- 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
…in the Synagogue To volunteer, contact the office at office@beki.org or by phone at 203.389.2108 x114. Administration – Members are needed to serve on the work-groups, committees and board that steward and administer the congregation. Membership recruitment and retention, financial management, library services, and the Gallery are among the many areas that require eager and willing volunteers. Office Tasks – Stuffing envelopes, preparing mailings…
…ograms. Rides for kids when their parent is unable to drive. An occasional phone call or visit to someone who lives alone or in assisted living. A cooked meals or groceries for someone recuperating from illness or surgery. Of course, we can’t provide regular nursing service or permanent carpooling, but we can extend a helping hand, and we should. How will this work? Well, were just getting started, and there may be some kinks till we work out the…
…evision programs around the world some months ago depicting an Israeli Telephone Company employee stuffing faxes into the Western Wall. It is in fact a custom among many of our brothers and sisters to insert small handwritten personal notes and petitions to God between the stones of the Kotel, 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 petitio…
…d 1% at six months. People who study resilience point out that there are a number of factors that can predict how well someone will handle severe trauma. These come from studies of hospitalized survivors of motor vehicle accidents, combat veterans, people who lived through the Los Angeles riots, the Oklahoma City bombings and many other tragedies. While degree of exposure is the greatest predictor, other individual characteristics include a good t…
…ctive Exhibit Leslie J. Klein is a mixed media and fiber artist from South Florida. She has worked in pastels, oil pastels, graphite and mixed media, creating her images from a Jewish and feminist perspective. She has had many one-person shows both in the U.S. and in Israel, including “The Eden Trilogy”, an installation in oil pastel first exhibited at the Artist’s House in Jerusalem. Klein is also well known for her work in fabric” painting, dyin…
…y 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 at improving accessibility, enhancing energy efficiency…
…rty of meat for a short time, as is suggested by the Good Book: “While the flesh was still between their teeth,” etc. (Numbers 11:33). Partly for that reason we are enjoined to wait a period of time after eating meat before eating dairy. But after some time, the “food” in your mouth (and stuck on or between your teeth) ceases to be “food.” Who would eat it? If your toothbrush is used at that point, it is not really in contact with “meat” or “dairy…
…hat space is sacred, and that in that space, we are called upon to build a Sanctuary. If God is within us, then we each must build a Sanctuary within. If God is between us, then together we must build a Sanctuary in our midst. My third teaching commitment has been with my son, Jonathan. We have been studying Parashat Bereshit and Rashi’s commentary on it weekly in preparation for Jonathan’s Bar Mitzva next fall. Here I learned that the first day o…
…ose close to me in this drama was God. For the first time, really, a fixed flaw in my relation with God was exposed and pried loose. For so long, without realizing it, my belief in Him and my thanks to Him had been responses to my successes at this, my successes at that. Good health, wonderful family, successful career – thank You, God! I owe it all to You. But as I awaited neurosurgery, for the first time I felt that God did not owe me an uninter…
…be successful independently — “thou shall furnish him liberally out of thy flock, and out of thy threshing floor, and out of thy winepress.” And we must do this so as not to forget that we were once slaves in Egypt — but were then redeemed. It goes on to say that if the slave or his woman chooses not to leave- they are to be hammered to the doorpost through the ear — and remain bondsmen forever. The decision to choose slavery over independence is…
