- 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
…familiar symbolic images embedded as decorative elements. “All That Remains” will next be presented at the Virginia Holocaust Museum, Richmond, VA, in October 2020. The works in this show include images from each of these series. In this retrospective of her work, a number of works in private collections are represented by photographic reproductions, thus providing context for the entirety of exhibition. for more information and for purchasing wor…
…of spiritual leader, as the congregation began its second century. As it happened, that year Louis Friedman ז״ל retired after over 40 years as shamash; his retirement necessitated the mobilization of volunteers to read Torah, lead daily and Shabbat services, and teach benei mitzva students. Mr. Friedman had raised generations of New Haven youth with a love of Torah—and his commitment to both tradition and the advancement of women eased the congre…
…, 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…
…however, surprised some experts. One prominent oceanographer said that it appeared …roughly equal to the amount of heat stored by the oceans as a result of seasonal heating in a typical year. That makes it a big number. In other words, as a byproduct of human exploitation of the land and other natural resources, we have crammed 51 years of solar heat into 50 years of solar time. I cannot help but feel that the earth will make up for this in due c…
…ah reading for Shavuot Second Day in Diaspora: Deuteronomy 14:22 – 16:17 & Numbers 28:26-31]. It begins with the commandment to tithe on a yearly basis, so as to provide for the needy among us, to take care of the Levites, to understand that our year’s bounty is not just a result of our great skill but also of God’s goodness, and to realize that our possessions are merely possessions- whose enjoyment comes from sharing them with others. The text g…
…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…
…century, Austria) in his Hagahot Asheri.16 Court Intervention The court’s approach to wife-beating appears to have several aims. One is to effect reconciliation; another is to stop the beating in any case. Should that fail, the court wants to be in a position of knowing who is at fault so that it can assign damages, levy fines, collect alimony, or take other appropriate action. One of the earliest sources on the court’s response to a claim of wif…
…fered the tremendous trauma of dislocation, regardless of how the blame is apportioned. After Yasir Arafat and his associated organizations came out publicly in favor of Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait (1990), some 400,000 ethnic Palestinian Arabs were expelled (i.e., “ethnically cleansed”) from Kuwait (1991). At least 20,000 ethnic Palestinians left or were chased from Iraq during the current war. In August 2009, the press reported that the U…
…hat one is not doing so. One must face facts, despite fear and communal disapproval. Maybe you’ve seen the t-shirt that reads: I’m not gay but my boyfriend is. I’m not a lesbian but my girlfriend is. They’re meant tongue in cheek, but have a grain of truth. There are many, many people who, for fear of repercussion, from internalizing what we hear on the news every day (this week’s attempt to create a Federal Marriage Amendment being a prime exampl…
…my mother’s approach to teaching Jewish values; second, a commandment that appears at the beginning of this week’s Torah portion that makes no sense today; and finally, a position held by the Conservative movement that — to my mind — also makes no sense and ought to be altered, in light of the values that my mother taught. First things first. As many of you know, my mother Shulamit Lubarr passed away last year. She was a gifted Hebrew teacher. She…
