- 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
…children, in Woodbridge and also Portland, ME. We were in East Northport, Long Island where we lived for 40 years as active members of the Commack Jewish Center, which later merged with Dix Hills Jewish Center. Coleman works full time as an IT professional, and Tema owned a specialty food store in the Five Towns area of Long Island for forty years. She works remotely part time now as a financial professional for a small company, and has already j…
…o families during the shiva mourning period. Meals for Newborns BEKI has a long tradition of providing meals to families who have welcomed a child. Volunteers use a website called Lotsa Helping Hands. Just log in and choose your password. When the calendar is set up for meals, you’ll receive an email with a link. Jewish Community Alliance for Refugee Resettlement The Jewish Community Alliance for Refugee Resettlement (JCARR) is a partnership of BE…
…e spouse, children and grandchildren of a Jew, including their spouses, as long as they are not a member of another faith community. What kept these two definitions of Jewishness (by faith and fate) from flying apart was a Zionist Chief Rabbinate that made conversion easy. Today , unfortunately, the office and its rabbinic courts have fallen into the hands of the ultra-Orthodox, who ruthlessly conspire to do everything in their power to obstruct p…
…his problem by guaranteeing that the property’s value would not go down as long as they did not sell their houses. This was a step forward in civil rights in an era when such a thing was unthinkable, and it ended up being successful; not a single person sold their house, and the property’s value actually went up. This was the first private integrated housing project in the U.S. Another example from my family is the work of my grandmother, Evelyn B…
…re six possibilities.¹ It turns out that the question of order was debated long ago by our sages. Carl will recognize this text from our Thursday Talmud study group.² According to the Mishna (Sanhedrin 7:1), the second-century law compendium created by Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi based on the mishna of Rabbi Meir, student of Rabbi Aqiba: There are four means of execution imposed by the Supreme Court:Stoning, burning, the sword, and strangulation. Rabbi Sh…
…although Moshe was eager to continue doing what he had done so well for so long, the time was coming for Joshua to take charge. Moses wasn’t the right man to lead the people into battle. A new era was about to begin. New leadership was taking over, with new objectives and a new style-but the same core values and the same shared history. I’m not saying that I’m Joshua to Stephen Pincus’s Moses, but there is a modest parallel. What happens in the go…
…er night and then blame all the people of the town. By talking with him so long and by treating him well he had erased the plot from the priest’s mind.5 Another tale, which does not seem to place the initial blame on the gentiles, makes a similar point in a somewhat more abstract fashion: Once the Besht prayed before the ark. In the middle of the prayer he stopped and went to the street before the synagogue where he saw a gentile selling wood. He…
…in Moshe Ma`oz, ed., Studies on Palestine During the Ottoman Period, (Jerusalem: Magnes Press) 1975, p. 365. Also cf. John Ruedy, “Dynamics of Land Alienation,” in Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, ed., The Transformation of Palestine, (Evanston: Northwestern University Press) 1971, p. 124. 30 Granott, 1952, pp. 54-77, esp. p. 77. 31 William R. Polk, David H. Stamler, and Edmund Asfour, Backdrop to Tragedy: The Struggle for Palestine, (Boston: Beacon Press) 19…
…on, and hoped the hype would be forgotten within a week of opening day. As long as it did not inspire pogroms in the streets of New Haven or the wilds of Woodbridge, my plan was to ignore the movie. I will admit, though, that the idea of watching a movie in Aramaic appeals to me. Since Aramaic is the language of the Talmud, parts of the Hebrew Bible, and passages of the siddur, it is very much a “Jewish” language. As a cognate language to Hebrew,…
…al night with me. Before moving to New Haven, I lived in Port Jefferson on Long Island, and was involved in a women’s tefila group at my synagogue. At that time, the Rabbi allowed only men to read Torah or lead services. After some difficult negotiations, we got his permission for interested women to gather once a month in a classroom, to tallit. Wrapping myself in a tallis for the very first time was a strange and very moving experience. I felt t…
