Welcome to Congregation B'nai Israel!
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Congregation B’nai Israel (CBI) is a vibrant Jewish community that includes a conservative synagogue, a restorative communal farm and garden, Gan Keshet preschool, Alma religious school, and havurah (social micro-communities). Our innovative programming and opportunities for social justice have drawn a widely diverse community. We are proud of our long-standing, dedicated, and intergenerational members who are committed to ever evolving and being among some of the most forefront voices of modern American Jewry through an embrace of culture, art, engagement, compassion, and education.
Our visionary rabbinic, professional, and lay leaders are committed to exploration, moral integrity, and spiritual vibrancy with a special awareness for natural cycles, nuanced and compassionate thinking, and our relationship with planet and community.
Please use the calendar below to explore some of our upcoming events and offerings. First time visiting? Learn more about our religious services here.
This Month At CBI
Testimony by Rabbi Ariella Rosen of Congregation B’nai Israel for the Massachusetts Special Commission on Combatting Antisemitism
" This duality is so important for navigating being a Jew in our time: don't be naive, don’t be brutal. The threat to Jewish safety is real, and exists across the political spectrum, showing up in many different ways, including sometimes under the guise of “helping the Jew.” But in our response to fear of threat, or deep pain at experienced harm, let us not allow the tactics that have been used against us to be used in our name against others.
Sending ICE to detain Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder involved in the pro-Palestinian student protests of the past year, deepens my alarm. No matter his politics, even if we strongly oppose his politics, the violation of his rights should scare us all. Moreover, I find it horrific that the very tactics that Jews have faced with our long history of forced migration are being used against others in our name.
Relying on the goal of Jewish safety as an excuse to further a political objective becomes a vehicle for division, distrust, and resentment, shutting down the real and critical work of discerning the difference between legitimate protest and true harm. Once again, the claim that such actions are for the sake of Jewish safety can very easily lead to the opposite.
We face here in Massachusetts, the nation’s capital of higher education learning, the same threats before us. I urge the commission to defend free speech, including freedom to protest peacefully that makes academia possible and vibrant. These freedoms are vital for Jewish safety in our country.
As a rabbi, my primary tool for effecting change is learning, education, conversation, all of which further open doors to greater understanding. This is how stable, lasting change can happen.
We need to educate about how antisemitism has historically shown up throughout the generations, and how antisemitism has been used to divide us from our neighbors and natural allies.
We need to have conversations about the ways in which antisemitism is both unique from and linked with other forms of discrimination and hate. "
Read the complete letter here.
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Congregation B’nai Israel recognizes and honors the original inhabitants who first settled in the valley of the Kwinitekw River. CBI acknowledges that we are on Nonotuck land. We also acknowledge our neighboring Indigenous nations: the Nipmuc and the Wampanoag to the East, the Mohegan and Pequot to the South, the Mohican to the West, and the Sokoi Abenaki to the North.