- Congregation Beth El–Keser Israel
85 Harrison Street, New Haven, CT 06515-1724 | P: 203.389.2108 | office@beki.org
85 Harrison Street, New Haven, CT 06515-1724 | P: 203.389.2108 | office@beki.org
…ake sure he’s dead.” There is a silence, then a shot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says: “OK, now what?” Even if you follow all the directions geschribben in the Shulhan Arukh strictly, letter by letter, you are not performing the mitzvot as our sages intended unless you understand what you are doing and why you are doing it. Our sages have taught that in order to perform a mitzva optimally, in most cases, one must do so conscientiously, th…
…of all the people. Imagine if the parshah has told us, tribe by tribe, the number of people in each tribe, and separately, the number of males, 20 and up, who were fit for service. Would that kind of census send a different message to us, a message saying, “everyone counts”, including all the women? The second census, what I’ll call the redemption census, I find a strange one. It requires counting of all the male Levites who were at least a month…
…nk, To the deaths of Miriam and Aaron. * * * One thing to notice About the number 14,700 Is that it promises reduction: It moves toward its own diminishment. There is a half-life logic to it, An inherent halving: 14 in the thousands category, Then 7, half-14, in the hundreds. In this promise of reduction, We move toward zero, Though we will never reach it. Just after the number of dead is given, Parshat Korach turns suddenly. G-d tells Moses to ta…
…ed intentionally, and unfortunately are widely believed. As bad as Israeli military rule of the non-Israeli Arab population is, the death and destruction, and wanton killing, perpetrated by the American military in Iraq in the first and second Iraq wars is orders of magnitude greater by any measure than the violence experienced by Arabs in the West Bank. Lebanese, Gazans and Iraqis suffer far more death, violence and suppression at the hands of th…
…ments for further information. A schedule is presented below. To purchase tickets online, click here, then scroll down to High Holy Days – Tickets. SECURITY UPDATE: Please know that our High Holy Days team is working hard to make sure that while remaining the warm and welcoming community we have always been, it is doing its best to implement some new procedures and policies, which take your security very seriously. Your understanding and total…
…or covering and seating? The committee will seek congregational input on a number of items, including the seating and potentially floor covering. The committee will make the final decision based on a variety of factors, including cost, durability, sustainability, and congregational input. Sound and Acoustics How will we handle room acoustics? We will work with the architect and potentially with an acoustical engineer. Is the space intimate enough…
…did not experience antisemitism in India and, in fact, helped to rescue a number of Jews fleeing Europe in World War II. Conversation with Mark Oppenheimer, jewishledger.com, Nov 25, 2019 Mark Oppenheimer describes himself as a writer, talker, father, husband, dog-owner, and challah baker. Though not necessarily in order of importance. Challah baking aside, the talker in Oppenheimer will get to do just that on Sunday, Dec. 15, 10 a.m., at Congreg…
…to the assassination of Mr. Rabin. Before Yigal Amir pulled the trigger, a number of Orthodox rabbis had stretched medieval Jewish law beyond all reasonable limits to classify Mr. Rabin as a “pursuer,” whose life could be taken in self-defense. The same body of medieval law explicitly sanctions the killing of Jewish heretics as the Union of Orthodox Rabbis surely knows. To publicly denounce Reform and Conservative Jew as apikorsim in the current h…
…rs, words and spaces, although exact layout (number of words in a line and number of lines in a column) may vary, as will the quality of the materials and calligraphy. We take out the particular scroll or scroll that is set to the portion that we are reading on the given occasion. The weekly reading goes in sequence, so each shabbat we begin reading from the spot we left of the previous week. But on festivals and other occasions we may read from a…
…hei HaBesht (Tel Aviv: Devir) 5707/1947, 5735/1975, p. 35. A table of tale numbers and the corresponding page numbers in other editions is given at the back of the book by Ben-Amos and Mintz. 2. Violence is neither advocated nor condoned in these tales to any significant extent, whereas many tales strongly advocate the efficacy and advantages of nonviolence. The main exception to this generalization are a few of the first fifteen tales (pp. 39-51…
