- 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…
…n interfaith and multi-racial family himself, Rabbi Woodward considers the spiritual inclusion of non-Jewish relatives in the rituals to be deeply important. If you choose to name your child within BEKI’s Shabbat morning service, please note that only one person at a time is called to recite the blessings for a Torah aliyah, though an additional parent can also come to the readers table for the aliyah. If you would like to sponsor the Kiddush lunc…
…o BEKI. At the same time, we also admire and love the fact that a sizeable number of congregants can daven and read Torah! The unrestrained excitement of little ones further adds to the pleasure in feeling that Am Yisrael Chai! Tom Goldenberg & Jessica Holzer and Ainsley Tom is a New Haven Mayoral candidate and was previously a public sector consultant. Jess is the chair-elect of the University of New Haven’s public health department. Ainsley is i…
…e Ely House, Center for Contemporary Art, New Haven, CT, and has curated a number of independent exhibitions. She studied at the Akademie fuer Angewante Kunst in Vienna, Austria, and received her MFA from San Jose State University. Anna Broell Bresnick has collaborated with dancers and musicians in the creation of installations for performances. These have included large sculptural str uctures, floor drawings and video. Broell Bresnick has taught…
…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…
…, 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…
…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…
…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…
