ROSH HASHANAH

O

n Rosh Hashanah, when we wish 
each other a sweet new year, it 
seems natural that we associate 
that wish with honey. Honey, the sweet-
ener mentioned in the Bible (Hebrew 
devash), is even sweeter than table sugar. 
Veteran beekeeper Joel Letvin of 
Bloomfield Hills points out that most 
often when the Bible mentions honey, 
it means the thick juice of dates or figs 
(which your grocery store might call 
dibs, the Arabic equivalent of devash). 
Bee honey does unequivocally appear in 
Samson’s riddle (Judges 14:18ff).
The Talmudic rabbis knew that bee 

honey was kosher and only had to explain 
why. Their answer, that the bees “bring it 
into their bodies and do not excrete it from 
their bodies” (Bekhorot 7b), apparently 
means that however much chemical change 
the bees introduce in processing the honey 
does not reach the level of making honey 
“the product of a forbidden creature.
” 
The bees process the nectar they gather 
from the flowers. The nectar has such a 
low concentration of sugars that it would 
hardly taste sweet at all. Letvin describes 
how the bees gather one drop of nectar at 
a time and then evaporate away the extra 
water. They also add enzymes to effect the 

transformation. “I called my business the 
Liquid Sunshine Honey Company because 
that, in effect, describes honey. Plants turn 
sunshine into flower nectar; bees collect 
that nectar and turn it into honey.”
Farmers need honeybees to pollinate 
their crops and will pay for their services. 
Honey is almost a byproduct of the main 
business.
Letvin did beekeeping in California 
until he moved back to Michigan in 1978. 
In California, where it does not rain for 
more than half the year, beekeepers must 
follow the irrigation schedule, following 
the pollination schedule for agricultural 

Learn about the honey you’ll dip your 
apples in this holiday season.
Bee Smarts

LOUIS FINKELMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

42 | SEPTEMBER 2 • 2021 

Since 1990, Yad Ezra has been 
providing supplemental kosher 
food and other services to those 
in need in the Jewish community. 
More than five years ago, as part 
of that mission, Yad Ezra started 
Giving Gardens, raising fresh food 
for its clients.
Josh Gordon, manager of 
Giving Gardens, loves to have 
bees. “Bees are wonderful pol-
linators. We see increased yield 
from our garden because we 
have resident honeybees.” 

But when Gordon became 
Giving Gardens manager, he 
reluctantly recognized that the 
staff could not continue the hives. 
Beekeeping requires expertise 
and more work than the organiza-
tion could spare. 
Meanwhile, a neighbor, 
Thomas Demeter, had his own 
problem. Demeter’s wife, know-
ing about his long-deferred 
dream of someday becoming a 
beekeeper, bought him a pres-
ent of a course with SEMBA, 

A Win-Win Situation at Yad Ezra

A Beekeeper’s Advice 
for Buying Honey 
Bee honey, famously, has an infinite 
shelf life. Honey buried with the Pharaohs, 
unearthed by archeologists in the 20th century, 
remained edible. However, it does crystalize. As 
a supersaturated solution, it tends to form crystals 
of sugar. You can easily restore it to its liquid state 
by heating it; however, to save you the inconvenience, 
large-scale commercial honey producers process 
the honey until it will not crystalize. That processing 
removes much of the flavor and perhaps much of 
medical benefits of pure honey. People who want 
real honey buy directly from the beekeeper or 
from small-scale producers, who carefully limit 
how much they heat and 
process the raw honey. 

Giving Garden at Yad Ezra

