- 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
…th El–Keser Israel has been determined to be an exempt organization by the United States Department of Treasury Internal Revenue Service as described in section 501(c)3 of the Internal Revenue Code; see our Letter of Determination from the IRS. Donate Online – To make a donation online by credit card, complete this form. Contributions of any amount are appreciated. Bill My Account – Donate now and have our office bill you. Members and Supporters…
…a distinct movement in its own right. It was not until the 1990’s that the United Synagogue took the name United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism. My great-grandparents followed in the footsteps of their parents in living as observant traditional Jews. They were not Orthodox. They were not Hippies. They were by definition Conservative Jews. I am proud to be a Conservative Jew like my great-grandparents. May God grant that I be blessed with great-…
Kadima (grades 6-8) and United Synagogue Youth (BEKI–BJ USY) (grades 9-12) enable youth to plan and hold educational, public service, worship and social events with adult guidance and supervision locally, regionally and nationally. BEKI youth share a chapter with neighboring Congregation B’nai Jacob in Woodbridge. The Kadima and USY chapters have won numerous awards in recent years. Youth preparing pies to be sold as a benefit for local and inter…
…m Iraq during the current war. In August 2009, the press reported that the United Arab Emirates planned to deport hundreds of ethnic Palestinians, particularly Gazans, in the coming weeks. In contrast, Israel has not forcibly expelled Arabs since Rabin dumped (“deported”) 415 HAMAS terrorists into Lebanon in 1992, but subsequently took them back under Israeli court order. (This does not count the expulsion of tourists with expired visas and assort…
…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…
…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…
…the Torah and perform their aliya properly. If there were no limit on the number of people who may go up for an aliya at once, then what if a Bar- or Bat-Mitzva family were to want to send up a group of five or ten at once? And what if two groups of ten are called up in succession? The result might violate even our minimal demands of decorum. If we were to limit joint aliya to two people per aliya, then on the one hand we would run into some fami…
…Abby Fraade, the volunteer who manages sponsorships. Please note that cellphones and photography are permitted on weekdays, but not on Shabbat or Yom Tov. If you choose to have a ceremony at BEKI on some other day, please work out the general plan in advance with Office Manager Peggy Hackett. She will arrange kitchen supervision and custodial services. Please note that we do NOT allow self-catering or a plan that’s “friends will take care of setu…
…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…
…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…
