- 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
…Shabbat Afternoon Schedule Change: The Shabbat Minha (Saturday Afternoon) services in February 2017 will be 1p – 1:35p in the Posener Beit Midrash, and (as in the summer) the evening service will not be held at BEKI on those four days. This early service time will allow participants to avoid the round-trip to the synagogue on what are the snowiest and coldest nights. Comments or questions to jjtilsen@beki.org . …
…gregation Beth El-Keser Israel was established in 2009 by Batsheva Labowe-Stoll, her parents Sara Labowe and Steven Stoll, and supported by family and friends, in order to help sustain the Congregation. At the time of the Fund’s establishment at the Jewish Foundation of Greater New Haven, Sara and Steven commented, “This is one way we wish to express our appreciation to our community, and to God, for the blessings of love, joy and Torah that we ex…
…service is an Amidah very similar to the Amidah of the Shacharit (morning) service. Near the end of the service, Mourner’s Kaddish is recited by people observing either a mourning period or the anniversary of the death of a close relative. Kiddush & Motzi Celebrating happy occasions with feasting is an important part of our tradition. We hope you can join us for a reception, which will be held in the downstairs Social Hall. We will gather in the S…
…eaching. To my mind, it’s no coincidence that there are a disproportionate number of gay clergy. Half of my ordination class was gay or lesbian. The process of coming out of the closet, the work we’ve done to become whole and unashamedly ourselves is deeply spiritual. Perhaps this is the Torah that gay men and lesbians have heard and give the world – the lesson that we all, gay or not, must be honest about our lives. And it’s a lesson that is usef…
…lieve that the book of Isaiah was written during the Babylonian exile by a number of people in addition to Isaiah. Isaiah himself was a prophet of the nation of Judah and was one of the first to leave a written record of his prophecies, or proclamations. The book of Isaiah is one of the longest in the Bible, containing sixty chapters. The sayings of Isaiah are contained in the first 39 chapters. Most of the rest, written around 550 BCE, were poems…
…, 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 that the majority of interactions, or in this case, power transmissions, are local, but the network is able to transmit p…
…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’…
…nsgresses a prohibition, as Scripture states, “Do not add [to the required number of lashes]” — if the Torah warns not to add blows to a guilty person, how much more does this apply to an innocent person. Even to raise one’s hand against another, even if one doesn’t actually hit him or her, is called wicked, as Scripture states, “And he said to the wicked one, Why do you hit your neighbor?”7 Rabbenu Perez, in his decree, cites a responsum of Rabbi…
…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…
…t mornings – Cosmic Conversations, the name our Shabbat morning children’s services coordinator, Anne Johnston, has bestowed upon the Torah study group for our 6th to 8th graders. My commitment blossomed from having sat in on two wonderful study sessions for this age group led by Rob Forbes during the High Holidays last fall. In one of our Cosmic Conversations, we read Parashat Teruma about the design of the Mishkan, or Tabernacle, the dwelling pl…
