- 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
…n to global warming. The cooling system is also way beyond its life expectancy. Maintenance and repair costs are huge. So is the risk of a leak of large quantities of chloroflourocarbons, also known as CFCs, which attack the atmospheric ozone layer and thus expose life on earth to increased levels of harmful ultraviolet radiation. Waiting for this system to break down and to patch it again and again is not environmentally responsible. As a congreg…
…g, may we make of this parallel? Nothing, perhaps – unconnected, just a coincidence; but what if all three patriarchs and all three Divine attributes were somehow to correspond? Would that not strengthen the hint we have of connection? In search of correspondence, I looked around a bit and found an illustration in my edition of the medieval mystical text of the Zohar. The illustration is of the Ten Sefirot – mystical attributes of the one God. The…
…can sing, they want you. Despite the fact that the Men’s Club no longer functions, we’ve managed to have quite a few interesting brunches mdash; because people stepped forward to organize the food, the program, the publicity. The teenagers asked for their own minyan and now they have one. Lana Gad wanted a Jewish Montessori School at BEKI, and she made it happen. Darryl and others thought we should have a Shabbaton: this coming September, we are…
…t what’s in it. But of course, we do look at externals, and that can influence how we treat people. Which brings me to the parasha. Mattot opens by talking about promises and vows, and the importance of carrying out what you swear to do. That is, unless you belong to the female persuasion. Look at Chapter 42, verses 11-14. If you’re a grown woman, your husband could nullify any vow you made, so long as he spoke up when he heard about it. This posi…
…twork, like the monkeys, had the possibility to communicate over long distances. The advantage of the network was that of insurance. If, for example, I were a Jew in Baghdad and I had a contract with a Jew in, say, Madrid, this network would help enforce the contract, to the end that Jewish traders in those times could operate with greater security. So here’s my overall point. Today, the power grid in America is, shall we say, a very complex distr…
…able and realized- “We are seven women — one teacher and six students.” Coincidence? Book of Ruth Let me move on to The Book of Ruth. I’d like to make some remarks about the story that resonate with us, and also consider why this is read on Shavuot. Here is a story of friendship and loyalty between women on one level, but also about the taking on of Judaism on another. When Naomi decides to return to Bethlehem, having learned that the famine was o…
…ritual and actual return to Jerusalem. He and others focused on the importance of the cult, upon rituals, and abstention as the way to redemption. Isaiah, on the other hand, believed that Judaism was focussing too much on technical questions of ritual purity, punishment, and details of the law and losing sight of the basic injunctions to love your neighbor as yourself, to pursue justice, and to love the stranger. In the face of great suffering, Is…
…day, so too writers of Jewish history have sought to minimize or deny the incidence of wife-beating in the past.2 Whether or not the incidence of wife-beating among Jews has compared “favorably” with that among other groups, it has been sufficient to generate a significant body of halakhic (Jewish legal) literature over the centuries. Due to the unusual nature of the crime, legal principles and devices are pushed to their limits, with some remarka…
…cond Iraq wars is orders of magnitude greater by any measure than the violence experienced by Arabs in the West Bank. Lebanese, Gazans and Iraqis suffer far more death, violence and suppression at the hands of their own rulers or warring factions than do Arabs in the West Bank. It is inaccurate to view the problem in the West Bank as somehow beyond the norm of what goes on in much of the world. Unfortunately, the Israeli Army may be no better, or…
…st have had a fruitful struggle with this teaching. 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 abou…
