- 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
…ouse hasn’t been sold yet, I’ll still be around for at least a few more weeks. There’s an old song, “How can I miss you if you won’t go away?” I hope you’ll forgive me for hanging around after the official farewell. I want to talk about three things that relate to each other: first, 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 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…
…en. Social action and tiqun olam have been given new energy this year, thanks to Jennifer Botwick, and projects are in the works that will enable us fulfill the mitzva of giving to the broader community. Our Habitat for Humanity project will break ground in Newhallville in a couple of weeks. Talk to Darryl about signing up. All kinds of great ideas are waiting to be tried, including quite a few in the BEKI 2000 report that have not yet been done….
…h: Passover, where we eat unleavened bread for seven days; the Feast of Weeks, or Shavuot, seven weeks later, the season of the giving of the Torah; and Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles which ends with Simhat Torah, when the yearly reading of the Torah is completed and begun again. Parallels for us? I’d like to comment briefly on Shavuot and why we chose this day to come before you. Whereas on Passover there is a prescription with regards to how m…
…them, the Ishtar gate, was magnificently decorated with blue enameled bricks into which were set red and white depictions of bulls and dragons. It opened on to an extraordinarily lovely avenue sixty three feet wide and paved with red and white stones was bordered by sixty large ceramic lions. Near Nebachadnezzur’s palace was an enormous ziggurat, a temple tower dedicated to the god Marduk. In the midst of this overwhelming display of architectura…
…ort hundreds of ethnic Palestinians, particularly Gazans, in the coming weeks. In contrast, Israel has not forcibly expelled Arabs since Rabin dumped (“deported”) 415 HAMAS terrorists into Lebanon in 1992, but subsequently took them back under Israeli court order. (This does not count the expulsion of tourists with expired visas and assorted individual political cases.) The scale of that Arab expulsion of Palestinian Arabs from Kuwait is more than…
…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…
