- 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
…y of Shabbat and weekday programs for children and youth expanded, and the number of minors grew from under 70 in 1994 to over 225 a decade later. A typical Shabbat morning includes simultaneous programs or services for children and youth, as well as youth participating in the main service and Shabbat Shalom Torah Study. In 2003, the congregation began a process of building renovations, aimed at improving accessibility, enhancing energy efficiency…
…a Devar Torah on “Toyrah Story”, wherein I offered – no sense in beating around the bush – definitive proof that the plot for the 1995 movie, Toy Story, is the Joseph story spliced together with the Exodus story! Other movies covered in the course were Prince of Egypt, in which the brilliant Moses dream sequence illustrates the concept of “hierophany” – revelation of the sacred; Groundhog Day, in which weatherman Phil Connor’s struggle for releas…
…pouring of expressions and acts of lovingkindness. My family and I felt surrounded with love and support. Thank you 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 Sh…
…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…
…an 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 position held by the Conservative movement that — to my mind — also makes no sense and ought to be alt…
…, 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…
…Isaiah are contained in the first 39 chapters. Most of the rest, written around 550 BCE, were poems designed to rebuild the faith of the exiles in Babylonia. Today’s haftorah is chapter 60, one of the final three chapters. It was written towards the end of the century and foretells the return of the Jewish people to their homes in Palestine. To understand Isaiah better, imagine for a moment what it must have been like to have been forcibly taken…
…borates on these cases, but wife-beating is not specifically mentioned as grounds for forcing divorce. Forcing divorce is viewed as an extreme judicial measure, and is in fact later endorsed for this type of case. According to the responsum of Yosef ibn Evyatur, the court may compel divorce: Even though it has been found to be true that he hit her repeatedly as you described, we don’t force the husband to give her a bill of divorce and to pay her…
…tted by Jews. With all the talk of “ethnic cleansing,” the reality on the ground is quite the opposite of the accusation. It is true, of course, that Arab and Bedouin Palestinians have experienced expulsions and “ethnic cleansing” throughout history – often at the hands of fellow Arabs or Muslims, as well as by Europeans. Many Arab villages in Northern Israel were wiped out by Bedouin raiders or Druze forces in the 19th century, including most of…
…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…
