- 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
…in me an unusual calm and lucidity. These helped me to reach out to those close to me in special ways both before and after going in for the surgery. One of those close to me in this drama was God. For the first time, really, a fixed flaw in my relation with God was exposed and pried loose. For so long, without realizing it, my belief in Him and my thanks to Him had been responses to my successes at this, my successes at that. Good health, wonderf…
…d activities that have been flourishing for years. And we’ve initiated any number of new programs that you have suggested. There is energy in the air that encourages people to think, “We can do it.” Our attitude is, “Just say yes.” Last June we had a tribute dinner, honoring the rabbi and Miriam and raising a lot of money for the shul. A zillion people worked to make that happen. Prior to that, the last tribute dinner anyone could recall took plac…
…, 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…
…speaks for itself. You’ll note also that today’s parasha resounds with the number seven – the seventh year is the sabbatical year- the seven days of Passover, the seven weeks until the Feast of weeks, etc. At some point during this last year I looked around the table 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 res…
…chnical 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, Isaiah’s poems are full of hope. They poured forth the blessing and the promises that would attend the return of the people to the promised land. Literally read, the chapter from Isaiah contains a description of how outstandin…
…o injures one’s neighbor, viz. bodily injury, suffering, medical expenses, lost income and disgrace. Remarkably, it specifies that these apply to all sorts of persons, such as mother, friend, gentile male slave, blind person, child, poor person, and even distinguishes between one’s own slaves and those of others, but for whatever reason, ‘one’s own wife’ is absent from the list. The Tosefta, however, does specifically mention a wife: One who injur…
…that Arab expulsion of Palestinian Arabs from Kuwait is more than half the number of Palestinian Arabs who fled or were expelled from Israel in 1947-49. The “Jenin Massacre” (2002) turned out to be a hoax; while it was reported that hundreds or thousands had been massacred, the reality was that about 55 Arabs (including 5 or 10 civilians) died, along with 22 Israeli soldiers. The headline story in mid-August (2009) of the Swedish daily Aftonbladen…
…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…
…cities of Greece, and even twentieth century America? Surveying the large number of works in the BEKI collection entitled “Rabbi_,” the BEKI Art Committee began discussing how best to present this work in an exhibition. Among ourselves, we called this the “Rabbi Show,” although there is nothing in the artworks themselves to signify that these are rabbis, rather than ordinary men who have been given the honor of holding the Torah. As Jewish artist…
