archive "Jewesses with Attitude" blog

I went to Israel in July, ready to ride segregated busses in Jerusalem and report to the liberal Jewish feminist community on what I saw. Just before I landed, this blog post went up on the Jewish Women's Archive "Jewesses With Attitude" site.

 http://jwa.org/blog/modern-day-freedom-rider

But when I actually reported on what had happened, what I wrote was rejected as "too controversial."  What do YOU think?

As a good progressive Jew and feminist, I regularly read the online newsletter of the Israel Religious Action Center, (IRAC), founded in 1987 with the goals of advancing pluralism in Israeli society and defending the freedoms of conscience, faith, and religion. They stage demonstrations of women permission to praying at the Kotel with Torahs and Tallitot, and frequently get harassed. They also champion Reform and Conservative interests in congregations in court. They get me upset on a regular basis. Their mission includes fighting the ultra-Orthodox Jews on the far right, also called Haredim. These Haredim are so zealous in defending their brand of religion that they impinge on the rights of others—women in particular.

One such practice is the segregated bus, where women sit in the back and men sit in the front. IRAC regularly organizes “Freedom Rides,” where women sit in the front, because these segregated busses seem ridiculous in a country where women serve in the Army. It seems foolish to herd them to the back of the bus. Since I was going to Israel anyway, I tried to join a “Freedom Ride, ” IRAC never answered me except to say “you are just one person, come with a group and we’ll talk.”

Ruth Marcus, who writes for the Washington post, must have come with a group. She was in Israel and rode a segregated bus with representatives of IRAC. You can read about it here:

A Religious Fight in Israel

So had my cousin Sandy come with me to see what these Haredi busses were like. They are called “Mehadrin,” which is the same word applied to kosher food which is prepared according to ultra-strict standards. Egged, which is a government run company and by far the biggest bus company in Israel, runs them, and it is simple to see why. These busses typically run with full loads of passengers, which is the holy grail of any mass transportation company. They are also fairly rare, only running from certain neighborhoods to other neighborhoods, and you have to find them by word of mouth.

Just so you know, in America, we also have segregated busses that cater to the Ultra-Orthodox communities. These busses are run by private companies, and are divided by a curtain running down the middle of the bus (Yes! A mehitza!), so the resonance with the segregation of the Old South does not apply. These busses have been have been going to Manhattan for decades. Men can daven during their commute.

But back to Jerusalem.

“I don’t want any trouble,” Sandy said. “So we are going to have to dress you up.” I put on a light shirt that covered my elbows, and a wrap skirt that covered my knees, and I was ready.  Sandy didn’t think that head covering was needed—I could be a widow, after all. Or single.

Then we went to Mea Shearim and looked for segregated busses. Some women we spoke to told us that if we wanted to ride in the front, we had every legal right to. “There are signs on every bus near the driver”  We rode the #56 line, which runs from the center of Jerusalem to a section of town called Ramat Shlomo, three times, and on our last trip, we were part of a large crowd that sorted itself by gender. One woman repeatedly told us, in Hebrew, that women rode in the back, but we played dumb and got on at the front of the bus so the driver could punch our transfer tickets. We stood with the driver, admiring the scenery of Jerusalem before us, and then looked back. A phalanx of black coats and hats looked back at us. Every seat appeared to be full, and some men were standing in the aisle, blocking our access to the back.

The wall of black coats intimidated me, even with all those Shirley Temple ringlets bobbing around. The men didn’t SAY anything, just stood there and stared at us, and blocked the aisle.

Sandy asked the driver  “Should we push our way to the back?”

“Better stay up here, with me,” the driver answered.

So we did, back to the center of Jerusalem, and relative sanity.

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Nice Picture! Thanks, Boris Feldman