- 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
…ou all. Please help us again, this time by passing along our thanks to the number of congregants who are away this weekend of Thanksgiving, giving thanks of their own elsewhere. The morning of the surgery I prayed and learned another prayerbook lesson, this time explicit. At my request, Marsha had brought me a copy of our Siddur, Sim Shalom. Uncharacteristically, I admit, I started from the beginning of the Shaharit, or morning, service. There I d…
…en were embracing and handing a child to each other. While we did this, we sang a verse from the siddur: “ve-kulam miqablim aleihem `ol malkhut shamayim, ze me ze: they all took upon themselves the yoke of the heavenly kingdom, accepting it from one another.” The words and the actions dramatized vividly that we were not only choosing to take on our traditions, but also enabling one another to do so. When I moved to Connecticut and went shul shoppi…
…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’…
…ll of Israel and put them as chieftains over the people: officials for thousands, officials for hundreds, officials for fifties, and officials for tens.” A few verses back, Yitro, Moshe’s father-in-law, had suggested this judicial plan as a solution to Moshe’s volume problem. Moshe was supposed to judge every case among the Israelites, civil or criminal, by himself, from dawn to dusk. Yitro knew that Moshe wouldn’t last for long that way, and came…
…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…
…ion of a new category of separation without divorce, forced divorce, court-sanctioned torture, use of non-Jews as agents of the court, and women owning real estate completely independent of their husbands’ control, among other phenomena. All of the major codes of halakha deal with legal principles that jurists apply to this specific type of crime. Among the major sources on this issue are a series of responsa by Rabbi Shlomo ben Avraham Adret (Ras…
…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…
…o. Because look at how they interpret this text. This is from the Mishna, (Sanhedrin 8:1-4), written down about 1800 years ago. They begin by asking a question: A rebellious and disobedient son – when does he become a rebellious and disobedient son? From the age when he can produce two hairs but before he grows a beard…. And then they quote: When a man has a son – this means a son and not a daughter, a son and not a man, and a minor is exempt sinc…
…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…
