- 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
Spirit and Fire A Retrospective 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 wor…
…e, elevator, and many other renovations, tonight I’m going to focus on the spiritual, communal and social aspects of synagogue life. It seems to me that BEKI is humming with renewed energy. In the course of the past three years, we have revitalized programs that had been allowed to lapse. We have enhanced activities that have been flourishing for years. And we’ve initiated any number of new programs that you have suggested. There is energy in the…
…course, I gleaned that: To Israel the unique events of historic time were spiritually more significant than the repetitive processes in the cycle of nature…. The God of Israel [is] the God of events: the Redeemer from slavery, the Revealer of the Torah, manifesting Himself in events of history rather than in things or places. Though seeking God in a visual medium, we looked not for images but for stories, patterns of events that reveal the sacred…
…, Abraham had accomplished much. He was a great leader and warrior. He was spiritual, personable, and principled. And yet, after everything, it is as if he has not yet arrived. Lekh lekha — go, travel — is repeated. He must journey again. Because a religious person never arrives. A religious person is always on a pilgrimage. A religious person is, spiritually, never at rest. Nehama Leibowitz notices that in each lekh lekha, God asks Abraham to for…
…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…
…re to include everyone. As it is, if such a family may pick only a limited number of people to honor, everyone who does not receive an honor understands that the family was limited. However, if the family is essentially unlimited, by being able to call up more than one person at a time for an aliya, then anyone who is not called up has greater grounds to feel slighted. A second reason for wanting joint aliya is that one of the proposed honorees do…
…tell stories that celebrate our shared past. It is also a place where our spirits and our community can be invigorated, nourished, and rested. It is a safe place, made safe by the community’s recognition of its sacredness. The sanctity of the sanctuary derives not from its location, structure or furnishings. Sanctuary services can take place in a store front, a dining room, a concentration camp, or in a submarine. Any space with any architecture…
…is to say nothing about helping others at the expense of our own pleasure, spiritual satisfaction, or bank account — we’re talking mitzva here. Like the Biblical Yosef, if we flaunt — or simply enjoy — our material blessings while our brothers and sisters go without, we run the risk of being thrown in a pit. It may be a physical pit, or it may be a spiritual pit. Many Americans are facing a relatively challenging fiscal climate. We are feeling tha…
…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…
