- 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
…d by the Good Book: “While the flesh was still between their teeth,” etc. (Numbers 11:33). Partly for that reason we are enjoined to wait a period of time after eating meat before eating dairy. But after some time, the “food” in your mouth (and stuck on or between your teeth) ceases to be “food.” Who would eat it? If your toothbrush is used at that point, it is not really in contact with “meat” or “dairy” and thus, strictly speaking, you would not…
…The other days of Creation are denoted, as you would expect, using ordinal numbers – second, third, and the like; but not the first day, Yom Ehad – Day One. Rashi teaches that “Day One” is to be understood as the Day of the One, the Day of God, and that God created everything in all its potential on that Day. From that day on, it follows that, as my daughter Sarah has recently begun quoting Martin Buber in the tag line to her email messages — To p…
…d activities that have been flourishing for years. And we’ve initiated any number of new programs that you have suggested. There is energy in the air that encourages people to think, “We can do it.” Our attitude is, “Just say yes.” Last June we had a tribute dinner, honoring the rabbi and Miriam and raising a lot of money for the shul. A zillion people worked to make that happen. Prior to that, the last tribute dinner anyone could recall took plac…
…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’…
…g distances. The advantage of the network was that of insurance. If, for example, I were a Jew in Baghdad and I had a contract with a Jew in, say, Madrid, this network would help enforce the contract, to the end that Jewish traders in those times could operate with greater security. So here’s my overall point. Today, the power grid in America is, shall we say, a very complex distribution network. The way it operates is by a certain number of power…
…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…
…d miss nothing’ [or, ‘and not sin’] (Job 5:24)” (Yevamot 62b). This last example becomes, in Maimonides’ Mishne Torah (written 1177-1182), “Thus commanded the Sages: A man should honor his wife more than his own body and love her like his own body.”6 Similarly, the Rabbis have much to say about relations between one person and another in general, beyond emphasizing the Biblical dictum “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Hitting another per…
…this week’s attempt to create a Federal Marriage Amendment being a prime example), are unable to be honest with themselves or others about the truth of their lives and loves. This is a text about honesty. Remember, at one time, the language of “coming out of the closet” referred to something that gay people did. Now it’s a generic term for being open about something that might be hard depending on context – a Google search turned up coming out as…
…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…
