BEKI Kids

Matok @ BEKI News

Matok is young children’s programming at BEKI. Matok means “sweet” in Hebrew, and we hope that our programming brings sweetness to your world!

In This Edition

• Saturday Morning: Shabbat Children’s Services

• Sunday, 9:30–11:30: Shalom Baby at a BEKI Member’s House–Email for More Details

• Amer and Fatima’s Daughter Lana Available to Babysit

• Fun with the Parsha: Pinchas

* Saturday Morning: Shabbat Children’s Services

Shabbat Children’s Services will meet in their regular rooms:

Children’s Havura (Birth-Preschool) meets inside in the preschool classroom.

K-2 Kehila (Kindergarten-2nd Grade) meets in Classroom 6.

Junior Congregation (3rd-6th Grade) meets in the library.

* Sunday, 9:30–11:30: Shalom Baby at a BEKI Member’s House–Email for More Details

Instead of meeting at the JCC this summer, this fun, supportive baby group is “on the go” to different hosts, in homes, parks, and throughout the Jewish community.

This Sunday, 9:30–11:30 AM, a BEKI member is hosting in their backyard! Contact Kayla Bisbee at kbisbee@jewishnewhaven.org for location.

Find your new forever friends in a comfortable environment with music, coffee, conversation – and babies. Recommended for parents from pregnancy to two years old.

This group is free to attend and brought to you by Shalom Baby, an initiative of the Jewish Federation of Greater New Haven’s Women’s Philanthropy—designed to welcome Jewish babies and their families to the Jewish community in the Greater New Haven area. Please do not attend if you are unwell or have been exposed to sickness to keep our smallest members safe and healthy.

* Amer and Fatima’s Daughter Lana Available to Babysit This Summer

Lana Hassoon, the daughter of BEKI maintenance staff Amer and Fatima, is available for babysitting this summer. Lana is a 17 year old student at Common Ground High School. She has experience babysitting children 18 months and older. You can contact her at 203-508-4602.

* Fun with the Parsha: Pinchas

This week’s parsha, Pinchas, includes a tale people often call “The Story of Zelophehad’s Daughters.” A lot of times in Torah stories we don’t know the names of girls and women. We call them “X’s daughter” or “Y’s wife,” if that’s the only information we have about them. But in this case, we know the names of all five women in the story! They are:

• Machla

• Noa

• Chogla

• Milca

• Tirza

So this is “The Story of Machla, Noa, Chogla, Milca, and Tirza.”

These five sisters had a father, Zelophehad, who died. They did not have any brothers. In our parsha, Moses and the other Israelites are making plans to enter the land of Israel. They are counting every family, and making sure that each will have their own land to live on. If a father has died, they plan to give the father’s land to his sons.

Machla, Noa, Chogla, Milca, and Tirza want to live on the land meant for their father. They ask Moses, why should only boys get land? Why not girls, too? So, they ask God for a second opinion.

God gives a very clear answer: girls deserve to inherit land, too. Machla, Noa, Chogla, Milca, and Tirza should get their own land to live on. God says, “The request of Zelophehad’s daughters is just: you should give them a holding [of land] to inherit among their father’s relatives; transfer their father’s share to them.” (Numbers 27:7)

God makes this a mitzvah for everyone going forward. So, because these five women were brave enough to ask, many other women get to own land in the future!

We should all be like Machla, Noa, Chogla, Milca, and Tirza–when a situation is not fair, we should ask for what we need. These five women spoke up, and what they got was not only land for themselves, but fairer rules for everybody from then on.

Annie Norman-Schiff