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New Yorkers are buzzing about local honey this Rosh Hashanah
(New York Jewish Week) — Five years ago, Gadi Peleg, the owner and founder of Breads Bakery — an Israeli-style bakery with roots in Tel Aviv and stores around Manhattan — began to sell New York City-harvested honey in his stores in the weeks before Rosh Hashanah. It was an instant hit.
All the products at Breads (other than soft drinks) are prepared in-house, and it made sense to Peleg that the honey be proprietary, too. So Peleg turned to Andrew Coté, a fourth-generation beekeeper and owner of Andrew’s Honey, who has more than 100 hives around the city.
“Honey from the city is cleaner than honey from the countryside,” Coté, who is Jewish, told the New York Jewish Week. “Very few to no pesticides are sprayed in Manhattan.”
Beekeeping became legal in New York City in 2010, at which time 42 bee owners were registered. According to the New York City Health Department, there are currently 121 beekeepers registered with the city. Tom Wilk, New York City director of the Empire State Honey Producers Associations, estimates that there are probably twice that amount. “People are afraid of letting the government know what they are doing,” he said.
Interest in beekeeping continues to grow, and there are classes on beekeeping throughout the city. Brooklyn Grange, a leading rooftop farming business, holds a Beekeeping 101 class at its Brooklyn Navy Yard location. In Astoria, Queens, Nick and Ashley Hoefly, will soon open the city’s only dedicated honey shop, The Honey House at Astor Apiaries where you can try honey, take classes in beekeeping, gardening and cooking.
September is a busy month for New York City’s beekeepers. Rosh Hashanah, and its custom to put honey on the holiday table, jacks up demand — and demand in a city with 1.6 million Jews is steep. What’s more, September is a big harvesting month and, for the last 13 years, the Queens Beekeepers Guild has hosted a honey festival on the second Saturday in September on the boardwalk in Rockaway Beach.
Coté, founder of the New York City Beekeepers Association and the author of a book about urban beekeeping, is perhaps the best known of the beekeepers spread across the five boroughs. He and Peleg first became acquainted at the Union Square Greenmarket, where Coté sells his wares. The four-day-a-week market is just down the block from Breads’ original Manhattan location on West 16th Street. It was a win-win situation for the two businessmen: The beekeeper gained an additional revenue stream while the baker acquired an exclusive source of honey from a producer who’s landed on “best” lists.
Of Coté’s dozens of hives, four of them are earmarked for Breads. They are located on the roof of a building at 19th Street and Broadway.
“When people hear the honey comes from hives a few blocks away, they react with disbelief,” said Samantha Mele, logistics manager at Breads Bakery. She is referred to as its “Queen Bee” — both because of her focus on details and her involvement in the honey project. “Longtime customers will pre-order since they know we sell out.”
“We first prioritize jarring the honey,” Peleg said. “People really enjoy it obviously with apples and on our challah bread.” He added that Breads sells “ many, many hundreds of jars” of the stuff each fall.
Breads also uses honey — local, if available after jarring, as well as honey sourced elsewhere — in a variety of Rosh Hashanah baked goods, including honey cake, medovik (a caramelized biscuit layer cake made with buckwheat honey), honey rugelach and safta cake (a honey, cinnamon and apple cake).
The amount of honey harvested from Breads’ four hives changes year to year, and the flavor — which depends on where the bees collected their pollen, and when the honey was harvested from the hives — varies, too.
“Generally the earlier honey [of the season] is lighter and the later honey is darker,” Coté said. “That’s because of what is in bloom at different times of the year. The early harvest [in New York] is full of pollen from linden trees.” Pollen from these European lindens, according to the Central Park Conservancy, makes a delicately flavored honey.
Beekeeping is a full-time job for some New Yorkers, like Coté, who grew up keeping bees in Quebec with a Catholic and Native American father and a Jewish mother. “My mother’s family was thrilled to have beekeepers in the family, since it meant a relatively endless supply of fresh pure honey, for all occasions, but most especially for Rosh Hashanah,” he said.
For other urban beekeepers, it’s “a hobby that pays its own way,” according to part-time beekeeper Menachem Husarsky of Ditmas Park, Brooklyn.
Husarsky began raising honey bees three years ago, at his wife’s request. She, along with their daughter, suffers from seasonal allergies, and many believe that ingesting locally sourced honey helps people build immunity to their pollen. (Alas, the medical community is divided on this.)
“Menachem took the idea and ran with it,” said Malka Husarsky, Menachem’s wife, who recalled her own mother eating local honey to help with her allergies.
Within a year, the family’s COVID-era hobby grew into a small business. In 2021, they began to sell their honey, The Birds and the Bees Brooklyn. Most of the sales are via Facebook, to the local communities of Ditmas Park and Kensington, but they also sell to their fellow Orthodox neighbors at their upstate home at Vacation Village in Monticello, New York.
So far, this year, the Husarskys have harvested 170 pounds of honey from four hives located in the modest side yard of their Brooklyn home. This season’s flavors are rare: “We have apple, cherry and peach trees on our property,” Husarsky said. “We have Meyer lemon and clementine trees in pots. A lot of our neighbors in the area grow mint and someone was growing hot peppers.”
By the end of this season, they expect to extract a total of 375 pounds of honey, which they sell for between $2 to $3 an ounce (the peach honey, which has a more limited supply, goes for $3 an ounce).
Sales, said Husarsky, “kick up in September around Rosh Hashanah,” and they usually sell out.
And at the Husarsky family’s celebration of Rosh Hashanah, “We intend, of course, to dip our apples in our honey,” said Menachem Husarsky. “We have apple trees on both our properties with apples ready for Rosh Hashanah.”
“We’re excited and blessed to spend the holiday with family,” Malka Husarsky added. “ It will be really special to have our family around the table, filled with items from Hashem and our urban farm.”
And there may be Jewish lessons to be learned from beekeeping, too. According to Rabbi Eitan Webb, director of the Chabad House at Princeton University: “Honey bees all work together in unity. They know that time is short and there is so much to do, and they run around as fast as they can, so they can create something good.”
“Bees make honey, but they also sting when they are threatened,” he added. The late Chabad rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, “suggests that, like bees, our primary role is to do mitzvahs, bringing sweetness to the world. Though we have the power to sting, we should reserve it for sparing use and only in defense of our treasure: Judaism.”
At Breads, the crew there has been preparing for Rosh Hashanah — which begins on the evening of Friday, Sept. 15 — since March. “We realize what a huge responsibility it is to ensure that people can celebrate the holiday,” Peleg said. “We take that responsibility very, very seriously.”
As for Coté, he and his family celebrate Rosh Hashanah by having — you guessed it — a honey-based feast. First, there is honey cake. “Our honey cake is always made with buckwheat honey for a much richer and more satisfying (in my opinion) honey cake,” Cote wrote to the New York Jewish Week.
Then, there is the honey and apple tasting. “Since I work at a farmers’ market, I always command a wide spread of different apples,” he said. “These are sliced and sorted and dipped in an almost equally diverse selection of honey.”
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The post New Yorkers are buzzing about local honey this Rosh Hashanah appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Amsterdam Mayor to Apologize to Jewish Community for City’s World War II Persecution
Mayor of Amsterdam Femke Halsema attends a press conference following the violence targeting fans of an Israeli soccer team, in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Nov. 8, 2024. Photo: Reuters/Piroschka Van De Wouw
Amsterdam authorities will issue an official apology to the local Jewish community for the city’s role in the persecution of Jews during World War II at a Holocaust commemoration next week, Dutch media reported.
The city’s mayor, Femke Halsema, will deliver the formal apology on April 24, during events for Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah).
Every year, the Dutch capital commemorates Holocaust victims at Amsterdam’s Hollandsche Schouwburg theater, originally opened in 1892 and situated in the heart of the city’s Jewish quarter. In 1942, the building was repurposed by Nazi German occupiers as a collection point for Amsterdam Jews before their deportation to Westerbork transit camp and other concentration camps.
According to the Dutch news site Het Parool, Amsterdam authorities will also allocate €25 million to bolster Jewish life in the city, supporting cultural and social programs designed to help the community feel safer and freely practice their traditions.
As in many other countries across Europe, antisemitism has sharply risen in the Netherlands following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel, with incidents spiking by 800 percent in the weeks after the Palestinian terrorist organization’s atrocities.
Last year, Israeli soccer fans were violently attacked in Amsterdam after watching the Maccabi Tel Aviv soccer team compete against the Dutch club Ajax in a European League match. At the time, Halsema called the attackers “antisemitic hit-and-run squads” who went “Jew hunting.”
With Amsterdam’s announcement, Halsema will be the first mayor in the country to publicly apologize for and recognize a city’s role in the persecution of Jews during World War II.
The mayor’s expected apology follows an investigation by the Netherlands Institute for War, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies (NIOD) into the role of Amsterdam’s municipal services in the persecution of Jews during the Nazi occupation. Previous reports revealed that police took part in raids, the city handed over Jewish residents’ addresses to the Nazis, and municipal trams were used to transport thousands to deportation points.
In 2020, then-Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who currently serves as secretary general of NATO, issued a public apology for the Dutch government’s wartime actions.
Last year, Halsema announced the city would give up the money it received during the war for transporting Jews to deportation sites, a sum originally equivalent to about €61,000 today. The municipality rounded the amount up to €100,000 and paid it into a fund managed by the Central Jewish Consultation (CJO), which can decide how the money is used.
During World War II, the Netherlands had the highest percentage of Jewish victims in Western Europe, with three-quarters of its Jewish population being murdered.
“Better late than never,” Ronny Naftaniel, a prominent member of the Dutch Jewish community, told Het Parool. “It would be good if the apology was not just about the war, but also about the period immediately afterwards, given the cold reception that returned Jews received at the time.”
The post Amsterdam Mayor to Apologize to Jewish Community for City’s World War II Persecution first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Alleged Arsonist Targeted Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro Over Palestinian Stance, Police Say
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and the Pennsylvania State Police provide an update on the act of arson that took place at the Governor’s Residence, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, US, April 13, 2025. Photo: Commonwealth Media Services/Handout via REUTERS
The suspected arsonist who allegedly tried to kill Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro set fire to his official residence out of anger over the governor’s perceived stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to a search warrant signed by State Police.
The suspect, 38-year-old Cody Balmer, called 911 prior to the attack and accused Shapiro of orchestrating nefarious “plans” against the Palestinian people. Balmer also referred to Shapiro, who is Jewish, as a “monster,” according to the search warrant, which was obtained by the PennLive news outlet.
Balmer told emergency operators that Shapiro “will not take part in his plans for what he wants to do to the Palestinian people,” and demanded that the governor “stop having my friends killed.”
The suspect continued, telling operators, “Our people have been put through too much by that monster.”
Corporal Benjamin Forsythe of the Pennsylvania State Police said in a warrant to obtain Balmer’s devices that the suspect set fire to Shapiro’s residence, the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion, over the alleged ongoing “injustices to the people of Palestine” and his Jewish faith.
Shapiro’s residence was set ablaze on Sunday morning, hours after the governor hosted a gathering to celebrate the first night of the Jewish holiday of Passover. Shapiro said that he, his wife, and his children were awakened by state troopers knocking on their door at 2 am. The governor and his family immediately evacuated the premises and were unscathed.
According to police, Balmer scaled a nearly 7-foot-high security fence and evaded authorities before breaking into the governor’s mansion. The suspect was able to remain in Shapiro’s home for around a minute before throwing Molotov cocktails and escaping.
The suspect later revealed to police that he planned to beat Shapiro with a sledgehammer if he encountered him after gaining access into his residence, according to authorities.
Balmer, who was charged with eight crimes by authorities, including serious felonies such as attempted homicide, terrorism, and arson. The suspect faces potentially 100 years in jail. He has been denied bail.
Shapiro, a practicing Jew, has positioned himself as a staunch supporter of Israel. In the days following Hamas’s brutal slaughter of roughly 1,200 people across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Shapiro issued statements condemning the Palestinian terrorist group and gave a speech at a local synagogue. The governor also ordered the US and Pennsylvania Commonwealth flags to fly at half-mast outside the state capitol to honor the victims.
Shapiro has condemned protests against Israeli- and Jewish-owned businesses in Pennsylvania as “antisemitic” and resisted demands to call for a “ceasefire” in Gaza between Israel and Hamas. The governor revised the state codes of conduct to bar government employees from participating in “scandalous or disgraceful” behavior.
Shapiro’s strident support of Israel in the wake of Oct. 7 also incensed many pro-Palestinian activists, resulting in the governor being dubbed “Genocide Josh” by far-left demonstrators.
In a statement, US Attorney General Pam Bondi condemned the attack targeting Shapiro. However, Bondi did not clarify whether she plans on opening a federal case against the suspect.
“It is absolutely horrific what happened to him,” Bondi said. “We have been praying for Josh, for his family. Those photos, it was horrible. I firmly believe that they wanted to kill him. The defendant allegedly said he was going to use a hammer if he could have gotten to the governor. I’ve known the governor many, many years. It is horrible, and yes, we are working with state authorities to — it’s now a pending investigation — anything we can to help convict the person that did this and keep them behind bars as long as possible,” Bondi said.
In statements to reporters, Shapiro refused to accuse the suspect of antisemitism, saying that he would allow prosecutors to determine the motivation.
“I know that there are people out there who want to ascribe their own viewpoints as to what happened here and why. … I choose not to participate in that,” Shapiro said.
“Prosecutors will ultimately determine what motivated this. The district attorney and the Department of Justice can comment on that further,” Shapiro added.
The post Alleged Arsonist Targeted Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro Over Palestinian Stance, Police Say first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Backlash Grows in UK as Hamas Mounts Legal Challenge Against Terrorist Designation
Demonstrators hold Israeli and British flags outside the Law Courts, during a march against antisemitism, after an increase in the UK, during a temporary truce between the Palestinian Islamist terrorists Hamas and Israel, in London, Britain, Nov. 26, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Susannah Ireland
A growing wave of condemnation is mounting in the UK after lawyers representing the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas sought to challenge the organization’s terrorist designation, prompting fierce criticism from British Members of Parliament and Jewish organizations.
Last week, Hamas filed a legal petition arguing for its removal from the United Kingdom’s list of proscribed terrorist groups, describing itself as “a Palestinian Islamic liberation and resistance movement whose goal is to liberate Palestine and confront the Zionist project.”
Riverway Law submitted a claim to UK Home Secretary Yvette Cooper on behalf of senior Hamas official Moussa Abu Marzouk, who also provided a witness statement in the case. Given that accepting funds from Hamas would violate British law, the firm is providing pro bono representation to the terrorist group.
“The British government’s decision to proscribe Hamas is an unjust one that is symptomatic of its unwavering support for Zionism, apartheid, occupation, and ethnic cleansing in Palestine for over a century,” the filing reads. “Hamas does not and never has posed a threat to Britain, despite the latter’s ongoing complicity in the genocide of our people.”
Hamas’s military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, had been banned in Britain since 2001, but the Interior Ministry broadened the ban to include the group’s political entities in 2021, arguing that Hamas functions as a unified organization rather than separate branches.
“I would be very surprised if the British government agrees to remove Hamas from the proscribed list,” Jonathan Turner, chief executive of UK Lawyers for Israel, told The Algemeiner in an exclusive interview.
“The UK is not entirely sympathetic to Israel, but it’s still very unlikely they would rule in favor of Hamas.”
In applying for removal from the list of proscribed organizations, Turner explained that Hamas does not deny being a terrorist group but rather argues that it is undesirable for it to remain banned.
In its filing, Riverway Law outlines three primary grounds for why Hamas should be removed from the terrorist list. The first argument contends that the UK’s ongoing proscription of Hamas violates international law, including the British government’s obligation not to be complicit in genocide, which Hamas claims is being perpetrated by Israel in Gaza.
Additionally, it highlights the UK’s alleged responsibility to end “the unlawful occupation of Palestinian territories,” referencing the 2024 International Court of Justice (ICJ) advisory opinion that Israel’s presence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem is illegal.
The second argument claims that proscribing Hamas violates the European Convention on Human Rights, particularly the rights to freedom of expression and assembly, as UK law prohibits the promotion or support of proscribed organizations. Hamas argues that this ban restricts open debate on the Palestinian issue and peaceful demonstrations, while also being discriminatory since Israel is not similarly proscribed.
The third argument asserts that the proscription is disproportionate and not sufficiently justified. Hamas argues that there is no direct threat to the UK, that its violence is a “legitimate response to occupation,” and that the proscription undermines Palestinians’ democratic will when they elected Hamas.
The terrorist group violently eliminated its Palestinian opposition in a brief conflict in 2007, when Hamas took full control of Gaza after winning legislative elections the prior year.
Turner countered that all three arguments lack merit, emphasizing that rights such as freedom of expression and assembly can be lawfully restricted under UK and international law to protect national security, public safety, and the rights or property of others.
He also pointed out that Hamas still holds 59 of the hostages abducted during its invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and that hostage-taking is a crime against humanity under international conventions.
“Hamas is a very vicious terrorist organization,” he told The Algemeiner.
Earlier this week, British Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick announced that he had reported Riverway Law attorney Fahad Ansari for supporting Hamas and jihad, as well as the firm’s potential breach of sanctions regulations.
“The legal profession is being damaged by ideologues exploiting their status to platform extremism,” Jenrick wrote in a post on the X social media platform. “This isn’t about free speech. It’s about a man who repeatedly crosses the line into open support for terrorism — all while the authorities look away.”
Shadow Foreign Secretary Priti Patel also criticized the legal effort, calling Hamas an “evil Iranian-backed terrorist organization, which kidnaps, tortures, and murders people, including British nationals.”
More British citizens (18) were killed during the Hamas-led Oct. 7 onslaught than in any foreign terrorist attack since Al Qaeda struck the US on Sept. 11, 2001.
“They pose an ongoing threat to our security and to the peace and stability of the Middle East and have weapons and training facilities that put lives at risk and threaten our interests,” Patel said in a statement. “They show no respect for human rights, life, and dignity and have oppressed people living in Gaza for too long.”
“Those campaigning to end the proscription of Hamas fail to understand the seriousness of the threats this terrorist organization poses,” the statement read.
Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA), a UK-based Jewish civil rights group, also dismissed the case as a “bad-faith attempt to promote genocidal antisemitism,” rejecting the argument that proscribing Hamas stifles political engagement. They argued that it’s still possible to campaign for Palestinian rights, criticize Israel, or support a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without endorsing Hamas or terrorism.
Riverway Law’s legal challenge on behalf of Hamas came less than a month after a group of British lawmakers released a new and extensive report documenting the atrocities of the terrorist group’s Oct. 7 atrocities across southern Israel.
The report showed that, in total, about 7,000 Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists killed 1,182 people, wounded more than 4,000 others, and kidnapped 251 hostages — 210 living and 41 dead bodies at the time of their abduction — during the onslaught. The study detailed Hamas’s planning, the weapons used, and the violence which occurred at each location, including gristly details of sexual violence, torture, and the desecration of corpses.
The post Backlash Grows in UK as Hamas Mounts Legal Challenge Against Terrorist Designation first appeared on Algemeiner.com.