- 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
…11 Mar Abraham’s Tent March 11, 2015 5:30 pm – 11:30 pm BEKI Abraham’s Tent is a community-based program with Columbus House which, through the generosity of local religious congregations and organizations, provides shelter and case management for […] More Info…
…hopes BEKI congregants will volunteer and teach Kulanu students Hebrew one-on-one. Johnston will also ask BEKI members to provide home hospitality–inviting participants over for Shabbat lunch or for the High Holiday meals. (BEKI provides clients with free tickets for High Holiday services.) In the summertime, Kulanu participants may have a joint program with one of BEKI’s social action committees—they will clean up Beaver Pond Park in southern Co…
…look through the make-up and clothes and dye and see a naked, shivering run-of-the-mill girl who’s trapped in her mind, trying to get out of a contradiction in itself. Beverly Sills, an opera singer, once said, “A happy woman is one who has no cares at all; a cheerful woman is one who has cares but doesn’t let them get her down.” I guess that’s why some people identify me as a pessimist and others consider me odd. I can swear and curse and disresp…
…he functions of the priests; that is to say, it deals with the tangible day-to-day reality of the Jewish religion while the Temple stood. The rest of the Torah has historical, philosophical, and legal interest to Jews of the Temple period, but VaYiqra, as a guidebook to sacrifice and the atonement of sin, contained an immediate, practical, concrete blueprint for how to get right with God. This was the owner’s manual of the Jewish way of being in t…
…hat portion, in Genesis 12:1, God tells Abraham, “lekh lekha me-artsekha, u-mi-moladetekha, u-me-bet avikha, go forth from your land, your birthplace, and your father’s house.” As I found out from a sermon given by Rabbi Michael Whitman, these are the only two times that the phrase “lekh lekha” is used in the entire Torah. I saw a connection between the two instances of lekh lekha: in both, there are lists of what exactly Abraham has to leave and…
…ah with this language: “Ya`amod Ploni ben Ploni `im ishto – Come up, Mr. So-and- so with his wife.” The woman was called not as an equal but as an appendage. Joint aliya played a legitimate role in the progress toward equality for women. It got women up on the bima for the first time, overcoming what for some was a major psychological barrier to women’s participation in synagogue ritual. Now that era has passed. Now women count. A woman does not n…
…biting the creating of art by Jews is their historical exclusion by the non-Jewish rulers from the world of Western art until this century. A fourth factor is the fear that by creating art, especially art that beautifies the sanctuary, we will be imitating Christian churches and thereby losing our uniqueness. This argument has also been used to restrict the harmonies of songs that are sung or the use of choral music during services. Because our ti…
…ene. Each member of the household has their own Hanukia, and each lights a number of lights corresponding to the number of the day of the holiday. We are fortunate that we are able to do this mitzva in such a complete and beautiful way. But what of the poor person who can not afford all of this “hidur mitzva” but must struggle to light even one lamp? The Mishna Berura, written at the beginning of the twentieth century by the Hafetz Hayim, comments…
…to carry the effort to the finish. I also think we need to realize that day-to-day decisions we make, attitudes that we express, actions we take play a role in this effort. What decision do we make if we are asked to help make a men’s only Minyan in a shul with a mechizah separating the genders? That is a tough call when someone needs that Minyan to say kaddish, or that shul is where your cousin’s son’s bar-mitzvah celebration is occurring, becaus…
…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…
