- 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
…Go, newhavenindependent.org, Jun 1, 2020 Chapel on the Green, a program of Trinity Church on the Green, teamed up with a local synagogue to distribute masks Sunday in conjunction with a nearby soup kitchen. BEKI hires youth and family programming director, jewishledger.com, Apr 28, 2020 Anne Norman-Schiff, who is completing a Ph.D. in religious studies at Yale, has joined the professional staff of Beth El-Keser Israel (BEKI) as youth and family pr…
…s of a story is called a doublet — what we have here is sometimes called a triplet, although some scholars deny that these three form a true triplet because they see today’s passage as an independent story simply offering an episode in the life of Isaac. First let’s compare the three episodes and see where they’re alike and where they differ. The first and third stories involve a famine which causes the patriarch to travel to a foreign land with h…
for works in Main Gallery Contact the Sisterhood Gift Shop to purchase Matzo Covers Keyboard Fantasy $800 Floral Deck $1,200 Popups $1,200 Coaster $1,200 Busy Garden $1,000 Outside the Box $700 Cell $700 Balloon Festival $600 Sails $500 Beneath the Surface $500 Introspection $500 Genesis 1-12 $1,200 Valley of the Leaves $700 The View from Above $1,000 The Book of Life $600 Huppa $2,000 Kaleidoscope $400 Round Matzah Cover $150 Click here to downl…
…ll time. When the Temple was destroyed, the central book of our Torah was stripped of its earthly referent and its specific, tangible meaning. And not VaYiqra alone, of course, but most of Bamidbar (Numbers), from which our additional reading comes; a large portion of Shemot (Exodus), and Devarim (Deuteronomy), as well. Our world was rent asunder, smashed into a thousand pieces. The parallel of Temple worship with the synagogue and prayer is more…
…erent. Everybody does something behind closed doors, whether it be write a cheap romance novel or go to some forbidden site on the Web. The thing I do behind closed doors is write poetry. Long and involved, they usually represent some flaw in humanity or in myself or just some tragic love poem. Words spurt out of my mouth and I have to write them down or else I lose them, the ideas slipping through my fingers like grains of sand in an hourglass. I…
…nse of peacefulness, awe, community, mystery, and religiosity. There are a number of factors that could conflict with our wish to achieve beauty and art in the synagogue and sanctuary. One is the expansive interpretation of the second commandment. The literal words of the commandment are, Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image nor any manner of likeness that is in the heaven above or that is in the earth beneath. My reading of this is that t…
…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…
…ll do it that way, too. But this procedure often created a dilemma: If the number of qaddishes was limited, there might still be some who did not get to say one; if there was no limit to the number of qaddishes added, the service became burdensomely long. So after careful scrutiny the rabbis allowed all mourners to say qaddish simultaneously. This rabbinic solution was adopted only after careful consideration, and after it was determined that mour…
…ther problem, one that would apply at BEKI, is that we determine a woman’s tribal status for purposes of aliya based on her father’s tribe, i.e., we call a daughter of a Kohen or Levi for the Kohen or Levi aliya. There is also a convention that says a Kohen and Levi must get the first and second aliya, respectively, and the next aliyot are reserved for people who are not a Kohen or Levi. Under this system, a couple of different tribal status could…
…ene. Each member of the household has their own Hanukia, and each lights a number of lights corresponding to the number of the day of the holiday. We are fortunate that we are able to do this mitzva in such a complete and beautiful way. But what of the poor person who can not afford all of this “hidur mitzva” but must struggle to light even one lamp? The Mishna Berura, written at the beginning of the twentieth century by the Hafetz Hayim, comments…
