- 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…
…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…
…ah reading for Shavuot Second Day in Diaspora: Deuteronomy 14:22 – 16:17 & Numbers 28:26-31]. It begins with the commandment to tithe on a yearly basis, so as to provide for the needy among us, to take care of the Levites, to understand that our year’s bounty is not just a result of our great skill but also of God’s goodness, and to realize that our possessions are merely possessions- whose enjoyment comes from sharing them with others. The text g…
…r ten minutes, he would probably decide that he’d prefer to memorize every city the Ringling Bros. Circus visits on its cross-country tour. During the past few months, as we were helping Shai prepare for reaching the age of mitzvot, he has encountered many opportunities in which to learn how to take on greater levels of responsibility. A few months ago, Shai expressed interest in coming to shul for Shabbat morning services. After going to shul on…
…h exhibitions and film festivals, including Creative Tech Week in New York City, the Jerusalem Biennial, the Siberia State Art Museum, the Kyrgyzstan State Museum, and in cities such as Paris, New York, Toronto, Montréal and elsewhere around the world. Rubin’s videos, and interactive works have been shown on the ICC tower facade in Hong Kong, the Jewish Museum in Prague, the Cotton Club screen in Harlem, the ICA in London, and numerous internation…
…eds will have eternal effect. The Almighty will reward them abundantly as if they had done it all themselves. Susie, Ina, Carl: Thank you for giving us hope in government, for giving us a model to point to for our children, for tr ying to build a city and society that strives toward basic decency and maybe even our highest ideals. ¹To list them, using their first initials: CIS, CSI, SIC, SCI, ICS, ISC. ²The Sanhedrin Study Group meets Thursday’s…
…wls? Simple! I just read the same words that were read by Jews in the holy city of Jerusalem in ancient times and I’m wearing a tallit with blue-dyed threads just like my ancestors wore. Even more amazing is the fact that the method for making the blue dye was lost for thousands of years and my dentist on Emek Refaim Street in Jerusalem is one of the people doing research and leading the resurgence of the mitzva of petil tekhelet! In many schools,…
…had ten children, each of whom has married and had more children. Does the city really think that all of us can live in 602 square feet?” (Jerusalem Report, 30 March 2009, p. 13). (For reference, BEKI’s George G. Posener Daily Chapel is about 1,000 square feet.) Farmer Ahmed might also find that another Israeli Arab family is already working “his” land, or that his former farmland is now a fish pond, highway interchange or shopping mall. In the pa…
…We spent a good deal of time at Qibbutz Yizra’el and in New Haven’s sister-city Afula. We went from one end of the country to the other, from Majdal Shams in the far north, to Acco in the west (not really far), to Eilat in the south. Israel is small enough that we were able to drive from one end of the country to the other on a single tank of gas. (Small country, small car, big gas tank.) Both my dad and Tsvi especially enjoyed the tank museum (ba…
