- 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
…, the Western Wall of the Temple in Jerusalem. The service provided by the phone company allows people unable to visit the Wall in person to fax their petitions to an agent who then carefully inserts the sheets into cracks between the stones. But you don’t even need a fax machine to reach God. Our sages valued sincerity in prayer above all else. Length, language, or location are secondary considerations. Better a few words from the heart than the…
…, an American-born Israeli doctor who became a fundamentalist. On the 14th day of Adar 1994, he killed 29 innocents Muslims at morning prayer in the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron. He was then beaten to death by survivors and a riot broke out in which 26 Palestinians and 2 Israelis were killed. Baruch Goldstein has become a hero among some of Israel’s right-wing extremists. They set up a tombstone for him that reads, “Here lies the saint, Dr. Ba…
…wn for her work in fabric” painting, dying and constructing clothing and Judaic pieces. She constructs garments and objects of hand-dyed, airbrushed, silk-screened, and embellished fabrics to address her perspective on Judaic themes. Objects, wire, machine embroidery, photo-transfer and other complex cloth techniques conceptually allude to ideas, messages and symbols. Klein’s touring exhibition, “All That Remains: A Holocaust Exhibition in Fiber”…
…r their special learning needs. The breadth and quality of Shabbat and weekday programs for children and youth expanded, and the number of minors grew from under 70 in 1994 to over 225 a decade later. A typical Shabbat morning includes simultaneous programs or services for children and youth, as well as youth participating in the main service and Shabbat Shalom Torah Study. In 2003, the congregation began a process of building renovations, aimed a…
…h remains wet between uses, it could be in persistent contact with meat or dairy in a moist environment and thereby take on the property of “meat” or “dairy.” Even if the brush is not in contact with actual food, you might equate a toothbrush with an eating utensil or think of the particles on your teeth as being “like” food. So for “esthetic” reasons one might want to add the stringency of keeping separate toothbrushes. (Don’t even ask about a se…
…e Day of God, and that God created everything in all its potential on that Day. From that day on, it follows that, as my daughter Sarah has recently begun quoting Martin Buber in the tag line to her email messages — To produce is to draw forth, to invent is to find, to shape is to discover. **************** In addition to learning and teaching, I also increased my involvement in various BEKI projects. I would like to focus on two – the removal of…
…associations in the Sefirot does not mean they found their way into the Amida via the Sefirot. Since the Amida prayer came first (correct me if I am wrong), that would not be possible. It would be far more likely, though not necessarily so, that the associations found their way into the Sefirot via the Amida. Or perhaps the associations found their way into both from the Torah! In any case, the support for our original suggestion stands – the para…
…r God my God.” Naomi tried to dissuade her not only because of the obvious dangers of being a widow in a strange land, but because of the challenge and difficulty of accepting monotheism and the mitzvot that follow. However, Ruth willingly and courageously takes this on, and makes this commitment. It is perhaps because of this spirit of commitment, and taking on of the religion, that the reading of Ruth is done at Shavuot. And we have felt this se…
…essage. Over the course of the school year, the kids would memorize a fair number of these. The sayings she chose reflected her particular take on Judaism, which tended to the ethical rather than the spiritual. In cleaning out her apartment last year, my sister Naomi and I came across some of these sayings, which I’ve brought with me to show you. Some of the pitgamim were easy to memorize and therefore were very popular with the kids: “Tov shem m’…
…e times could operate with greater security. So here’s my overall point. Today, the power grid in America is, shall we say, a very complex distribution network. The way it operates is by a certain number of power plants producing energy, usually by burning fossil fuels, and then feeding it into the massive grid of electrical power lines. I think this is quite similar to the societal structure of the monkeys and the medieval Jewish court system, in…
