- 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
…remains wet between uses, it could be in persistent contact with meat or dairy in a moist environment and thereby take on the property of “meat” or “dairy.” Even if the brush is not in contact with actual food, you might equate a toothbrush with an eating utensil or think of the particles on your teeth as being “like” food. So for “esthetic” reasons one might want to add the stringency of keeping separate toothbrushes. (Don’t even ask about a sep…
…ans as a result of seasonal heating in a typical year. That makes it a big number. In other words, as a byproduct of human exploitation of the land and other natural resources, we have crammed 51 years of solar heat into 50 years of solar time. I cannot help but feel that the earth will make up for this in due course, that the land will have its rest. The environmental responsibilities of each of us and of our congregation need to be understood in…
…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…
…ity biologist Robert M. Sapolsky (“A Natural History of Peace,” Foreign Affairs, January/February 2006 p. 104), they live as a collection of small groups, each one an individual node. In this networked society, most of the interactions between individual nodes are local ones. The further away any two given groups are. the less frequently they interact, but they do retain the ability to communicate. This network, when properly balanced, produces hi…
…he message. 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 she…
…d 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. You’ll notice that I’m the one that gets to speak the most English today! In other words, a free will offering. The spirit of Shavuot is also one of renewal of commitment…
…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…
…ee (gezera) by Rabbenu Perez ben ‘Eliyahu (13th century, Corbeil),4 and a pair of responsa by Rabbenu Binyamin ben Matityahu Zev (born c. 1510, Turkey).5 This article discusses several aspects of the Rabbis’ response to wife-beating, including general moral judgments, claims of damages, purpose and mode of court intervention, presumption of guilt, forcing divorce, and conduct toward a “wicked wife.” This article can be a window into past legal dev…
…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…
…me 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 since he has not as yet entered into the general scope of the commandments. And another: When is the rebellious and disobedient son liable? When he eats a tartemar of flesh and drinks a half a log of Italian wine. Rab…
