- 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
…to be Jewish – and all this is true of my granddaughters – should we tell this child “No, not good enough! You aren’t really Jewish!”? With all the people born to Jewish mothers who reject or neglect Jewish study and practice, can we afford to reject children like Ariel and Zohar? And even if we can survive without accepting patrilineal descent – do we want to tell these children that two of the three major Jewish movements reject them? Al tifrosh…
…s, 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 power over extremely long distances if need be. However, as it is right now, the grid is made up of fewer but larger power plants, creating a more…
…ho’d like to organize a film series? How about a book fair? A juried art exhibit. A children’s choir. A gardening club to landscape the new entrance. A scavenger hunt for adults. A congregational trip to Israel. There’s really no end to what we can do. I know that in the months and years ahead, under the leadership of our next president Donna Levine and those who follow her, BEKI will thrive and grow, because we will continue to take upon ourselve…
…ments, especially at the beginning, when a few of us wanted to turn back, thinking that this was going to be too hard. You’ll recall that Naomi told Ruth to turn back and not take on Judaism, that it would be too hard. However, we established fairly early on that each of us was to take on as much or as little as we were comfortable with. The expectation was for each of us to only take on what we could, which meant more for some, less for others. Y…
…a truly spiritual, transcendental state of mind even when faced with hardship. With this in mind, I would like to read a portion of Isaiah to you and ask you, if you would like, to close your eyes as I read. Do not imagine I am reading about the state of the Jewish people three thousand years ago, but imagine rather that this portion of Isaiah is a personal promise that will come true for you, your family, and your people if you will be grateful…
…fact that a major highway (No. 90) through the Jordan Valley is named “Gandhi’s Road” in his honor is taken as menacing by Palestinian and Bedouin residents of the region. More recently, Henry Kissinger (among others) has suggested gerrymandering the borders of Israel to exclude some Arab population centers. However, these are still considered “fringe” voices in Israel and are not the platform or policy of the government or major parties. In contr…
…ve successfully integrated, or at least 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…
…afael Avraham Shalem, and many ethnically ambiguous works, but in general this is an exhibition with many exclusions. Additionally, only three works in the exhibition were created by women artists, including Belle Greenberg and Deborah Joy, who were BEKI members when they donated their own work, leaving the lovely small painting “Rabbi” by Judith Aamidor as the only woman created artwork that was purchased by a donor. We chose to honor the many mi…
