Berkjv sept15 web by Jewish Federation of the Berkshires

Jewish V ice Berkshire

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Pittsfield, MA Permit No. 19

A publication of the Jewish Federation of the Berkshires, serving the Berkshires and surrounding NY, CT and VT

Vol. 23, No. 7

Elul 5775-Tishri 5776

September 4 to October 13, 2015

jewishberkshires.org

Art Inspired by Judaism, Nature, and Sacred Responses of the Spirit

The Yiddish Book Center’s Next Great Adventure Founder Aaron Lansky to Discuss Plans to Deepen, Re-Energize, and Re-Imagine Contemporary Jewish Culture at Knosh & Knowledge, Sept. 25

Aaron Lansky GREAT BARRINGTON – On Friday, September 25, Knosh & Knowledge will host Aaron Lansky, founder and president of the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, who will deliver a talk titled “What To Do With What We’ve Found: A Blueprint for the Yiddish Book Center’s Next Great Adventure.” This Jewish Federation of the Berkshires program will take place at Hevreh of Southern Berkshire at 10:45 a.m., and will be followed by lunch. As the Yiddish Book Center turns 35 years old, Lansky will offer an exciting preview of the museum’s latest plans, which include an audacious

strategy to place the greatest Yiddish library ever assembled at the fingertips of every computer, tablet, and smartphone user on the planet. Other initiatives include a plan to train young people to translate the 98 percent of Yiddish books currently inaccessible to English readers, plus educational programs designed to deepen, re-energize, and re-imagine contemporary Jewish culture.

About the Yiddish Book Center After graduating from Hampshire College in 1977 with a BA in modern YIDDISH BOOK CENTER, continued on page 5

Novelist Letty Cottin Pogrebin to Talk About Intermarriage and Preserving Jewish Tradition at the October 9 Knosh & Knowledge

PHOTO: MIKE LOVETT

GREAT BARRINGTON – At the October 9 Knosh & Knowledge, Letty Cottin Pogrebin will give a talk titled “What Do We Mean By Jewish Continuity? And Must Intermarriage Necessarily Be a Threat to Jewish Survival?”, in which she will consider the impact of intermarriage on the survival of the Jewish people and Jewish heritage. She’ll also be talking about Single Jewish Male Seeking Soul Mate, her new novel about a son of Holocaust survivors looking for

Inside Shabbat for Seniors.................................... 2 Your Federation Presents............ 4-8, 15-18 Jewish Education......................................10 Berkshire Jewish Voices......................19-21 High Holy Days.....................................22-23 People of the Comic Book..................30-31

Letty Cottin Progrebin love and Jewish identity in 1970s and 1980s New York City. Pogrebin, who has a house in the Berkshires, recently spoke to the BJV about the novel and her own Jewish journey. In Single Jewish Male Seeking Soul LETTY COTTIN POGREBIN, continued on page 5

A working artist for five decades, weaver Wendy Rabinowitz says that presently 90 percent of her output incorporates Jewish themes, imagery, and calligraphy. Above, her mixed-media creation “The Burning Bush: Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh.” For more on the Pittsfield artist’s work and creative process, please see page 32.

Body and Soul: Documentary Examines Jewish Ties to the Land of Israel PITTSFIELD – On October 14, the Jewish Federation of the Berkshires, in collaboration with Berkshire Hills Hadassah, will screen the documentary Body and Soul – The State of the Jewish Nation at the Berkshire Museum’s Little Cinema at 7 p.m. A Q&A with the film’s producer and director, Gloria Z. Greenfield, will follow. This film presents a comprehensive examination of the broad and deep connections between the Jewish People and the Land of Israel. World-renowned historians, archaeologists, political scientists, religious leaders, and international law and media experts trace the evolution of the more than 3,000-year-old relationship between the Jewish People and their homeland. “Jewish identity is born in a journey to the Land of Israel,” says Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, formerly the chief rabbi of the United Kingdom,

who appears in the film. The journey moves through Antiquity to the Middle Ages, and then to modernity, where the development of political Zionism catalyzed the blossoming of a new Jewish spirit. That renewal of Jewish spirit resulted in the rebirth of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel, an event that Harvard University Professor Ruth Wisse declares is “a miracle of truly Biblical proportions.” BODY AND SOUL, continued on page 4

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Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

September 4 to October 13, 2015

In My View Bringing the Spirit of Shabbat to Seniors By Margo Golos, Development Officer From my current professional vantage point – I was hired two-and-a-half years ago to work on this Federation’s annual campaign – I tend to see much that happens in our community through a fundraising lens. But as a former geriatric social worker, I also see our community through a social services lens. In recent years, I have enjoyed volunteering with my friend Roz Kolodny to deliver Federation-sponsored Rosh Hashanah and Purim care packages to community members living at Kindred Laurel Lake Assisted Living in Lee. I realized that while these visits and packages are very meaningful for the residents, twice a year just wasn’t enough. So I started visiting some of these folks a little more often, spending time when I was able. During those visits, I caught the attention of the very caring recreation director Laurel Picard, who was interested in having the Federation arrange a Kabbalat Shabbat program for some of the Jewish residents. Together, we conspired to make something special happen. While in the planning process, I realized that by leveraging this Federation’s community resources, we could expand our reach to other senior care facilities. For one, we have the people – our Berkshires Jewish community has a great resource in retired rabbis, cantors, and Jewish educators who reside here either full time or as part-time residents. My thought was that perhaps some of them might be interested in spreading a bit of Shabbat joy by volunteering for this project. The Federation got the word out that we were looking for volunteers, and Rabbi Neal Borovitz and Rabbi Max Roth graciously answered the call.

Devonshire Estates residents celebrating Shabbat with Rabbi Neal Borovitz (first from left) and Rabbi Max Roth (first from right) Recently retired from a long career as rabbi of a Reform congregation in New Jersey, Neal had long enjoyed creating opportunities for his post-b’nai mitzvah students to perform acts of tikkun olam. He often had students join him in visiting the elderly and leading a regular Shabbat program for them. Max, a retired rabbi as well as a cantor, enthusiastically joined the effort to bring the blessing of Shabbat and its joyous melodies to the aging residents. The early results have been inspiring. We recently brought our “Shabbat Road

Show” to both Kindred Laurel Lake and also Devonshire Estates Lenox, arriving laden with candlesticks, challah, and grape juice. Neal and Max’s love for Judaism has been so evident in the way they share stories, familiar melodies, and prayers with the grateful residents at both sites. At Devonshire, the rabbis were joined by Noah Hochfelder, an energetic high school student from Congregation Knesset Israel, who shares their love of Judaism and the power of Shabbat. Before the recitation of the evening Shema, Neal asked Noah, who has attended Camp Seneca Lake for many years, to share his experience of the prayers. Noah recounted that while at camp, he discovered the timeless power of the Shema – first shielding his eyes and entering a contemplative, personal realm, then opening them up to see himself in the midst of his peers, together Noah Hochfelder (right) observes the licht affirming their shared religious benching and communal values. Noah’s heartfelt words set the tone for the warm and inspiring service that followed. For the residents, this Jewish connection evokes warm memories. For instance, as we were wrapping up our Kindred Laurel Lake program, resident Berta Kohl reminded me that we forgot to sing Ein Kelohaynu. She led us through the verses, but then skipped a few. When one of the other participants questioned her about this, she said that this was the practice in her former temple in Buffalo, NY, “when we were running late, the rabbi would make up time by skipping a few verses. I noticed this but no one else did.” Dr. Edith Ginsberg of Devonshire told us: “We’ve been waiting a long time for this, and to see it happening is gratifying. We Jews are such a small minority, and sometimes we get lost. So I am very happy.” The one thing participants at both sites wanted to know was: “When are you coming back?” “Just once a month,” we answered. “Can you come more often?” they responded. We would love to have more people volunteer in this type of outreach, which – I guarantee – will enhance your own experience of Shabbat’s power and beauty. I invite people throughout the community to consider leading a future event. Individuals, families, and youth groups can volunteer to at whatever level they are comfortable with. From reciting the Kiddush prayers to singing songs to leading a short Shabbat service, we all have the ability to bring the light of Shabbat to our Jewish seniors. Ahad Ha’am (Asher Ginsberg, poet and Zionist ideologue: 1856-1927) put it this way: “More than the Jews have kept Shabbat, the Shabbat has kept the Jews.” Shabbat is universal; it binds all Jews together. I am thrilled that our Federation is reaching out to these seniors, making sure they know that we remember them, care about them, and include them in our Berkshire Jewish community. Margo Golos is the development officer of the Jewish Federation of the Berkshires.

Young Judaism Life-Changing Camp Experiences Made Possible by Federation By Shayna Sawyer For the second summer, I was able to attend URJ Kutz Camp (the summer home of the NFTY Leadership Experience) thanks to the generous support of the Jewish Federation of the Berkshires. It was an experience I wouldn’t trade for anything in the world. Kutz means so much to me as a person and as a Jewish teen because everyone there is so passionate about their Judaism. When I’m at home, I go to services with my family, but they are not something I necessarily look forward to. At Kutz, I found myself waiting for our daily tefilah with my friends and enjoying every moment. I never knew what to expect when they told us it was time for tefilah. One morning we had a silent service, where the song leaders quietly played the melodies to the prayers but nobody sang. You could hear the birds chirping and the wind in the trees, and everyone had an opportunity to reflect and think about whatever they wanted to. At another morning service, we all went to the tower located on campus. When we got there, the song leaders were sitting halfway up the tower with their guitars. When we came to the Torah service, the rabbi took the Torah and slung it on his back. Then he proceeded to climb to the top of the tower with the Torah. There they read the

Torah, but the most impressive (not to mention somewhat nerve-wracking) moment was the hagba’ah at the top. Everyone was in awe, and so was I. Another memorable moment from my time at Kutz was when the Supreme Court passed the legislation making same sex marriage legal in all 50 states – all of us said the she’hecheyanu. Everyone then squished into a small room to watch President Obama’s speech – on the floor, on the couches, on other people’s laps, but we all fit. There were tears of joy, and everyone was extremely supportive of everyone else. As well as doing things as an entire group, there was lots of time spent in smaller groups. There was a list of chuggim (elective activities) in the lobby that changed every day, and each day we got to choose from a variety of activities that ranged from having conversations with our North American Board to water polo to watching TED talks. During this time we had the opportunity to speak with visiting faculty about college and continuing your Jewish life in college, and I think those sessions made me less scared to take that step in my life. YOUNG JUDAISM, continued on next page

Shayna Sawyer (right) and friends bringing it at a Shabbat Shira song session

Elul 5775 - Tishri 5776

Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

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Rabbi Reflections Just Asking – Questions for the High Holy Days By Barbara Cohen Is this you? (Be honest.) Do you feel the approach of the High Holy Days as a dragging and nagging undertow of obligation and a yearly ordeal of sitting and standing through services that are obscure and far from the spiritual experience that you have perhaps longed for and not found? (Usually?) Or do you not even care, but just go because that is what you are ‘supposed’ to do? (Often?) Don’t like organized religion because it is the cause of all of the world’s problems? (Yup?) Does this all have to be so hard? (Maybe…maybe not?) Not everyone feels this way, but enough people do and it is having an effect on the Jewish communal world. Yet it doesn’t have to be like this. We can take a fresh look at things, reconstruct our reactions and responses, and benefit from something that has been right under our noses all along…sound good? Again I ask, does this have to be so hard? The High Holy Days comprise time set aside in our tradition to take a serious look at ourselves…not just in relation to our Jewish selves, but to our relationship with the Divine, to those closest to us, and to the whole sphere of relationships that we have with others. It is also a time to review behaviors of habit and mind that dull our connections to our lives, to other people, and to the choices that we make. Choice – free will, you might say – and the exercise of our intelligence in all of its manifestations are skills that need to be honed by conscious attention to the edges of our experience. The Days of Awe are an orchestrated time of halting the rush and immersing ourselves in the sitting (and standing) in what could be such useful personal introspection. If the liturgy doesn’t move you, take up the intention of the time and think about what is working and isn’t working in you and in your relation-

YOUNG JUDAISM, continued from page 2 I now have relationships with people who I can talk to anytime I want and about anything I want. I made strong bonds with the girls and both of the RAs in my cabin, and I am so happy that I got to spend a month creating these relationships. I can’t stress enough how much Kutz has changed my life. I strongly recommend it to anyone even slightly interested in going. I hope that many other people will have a meaningful Jewish experience surrounded by other passionate Jewish teenagers, because it will stick with them for the rest of their lives. So thank you Jewish Federation for helping to change my life.

ships. Take an accounting of it. And by all means, try not to run from yourself by running the old tapes… “Don’t have time for this!” “Could be using this time to do something I really enjoy.” “I don’t need to examine myself, I am fine just the way I am.” How about we take all of that energy of avoidance and turn it? Begin the work of teshuvah, and lift ourselves, in solitude and in the communities that we are a part of, to a new level of connection and awareness of the blessing of belonging. V’ahavta l’rayacha camocha…You shall love your neighbor as yourself…it begins with us. How do we love ourselves? And is the love all gushy and not clear minded and analytical? Sometimes harsh and punishing? Our religion talks a great deal about the love of God for the people. There seems to be real dissonance between the description of this all-loving God and the fate that befalls the Jewish people throughout history. If, however, you delve into the writings of our tradition beyond the glancing introduction of a Hebrew school education, you come face to face with a much more complex relationship with the Divine that has been revealed all along. It is exalted and painful, mercurial and inspiring, uplifting and terrifying…and in the end, just like our relationships with ourselves and others. So how do we love ourselves in all of our complexity, and then go on to share our lives with others? Where do we begin? By being honest, by being merciful and forgiving, by generosity of spirit, and by not shying away from the hard work of being fully human. This is the message of these Days of Awe…look no further than your own face and then outward, in ever-expanding circles of realization that you are looking into the face of the Divine. May we all feel the sense of astonishment that, if we could see this Truth, it might transform the world we inhabit together. May it be so. L’Shanah Tova, Barbara Barbara Cohen is spiritual leader of Congregation Ahavath Sholom in Great Barrington.

Jewish V ice Berkshire

A publication of Jewish Federation of the Berkshires, serving the Berkshires and surrounding NY, CT and VTand surrounding NY, CT and VT A publication ofthethe Jewish Federation of the Berkshires, serving the Berkshires

The color photography in this issue of the Berkshire Jewish Voice is made possible through the generosity of Stuart M. Fischman, Esq., honorary publisher. The staff of the Federation and the BJV are deeply grateful.

Shayna Sawyer is a member at Hevreh of Southern Berkshire.

Jewish V ice Berkshire

A publication Jewish Federation of the Berkshires, serving the Berkshires A publication ofof thethe Jewish Federation of the Berkshires, serving the Berkshires and surrounding NY, CT andand VT surrounding NY, CT and VT

Published nine times a year by the Jewish Federation of the Berkshires Dara Kaufman: Publisher and Managing Editor Stuart M. Fischman, Esq.: Honorary Publisher Albert Stern: Editor Rose Tannenbaum: Graphic Design & Layout Jenny Greenfeld: Advertising Sales Representative and Assistant Editor Editorial opinions expressed in the Berkshire Jewish Voice are those of the newspaper and not those of any individual. Signed editorials do not represent the view of the newspaper, but rather express the writer’s view.

A dramatic hagba’ah at Kutz Camp

The Berkshire Jewish Voice is under no obligation to accept any advertisement. It does not guarantee the kashrut of any merchandise or service advertised. Serves the Jewish community in Berkshire County and neighboring New York, Connecticut, and Vermont. Voluntary subscription donations: $18, $36, $72, $108, other.

You may request that the Berkshire Jewish Voice be mailed to your home. Just email us at jfb.berkshirevoice@verizon.net for information.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR The Berkshire Jewish Voice welcomes signed letters on subjects of interest to the Jewish community. Letters are printed upon space availability. The BJV reserves the right to edit all letters for content, length, and style. The BJV does not print anonymous letters, insults, libelous or defamatory statements. For verification purposes, please include full name, home address, and a day and evening telephone number. Send letters to: Berkshire Jewish Voice, 196 South Street, Pittsfield, MA 01201, or email: jfb.berkshirevoice@verizon.net.

Berkshire Jewish Voice e-mail: jfb.berkshirevoice@verizon.net Phone: (413) 442-4360, ext. 11 Fax (413) 443-6070

Paid advertisements do not necessarily represent the opinions of the Jewish Federation of the Berkshires or its members.

DEADLINES The next Berkshire Jewish Voice (Vol. 23, No. 8) will cover the period October 14, 2015 through November 19, 2015. The following edition (Vol. 23, No. 9) covers November 20, 2015 through December 31, 2015. The deadline for press releases and other written submissions, all of which are subject to being edited, is October 20, 2015. Because of limitations of space and time, please be so kind as to not submit lengthy articles without first contacting the editor. Advertising deadline is November 2, 2015. For a complete Berkshire Jewish Voice schedule, contact (413) 442-4360, ext. 11, or e-mail jfb.berkshirevoice@verizon.net.

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September 4 to October 13, 2015

Your Federation Presents BODY AND SOUL, continued from page 1

Producer and director Gloria Z. Greenfield, also aims to debunk propaganda, myths, and misinformation about Jews and their connection to Israel. “Over several decades, we have seen in a growing number of forums a very deliberate and systematic policy of seeking to isolate and remove the State of Israel from the wider family of nations,” she says. “This is done through a willful effort to erode the moral standing of Israel by ceaseless and relentless stigmatization.”Body and Soul, she asserts, “had to be made to set the record straight.” Greenfield also produced The Case for Israel – Democracy’s Outpost, released by Doc Emet Productions in 2008, and produced and directed Unmasked Judeophobia in 2011. In addition to Rabbi Sacks and Dr. Wisse, the film features the insights of notables such as Yossi Klein Halevi, Benny Morris, Bret Stephens, and Victor Davis Hanson. The

New York Times wrote that the documentary “is a concise, skillful recounting of the story of the Jewish people and their connection to the land of Israel. While it tends to conflate Judaism with Zionism — a position not all Jews agree with — the film is straightforward in presenting the historical record. The director, Gloria

Z. Greenfield, keeps a swift pace...The [64-minute] film is as cogent as it is inspiring.” Tickets are $7.50 general admission ($5 for Berkshire Museum members), and can be purchased in advance by calling the museum box office at (413) 443-7171. The Little Cinema is located at 39 South Street in Pittsfield.

Attention 7th & 8th Graders – Make a Difference with the B’nai Tzedek Youth Foundation

PHOTOS FROM BODY AND SOUL

The Jewish Federation of the Berkshires invites 7th and 8th grade teens to become part of the Berkshire B’nai Tzedek Youth Foundation, where they will learn about and participate in Jewish philanthropy, tzedakah, tikkun olam, and social justice. The Berkshire B’nai Tzedek Youth Foundation is an exciting hands-on program that encourages teens to explore their personal Jewish values and learn how to effect meaningful change through philanthropy. Participants will: • Discuss social issues and Jewish values that are important to them in order to develop a group mission • Research important work being done by local, national, and international non-profits • Learn about the grant-making process and issue their own Request for Grant proposals • Review grant proposals and make collective decisions about allocating aid to organi-

zations of their choice. The Jewish Federation will provide funding for the students to grant out. There is no cost to participate in this program, but students must commit to attend a minimum of four sessions. No outside work will be required. Through this process, teens will also learn essential leadership and critical thinking skills, as well as develop valuable connections to each other and a deeper sense of their own personal values. The program will be held at the Lenox Community Center at 65 Walker Street from 4 – 6:30 p.m. on the following Sunday evenings: October 4, October 18, November 8, December 20, and January 24. A light dinner will be served. The program will be facilitated by Dara Kaufman, executive director of the Jewish Federation of the Berkshires and an award-winning Jewish educator, together with Jenny Gitlitz, a non-profit consultant with many years of experience working with environmental groups This is an exciting opportunity to bring local youth together to connect with their Jewish peers while reinforcing the power they have to make a difference in our world.

Elul 5775 - Tishri 5776

Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

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Your Federation Presents YIDDISH BOOK CENTER, continued from page 1

LETTY COTTIN POGREBIN, continued from page 1

Jewish history, Aaron Lansky enrolled in a graduate program in East European Jewish studies at McGill University in Montreal. There he discovered that large numbers of Yiddish books were being destroyed— not by anti-Semites, but by Jews who could not read the language of their parents and grandparents. Convinced that someone had to save those books, Lansky, ignoring the cautions of experts who considered the task impossible, left McGill and started what he then called the National Yiddish Book Exchange. In 1980, when Lansky issued his first public appeal for old Yiddish books, it was estimated that only 70,000 volumes were extant and recoverable. He rescued that many within six months. Today the Yiddish Book Center’s collection totals more than a million volumes, with the core collection stored in the Center’s state-of-the-art repository, and more than 12,000 titles available online from the Yiddish Book Center’s Steven Spielberg Digital Yiddish Library. With Lansky at the helm, the Yiddish Book Center has expanded its original mission to focus on education, sharing the content of the books it saved—and the culture those books represent—with new generations.

Mate, Letty Cottin Pogrebin encapsulates a dilemma commonly shared by children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors – how to feel “normal” despite the oppressive weight of history carried by people they love and need love from. Born and raised in the Bronx, the book’s protagonist Zach Levy remembers feeling “like a normal all-American boy, rather than the heir to a European catastrophe.” But heir to a European catastrophe he is fated to be. Zach’s father Nathan spent the war years as a resistance fighter, while his mother Rivka survived the camps and witnessed the brutal murder of her first child, Zach’s older brother. His parents never entirely regained their bearings after emigrating to the United States, and as a child, Zach had to navigate “the oppressive atmosphere in his parents’ apartment and the horrific images that sporadically flashed through his skull.” Before their deaths, they invoke the Holocaust in asking him to promise that he will marry only within the faith and that his children will be raised Jewish. Despite his own disengagement from Judaism, he accedes to their wishes. In forming romantic attachments as an adult, Zach (now a lawyer for the ACLU) finds that in making that vow, he was not merely placating his parents. He discovers that he has internalized his parents’ worldview about maintaining Jewish uniqueness and continuity despite his pluralistic ideals. In that tension between tribal Jewish values and Left-leaning political and social inclination, the fictional character of Zach Levy connects with his creator. Letty Cottin Pogrebin, a co-founder of Ms. Magazine, is an admitted “card carrying liberal” who has long felt that all people are created “in tzelem Elokim – the image of God.” Approximately 20 years ago, however, one of her daughters became romantically involved

The Center’s education programs include the Great Jewish Books Summer Program for high school students, the Steiner Summer Yiddish Program for college students, a yearlong fellowship program, and Tent: Encounters with Jewish Culture, as well as online and on-site courses on Yiddish and Jewish culture. The Center has launched an ambitious initiative to publish new Yiddish translations and to mentor emerging translators through a Translation Fellowship program. It publishes an English-language magazine, Pakn Treger, and is home to the Wexler Oral History Project. Visit the Center’s website at www.yiddishbookcenter.org.

IF YOU GO Sponsor: Jewish Federation of the Berkshires Venue: Hevreh of Southern Berkshire, 270 State Road, Great Barrington Date: Friday, September 25, at 10:45 a.m. (catered lunch follows at noon) Advance lunch reservations required for this event. Email jfb.officemanager@verizon.net, or call (413) 442-4360, ext. 10 Cost: $11 with buffet lunch. Program only, $5.

JE WI S H B E D TIM E S T OR IE S a n d S ONG S

Free books and music to nurture Jewish families, for children 6 months – 8 years Thanks to the generosity of the Jewish Federation of the Berkshires, Harold Grinspoon Foundation, Spitz/Tuchman Family Fund, and the Irving Bashevkin Trust, Jewish families in the Berkshires can enjoy PJ Library as a gift that will nourish Jewish life from the start. 

PJ Library is a program under the auspices of the Jewish Federation of the Berkshires. 

For more information or to register your child today please visit Jewishberkshires.org.

Sukkot Fun on the Farm Festival

CHESHIRE – The Jewish Federation of the Berkshires and PJ Library will celebrate Sukkot with a Family Fun Day at Whitney’s Farm on Sunday, September 27, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Whitney’s Farm is located at 1775 South Street (Route 8) in Cheshire. Children, parents, and grandparents can build their own edible sukkahs, as well as create sukkah decorations on arts and crafts tables and visit the Sukkot book center. Fall at Whitney’s is Berkshires tradition, and attend-

ees will also be able to enjoy the many fun activities at the farm, including the petting zoo, hay rides, a bouncy slide and house, and the haunted corn maze. Kids can choose their own sugar pumpkin to take home. Lunch options will be available for purchase, or bring your own – snacks will be provided. Cost is $5.00 per child payable at the event, with no charge for adults and infants. Advance registration is required by September 20 – call

(413) 442-4360, ext. 10 or email: jfb.officemanager@verizon.net. Heavy rain will cancel the event. PJ Library, a program of the Harold Grinspoon Foundation, is offered locally by the Jewish Federation of the Berkshires thanks to generous funding from local donors. The program provides free monthly books and music with Jewish content to children ages 6 months through 8 years of age.

with a practicing Catholic, who would have insisted that their children be raised as Catholics. “Suddenly, with the idea of non-Jewish grandchildren, my so-called tolerance went out the window,” Pogrebin remembers. Raised and educated in a traditional Jewish American home, Pogrebin says that approximately one-third of both her parents’ extended families were lost during the War, and that she is old enough to have been “aware of the Shoah as front page news.” She recalls the great anxiety she felt in thinking that her “family thru-line with the Jewish people would be out the window,” and the way this reaction imperiled her relationship with her daughter. Pogrebin believes that the anxiety is not uncommon, and is in part a product of Jews’ collective cultural memory of the Holocaust. All Jews, even those not directly affected, she believes, have “inherited the trauma” of the Shoah and grapple with its meaning in creating their own Jewish identities. Though Zach Levy’s experience as the child of survivors underpins the novel, the bulk of the narrative is about, as the title suggests, a single Jewish male seeking a soul mate. Pogrebin vividly captures the ideological disputes and personality types of an era she knows intimately – liberal Manhattan in the 1970s and 1980s. One of the novel’s two most successful set pieces revolves around a contentious cross-cultural outreach meeting at which a rabbi and African-American preacher preside over an attempt to breach the two communities’ differences. (It’s where Zach meets African-American radio host Cleo, the daughter a Southern minister with whom he falls in love.) The acrimony that Pogrebin depicts with such unflinching honesty and verisimilitude could only have been captured by a front line veteran of the culture wars who experienced (first, she says, with shock, and then with sadness, and finally with a renewed commitment to connect with the experiences of black women) the wrenching breakup of a once united coalition of Jews and African Americans. Some Jewish readers might find themselves unsettled by the novel’s other accomplished set piece, which revolves around Zach’s relationship with an emotionally erratic performance artist named Babka – suffice it to say, that

if you know any anti-Semites looking for some top-of-theline offensive Jewish jokes, refer them to the pages about Babka. As a portrait of downtown Manhattan’s performance art scene, onstage and off, Pogrebin’s depiction is (as this writer can attest) spot on. The novel’s characters are all people of the Left whose behavior is ideologically informed, if not always reasonable when considered from a less Liberal point of view. Their progressive lives are shaken up by a regressive Jewish conception of peoplehood that Zach feels deeply and acts on, even though he cannot outwardly embrace it. Though the novel ends on unresolved note that Progrebin says she will keep open ended – will Zach and Cleo reunite and raise the son he had shunned for 3 years? – the final chapters suggest that Zach’s eyes might have been opened (via an encounter with a professor at Hebrew Union College, New York’s center for Reform Judaism) to a different approach to the faith. Pogrebin expresses this ecumenical ideal more directly. “We [as Jews] accept that we survive as a people with traditions,” she says. “It carries us forward.” But in an age of intermarriage and loosening ties to tradition, she feels that Jews and Jewish institutions have to, for the younger generation’s sake, “make Judaism as beautiful and complex as we who have the deep background know it is. If they rebel, well, rebels should know what they are rebelling against. And if they come back, they should have a home base to come back to.” Her prescription is for more inclusion and education, adding that in her opinion the Talmud offers a good model of how to go forward. “We know what Shamai thought because the minority opinion is in there,” she says, “presented with respect.”

IF YOU GO Sponsor: Jewish Federation of the Berkshires Venue: Hevreh of Southern Berkshire, 270 State Road, Great Barrington Date: Friday, October 9, at 10:45 a.m. (catered lunch follows at noon) Advance lunch reservations required for this event. Email jfb.officemanager@verizon.net, or call (413) 442-4360, ext. 10 Cost: $11 with buffet lunch. Program only, $5.

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Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

September 4 to October 13, 2015

Your Federation Presents Jewish Writers: The Achieve- Jazz in Blues and the American Songbook, ments of British Historian Sept. 21 Jazz is the quintessential Martin Gilbert on October 8 American music, and at the As part of his ongoing series exploring the achievements of prominent Jewish authors, Hugh Black – a teacher, librarian, journalist, poet, and bibliophile – returns to the Connecting With Community series on October 8 to discuss the historical writing of Sir Martin Gilbert. Sir Martin Gilbert was born in London in 1936 to Jewish parents, Peter and Miriam Gilbert, whose own parents were refugees from Czarist Russia. Best known as the official biographer of Sir Winston Churchill, Gilbert also wrote many books about Jewish history. Among the books Black will discuss are Winston Churchill and the Jews, Israel: A History, Jerusalem in the 20th Century, The Holocaust Journals, The Boys: Triumph Over Adversity, and The Holocaust Chronicles. Black will also talk about the idiosyncratic Letters to Auntie Fori: The 5,000-Year History of the Jewish People and Their Faith, in which the historian recounts the saga of Jewish life in a series of intimate,

Historian Sir Martin Gilbert storytelling letters to a lifelong friend. Gilbert died in 2014 at the age of 78 in Jerusalem.

IF YOU GO Sponsor: Jewish Federation of the Berkshires / Connecting With Community Venue: Congregation Knesset Israel Date & Time: Thursday, October 8, at 10:45 a.m., followed by lunch (see page 14).

September 21 Connecting With Community program, guitarist Sam Rosen and pianist Richard Evans will explore the roots of jazz in an entertaining and educational performance called “Jazz in Blues and the American Songbook.” Jazz repertoire has evolved many forms over 100 years, drawing upon the blues, theatre, cinema, and popular song, as well as specific instrumental jazz compositions. While not unique to jazz, improvisation has played a central role in its development and has been considered a liberating influence. The duo will present several selections using piano and guitar to illustrate the role of texture, rhythm, melody, and harmony in the creation of this fascinating music. Sam Rosen is a popular Berkeley-trained jazz guitarist who plays in many local venues. Richard Evans is a retired psychiatrist who has for many years enjoyed playing jazz piano, most recently with local musicians.

Meet the New Artistic Director of the Williamstown Film Festival WFF Presents: Wind-Up Fest, Sept. 24 The September 24 Connecting With Community program introduces Paul Sturtz, the new artistic director of WFF Presents: Wind-Up Fest – formerly the Williamstown Film Festival (WFF). Now in its 17th year, the festival welcomes big changes with a new name, new faces, and new programming concept. Slated for October 15-18, WFF presents: Wind-Up Fest is a nonfiction festival with documentary film as its backbone. Other forms of nonfiction will be in conversation with documentaries, including long-form journalism, radio podcasts, photography, and social practice art. Sturtz is also the co-director at the True/False

Film Fest (Columbia, MO), and the new managing director Sandra Thomas is the former executive director of Images Cinema (Williamstown). Sturtz will talk about why he chose to take the festival in a new direction, his interest in the northern Berkshires, and the programming he curated that includes the creators and makers of documentary film and other forms of nonfiction.

Paul Sturtz

IF YOU GO Sponsor: Jewish Federation of the Berkshires / Connecting With Community Venue: Congregation Knesset Israel Date & Time: Thursday, September 24, at 10:45 a.m., followed by lunch (see page 14).

The Writing Life, with Ruth Sidransky on October 1 A daughter of profoundly deaf parents, Ruth Sidransky from childhood was tasked with explaining the hearing world to her mother and father. Her first words were in sign language – when she started school, she was placed in a class for special needs children until the principal realized that she could hear and speak. Her mastery of oral language provided her family with a pathway to understanding the world, and eventually she went on to become an author, educator, and television presenter. At the Thursday, October 1, Connecting With Community program, Sidransky will dis-

cuss her life as a writer. Her first book, the family memoir In Silence, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Other works include the Holocaust-themed Reparations: A Novel of War and Rebirth and A Women’s Primer: A Book Of Positive Essays About the Attributes of Living Life. She is currently at work on book about writing.

Ruth Sidransky

IF YOU GO Sponsor: Jewish Federation of the Berkshires / Connecting With Community Venue: Congregation Knesset Israel Date & Time: Thursday, October 1, at 10:45 a.m., followed by lunch (see page 14).

Richard Evans and Sam Rosen

IF YOU GO Sponsor: Jewish Federation of the Berkshires / Connecting With Community Venue: Congregation Knesset Israel Date & Time: Monday, September 21, at 10:45 a.m., followed by lunch (see page 14).

Poet Emily Dickinson and the Books That Shaped Her Life and Worldview, September 10 “I am glad there are Books. They are better than Heaven,” wrote the poet Emily Dickinson, and at the September 10 Connecting With Community program, Jane Wald, executive director of the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, will explore the poet’s work through the books that filled the Dickinson Family’s library shelves. What can these books tell us about the reclusive poet’s life and worldview? Wald notes that Dickinson’s poems and letters chronicle a lifelong struggle with issues of faith and doubt, suffering and salvation, nature and deity, mortality and the eternal. Nevertheless, Dickinson’s religious views have long evaded precise explanation. She refused to become a full member of her family’s church and called herself a “pagan,” but she knew the Bible backwards and forwards and often spoke of faith and its attributes in poetry. An examination of the religious texts on the shelves of her family’s libraries can cast more light on Dickinson’s personal theological explorations in the context of 19th-century religious movements. Were they better, to her, than Heaven? Jane Wald has been with the Dickinson Museum (also

Jane Wald known as The Homestead and The Evergreens) for 14 years, has been its executive director for the last nine. She has overseen the expansion of tours, public programs, and audience while directing many capital and restoration projects.

IF YOU GO Sponsor: Jewish Federation of the Berkshires / Connecting With Community Venue: Congregation Knesset Israel Date & Time: Thursday, September 10, at 10:45 a.m., followed by lunch (see page 14).

THE JEWISH FEDERATION FUNDS AND SUPPORTS A COMMUNITY-WIDE NETWORK OF ORGANIZATIONS THAT:

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Care for people in need here at home, in Israel and around the world. Nurture and sustain Jewish life and learning today and into the future.

Elul 5775 - Tishri 5776

Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

Page 7

Your Federation Presents LENOX – More than 500 people packed the sold-out Duffin Theater on August 2 to hear singing sensations the Maccabeats at the Jewish Federation of the Berkshires’ annual concert. The enthusiastic audience enjoyed the group’s a cappella harmonies (backed rhythmically by human beatbox Mendy the Maccabeat and, for one song, the Berkshires’ own Ellie Caine), supporting Post-performance, the Maccabeats graciously greeted the crowd and signed the performers by CDs of their music clapping and singing along. Norman Michaels (who coraised more than $16,000 for This Federation event was chaired the event with Judith the Jewish Fund For Israel’s supported by the Harold GrinCook) welcomed the gathered Fund for Victims of Terror. spoon Foundation. and announced that the event

PHOTOS BY ELISA SNOWISE

Federation’s Annual Concert a Fun Fundraising Success

“Boots ‘n Katz ‘n Boots ‘n Katz ‘n…” – Ellie Caine blowing the roof off the Duffin Theater

Connecting With Community “Swimming in Air”: Ongoing Qigong / Kosher Hot Lunch Classes with Jeffrey Gordon, September 17 Series Programs in the Jewish Federation of the Berkshires’ ConJeffrey Gordon is a native of Pittsfield and serves the community as an acupuncturist and Qigong instructor. Practicing Qigong is often likened to “swimming in air” and has a rejuvenating and refreshing effect on the body, mind, and senses. Qigong, similar to Tai Chi, is a simple form of exercise to strengthen physical health and calm and focus the mind. It is an ideal form of exercise for older adults and seniors, helping to

enhance joint mobility, bone strength, circulation, and balance.

IF YOU GO Sponsor: Jewish Federation of the Berkshires / Connecting With Community Venue: Congregation Knesset Israel Date & Time: Thursday, September 17, at 10:45 a.m., followed by lunch (see page 14).

necting With Community series are free and start at 10:45 a.m. most Mondays and Thursdays at Congregation Knesset Israel (16 Colt Road, Pittsfield). Programs are followed by a kosher hot lunch. Lunch is a $2 suggested donation for adults over 60 years of age or $7 for all others. Advance reservations are required for lunch and can be made by calling (413) 442-2200 before 9 a.m. on the day of the program. For further information on all programs, please call Nancy Maurice Rogers, program director, at (413) 442-4360, ext. 15. For lunch menus, please see page 14.

Page 8

Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

September 4 to October 13, 2015

Your Federation Presents

Jewish V ice Berkshire

A publication of the Jewish Federation of the Berkshires, serving the Berkshires and surrounding NY, CT and VT

Thank you to our supporters!

The Berkshire Jewish Voice extends a very special “thank you” for the generosity extended thus far by those households who have sent in their contributions for voluntary subscriptions to the paper. Anonymous (5) Suzanne Bach Anita Bakst Robert and Barbara Bashevkin Bob and Shelley Berend Rabbi Kenneth Brickman Irwin and Ilse Browner Alan and Roselle Chartock Mike and Bobbi Cohn Sue and Joel Colker Adele Cukor Joel and Phyllis Curran Nathan Doctrow Sheila Donath Marilyn Dukoff Eitan and Malka Evan Chris Fader and Michele Bauer Diana and Stanley Feld David and Lea Finck Stuart Fischman Sandra and William Flannery Robert and Marcia Gold Mae and Irwin Goldberg Irene Goldman-Price Susan and Marc Goldman Corinne and Jerry Gorelick Joel and Carol Greenberg Sue and Joel Gurland Aaron Gurwitz and Susan Abramowitz Peter Herman and Jerri Chaplin Mara and Muffin Herskowitz Harold and Elaine Isaacson Harry and Arlene Jaroslaw In memory of Jerry Silverberg Randy Johnson and Jackie Browner Martin and Alice Jonas Eliot Kalman Adele and Paul Kellman Ellen Kenwood Lawrence and Sarah Klein Roy and Leslie Kozupsky Dave and Ann Krawet Lois Kronick Bob and Carole Landau

Fred and Brenda Landes Jeffrey Lazarus and Phyllis Cohen Elaine Lee Donna Lefkowitz Arline Levine Paul and Fran Lippmann Elaine and Lenny Lipton Frank Litsky and Zina Green Elaine Loveman Norman and Wilma Michaels Richard Mickey and Nancy Salz Alan and Nancy Milbauer Annette Miller Faith and Larry Newmark Beth and Joel Radsken Elaine and Bernard Roberts Stuart and Myrna Rodkin Bob and Roz Rosenblatt Orson and Dianne Rothkopf Shirley Rubenstein David and Amy Rutstein Edwin Salsitz Bob and Lee Saltz Susan and Bob Scherr Alice and Len Schiller Lewis and Joyce Schiller Harold and Joan Schwartz Gloria Shipper Martin Silver Amy Simons Abramovich David Slick and Robin Seeley Steven Souza and Karen Kwitter Mimi and Steve Stambler Lois and Michael Storch Carol and Richard Strunin Rosalie Sussman Ellen and Leonard Tabs Henry Tulgan and Norma Propp Tulgan Gary and Bernice Turetsky Ruth and Robert Waldheim Arthur and Terry Wasser Howard and Deborah Wineberg Sergey and Natalya Yantovsky Margot Yondorf

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INCLUDES A CALENDAR OF PROGRAMS AND EVENTS SPONSORED BY THE BERKSHIRE JEWISH COMMUNITY

Volunteers are Vital! Joe’s Project Care Packages Bring Holiday Spirit to Area Seniors By Susan Frisch Lehrer, Coordinator of Volunteers Thanks to all of the many volunteers helping with “Joe’s Project” to deliver Rosh Hashanah care packages to our many senior adults and those who are ill in the community. Over 100 volunteers have been busy. They include: • Our talented bakers led by Susan Gordon of Bagels Too • PJ Library, Religious School, and Crane Lake Camp kids who have decorated bags throughout the summer • The dedicated volunteers packing and delivering to homes and senior fa-

cilities throughout the Berkshire area before Rosh Hashanah. Our recipients always enjoy the delicious challot and honey, the decorative bags, and the visits from families and friends. This project is truly a mitzvah. Todah rabah to all! Shana Tovah, Susan Frisch Lehrer, Coordinator of Volunteers (413) 442-4360, ext. 14 Jfb.volunteer@verizon.net

Preparations for Rosh Hashanah started early, as PJ Library families (above) gathered on the scenic grounds of Tanglewood on August 7 to hear a story and decorate gift bags for Joe’s Project.

Registration Open for JFNA General Assembly 2015 Registration is now open for the Jewish Federations of North America’s General Assembly (GA), which will take place from Sunday, November 8 through Tuesday, November 10 in Washington, D.C. The GA is the premier annual North American Jewish communal event, attracting Federation volunteer leaders and professionals, the leadership of partner organizations, and a range of national Jewish organizations. Community members are invited to attend. If you are interested in attend-

ing, please contact Dara Kaufman, executive director, at (413) 442-4360, ext. 12 or at dara.kaufman@verizon.net.

For more information, visit www.generalassembly.org/.

Elul 5775 - Tishri 5776

Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

Page 9

Wishing You A Sweet New Year L’Shana Tova Tikatevu 2015-5776

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Page 10

Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

September 4 to October 13, 2015

LOCAL NEWS – EDUCATION ROUNDUP

Jewish Education in the Berkshires 2015-2016 The Jewish Federation of the Berkshires has a strong commitment to Jewish youth, helping to provide a high-quality Jewish education for more than 212 children and young adults through grants to six congregational religious schools across the Berkshires. Berkshire County is fortunate to have a diverse Jewish community that offers educational opportunities encompassing a wide range of approaches and family preferences. This section offers an overview of local Jewish schools — please check congregational websites for full details.

Congregation Beth Israel

Hevreh of Southern Berkshire Hevreh Religious School is opening its doors this September to create a community of learners, from young children through high school seniors. With the guidance of teachers, song leaders, young teachers, and rabbis, Hevreh students explore Jewish heritage, rituals, history, and holidays. Hevreh will continue its successful Family YACHAD (Together) program where parents and students can participate together in learning and celebration opportunities

throughout the year. Religious School open house events include a tot Shabbat on September 26 at 9 a.m., and a picnic lunch and sukkah decoration celebration at noon on September 27. Contact: Rabbi Jodie Gordon or Joan Goldberg Munch (413) 528-6378. For a complete religious school calendar visit Hevreh.org.

Classes

at 4 p.m. beginning September 16 (weekly). Religious School classes for Kindergarten through Confirmation, Sundays beginning September 20 at 10 a.m. K – 6 classes meet weekly. Pre–confirmation and confirmation classes meet bi-weekly. Tiny Talmidim classes for pre-school children meet monthly beginning Sunday, September 27 at 10:15 a.m.

Hebrew Skills classes for 3rd – 7th graders, Wednesdays

Combining a creative artistic program that includes arts and crafts, delicious baking, singing, drawing, storytelling, and play performing with Jewish history, tradition, and holiday celebrations, Chabad’s program director Sara Volovik aims to offer a dynamic and energizing experience for her students. Bar and bat mitzvah lessons, as well as Hebrew language programs, are also offered. “The self-confidence in their Judaic skills and knowledge is growing,

and they are having lots of fun” report Shana and Richard Senzel, parents of 8-year-old and 6-year-old boys in the program. “We feel great when we drop them off and pick them up each week, and they do, too!” Chabad of The Berkshires offers the Hebrew School of The Arts Program on Sundays from 10 a.m. to 12:15 p.m., along with special holiday programs. For more information, please call Chabad of the Berkshires at (413) 499-9899 or visit the website at www.jewishberkshires.com.

Temple Anshe Amunim Temple Anshe Amunim offers religious education for students from preschool to high school, along with evening Hebrew and conversion classes for adults. All programs feature a full complement of professional educators and a focus on Hebrew instruction and individualized learning. The Religious School is led by Education Director Esther Benari-Altmann, recipient of

the 2015 Harold Grinspoon Award for Excellence in Education. Classes are held on Saturdays. In addition to Hebrew instruction, students engage in music, crafts, stories, drama and hands-on learning with a special emphasis on the traditions and rituals of Judaism. Group tutoring sessions are available for those students who wish additional help with learning Hebrew. Throughout the year, parents

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tion team. Rabbi Greenfield will lead the congregation’s Ne’arim class for 4th-6th graders and teach in the Hand-inHand program for the community’s youngest participants (pre-K and K). For more information about CBI’s education programs, see the CBI website (www.cbiweb. org) or contact Rabbi Rachel Barenblat (rabbibarenblat@ gmail.com) or Education Director David Arfa (maggiddavid@gmail.com).

Congregation Ahavath Sholom

Chabad of The Berkshires Hebrew School of the Arts Program

The Congregation Beth Israel education program uses an art-based curriculum combined with field trips, storytelling, and Hebrew instruction to teach Hebrew language along with Jewish holidays, tradition, and culture. CBI’s education programs meet Mondays from 3:30-5:15 for kindergarten through 7th graders, and one Sunday a month for 3-5 year olds and their parents. CBI welcomes Rabbi Jarah Greenfield to their educa-

will be invited to join with students for family education programming, student-led services, field trips, and special projects. The Temple continues its partnership with Congregation Knesset Israel in the Community Hebrew Afterschool Initiative (CHAI) which meets Wednesday afternoons from 4 to 6 p.m. at TAA. This program, offered in conjunction with Hebrew school, offers students a supportive atmosphere to gain and refine their Hebrew language and ritual leadership skills, as well as collaborative learning about Jewish holidays and practices. To learn more about the Religious School, please contact Esther Benari-Altmann at (413) 442-5910, ext. 12, email eba@ansheamunim.org or visit www.ansheanumim.org.

Centered on the core prayers of the liturgy and the values they represent, the new “V’Ahavta Project” curriculum is built to provide relevant context to religious school families The school schedule, starting in September, alternates between Sunday afternoon one week and Thursday after school the next. Class is taught by Spiritual Leader Barbara Cohen and Head Teacher John Slote, who say they strive to break the pattern of “I had to do it, so you have to do it” that for generations has characterized the Hebrew school experience. Children and parent(s) come

together in a small group atmosphere that encourages engagement with Jewish culture, history, prayer and Torah, and Jewish values. The teaching of Torah cantillation, through “Trope Aerobics” gets the students up out of their chairs after a long day at school, making an ancient skill active and alive. To begin the process, parent(s) are invited to meet with Barbara Cohen to explore family background and values in order to set realistic and attainable goals for each child. Please call (413) 528-4197 or email info@ahavathsholom. com.

Congregation Knesset Israel The Congregation Knesset Israel Hebrew School curriculum intends to prepare students for Jewish lives imbued with meaning, knowledge, and ruach (spirit). Classes are held at KI on Shabbat mornings, with the Hebrew language focused CHAI program (in partnership with Temple Anshe Amunim) on Wednesdays at the Temple for kindergarten through 6th grade students. The early drop off option for CHAI with supervised homework review and programming from 3:15 p.m. to 3:45 p.m. will continue to be offered this year. This year, the B’nai Mitzvah class will also meet at TAA from 4 to 6 p.m., as well as 9 a.m. to noon Saturdays at KI. For more information: Ed Udel, Hebrew School Adminis-

trator, (413) 445-4872, ext. 15 or email at eudel@knessetisrael.org

Schedule Preschool: Saturdays, 10:3011:30 a.m. Grade K-1: Saturdays, 9-noon & Wednesdays, 4-5 p.m. (Sat. required, Wed. optional) Grade 2: Saturdays, 9-noon & Wednesdays, 4-6 p.m. (Sat. required, Wed. encouraged) Grade 3-5: Saturdays, 9-noon & Wednesdays, 4-6 p.m. (both required) Grade 6 (special class): Saturdays, 9:30-noon; midweek by consensus Bar/Bat Mitzvah Class: Saturdays, 9-noon & Wednesdays, 4-6 p.m. (both required) High School: Saturdays, 8:409:30 a.m.; evening class on Israel TBD – weekday evenings in the winter

Elul 5775 - Tishri 5776

Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

Page 11

LOCAL NEWS

Local Group to Host New England ACLU Executive Director

IDF Reservists, Israeli Consul General Share Stories and Concerns at August FIDF Event

SALISBURY, CT – On Sunday, September 27 at 11 a.m., Stephen Glassman, the New England executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) will speak on the topic of “Racial Justice, Anti-Semitism, and the ACLU of Connecticut.” The lecture will be presented by the Jewish Community Group of the NorthWest Corner (JCGNWC) at Noble Horizons (in the Community Room), 17 Cobble Road in Salisbury. The public

LENOX – On August 11, the New England chapter of Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF) brought three IDF reservists and Yehuda Yaakov, Israel’s consul general in New England, to the Berkshires to share stories from the front lines of both military and diplomatic battles. The Jewish Federation of the Berkshires was a co-sponsor of this event. All coming from families with financial challenges, reservists Sergeant Reut, Sergeant Major Golan, and Staff Sergeant Arthur (last names withheld for security reasons) are recipients of FIDF IMPACT scholarships and are completing their studies at top Israeli universities. IMPACT beneficiaries give back by donating at least 130 hours of service to Israelis in need. Reut served an educator assigned with instilling IDF values (“ruach Zahal”) during officer training programs; she also spoke movingly about her volunteer work with and on behalf of aged Holocaust survivors. Golan, who worked with the IDF K-9 unit, described his harrowing search for a fleeing terrorist, as well as the loss of his canine partner in combat; he now studies architecture. Arthur shared a riveting story from his reconnaissance and support mission in Gaza, when a hard-to-explain sixth sense helped his unit foil an ambush by Hamas fighters; he currently studies government, and gives back by tutoring children from broken homes and by working at a food bank. Consul General Yehuda Yaakov delivered a sometimes controversial overview of the recent nuclear deal with Iran, laying out the Israeli government’s position. “For us, it is inconceivable that Iran will be declared the sheriff of the Middle East,” said Yaakov, who worked for years as an analyst of Iranian politics.

2nd Annual BerkshireSPEAKS Set for Sunday, October 18 GREAT BARRINGTON – Hevreh of Southern Berkshire’s second annual BerkshireSPEAKS is scheduled for Sunday, October 18 at 1:30 p.m., and will feature brief presentations by six Berkshire trendsetters who will discuss their work, their passions, and their visions for the future. The event, sponsored by Hevreh, is open to the community and will be followed by a reception with the speakers. Event chair Joan Kleinman notes that “This is a special event that will open our minds to the extraordinary talent and innovation here in the Berkshires. Using the TED Talks model, we will not only be informed, we will be surprised and dazzled!” Presenters include: Ty Allan Jackson: Social activist, speaker, author, and founder and president of Big Head Books, he was honored in 2012 with the Martin Luther King, Jr. Content of Character Award. His focus is to provide books for young people with content and characters that entertain, inspire, and educate. Sara Katzoff: A theater maker, writer, and actress, she is the co-artistic director of The Berkshire Fringe and Bazaar Productions, and is a teaching artist for the Playwright Mentorship Project at Barrington Stage. Howard Levin, M.D.: Dr. Levin is chief medical officer and vice president of LympheDIVAS, a Pittsfield company that makes specially designed compression sleeves, gloves, and gauntlets for women at risk for lymphedema after breast cancer treatment. Nancy Thomas: Co-founder and proprietor of the Mezze Restaurant Group, she is an advocate for shaping a com-

munity of sustainable agriculture with a commitment to the local food movement. She has co-authored books on food and beverages and was an initiator of Berkshire Grown’s Holiday Farmers’ Market events. Eleanore Velez: Coordinator of the Multicultural Center at Berkshire Community College, her work is focused on bridging cultural gaps between local and recent immigrants. She received the Berkshire Immigrant Center’s Jane Addams Spirit Award and was recognized by the Literacy Network with their Founder of Americans Award. Simon Winchester: New York Times bestselling author of The Professor and the Madman, Atlantic, Krakatoa: A Crack in the Edge of the World, and The Men Who United the States, he was made an officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) by Her Majesty the Queen for his work in journalism and literature. Tickets are $15 if you register online at: Hevreh.org/ BerkshireSPEAKS (online registration closes at noon Oct. 16). Tickets will be $18 at the door. Hevreh is located at 270 State Road, Great Barrington. For information, call (413) 528-6378.

IDF soldiers Arthur, Golan, and Reut with Eiran Gazit at the Gateways Inn

Yehuda Yaakov spoke about the dangers of the US deal with Iran “The Iranians are playing multi-dimensional chess, and they have got it all worked out. [Iranian President Hassan Rouhani] wanted legitimacy for the Iranian nuclear program, he wanted international recognition for Iran’s regional hegemony, a free hand and a place at the table. He got all of the above.” Yaakov asserted that while Israel will prevail in its efforts

Berkshire Jewish Teens Learn the Ropes GREAT BARRINGTON – On Saturday, October 3 from 3:30 to 6 p.m., Jewish teens from across Berkshire County are invited to challenge their minds and bodies with an exhilarating afternoon on the low-ropes course at Berkshire South Community Center. Jewish teens from grades 6-12 (regardless of affiliation or youth group membership) are welcome to join HOTY, PFTY, and USY participants for an afternoon of group building and problem solving on the

low ropes course, followed by pizza and Havdalah. Be sure to wear comfortable clothing and closed-toe shoes. Cost per teen is $20 for dinner and activity. Register at: http://tinyurl.com/lowropesreg. Berkshire South is located at 15 Crissey Road, Great Barrington. This event is co-sponsored by the Jewish Federation of the Berkshires and the Harold Grinspoon Foundation.

to remain strong and protect its inhabitants, he lamented that the energy, funds, and political will it will take to do so could have been better spent in more positive modes in the absence of the need to mobilize for a potentially nuclear Iran.

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is invited and refreshments will be served. The JCGNWC is a group of about 50 people who come together on occasion to hear lectures, see films, read books, and celebrate Jewish holidays with social gatherings and dinners. All are welcome at events hosted by this 25 year old social and cultural organization. Please contact Dr. Alfred Ivry, the group’s director, at ai1@nyu.edu or (860) 8244658 for more information.

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Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

September 4 to October 13, 2015

LOCAL NEWS

Former Marine Takes Over as Commander of The Trial of Aaron: A Courtroom Drama Based on a Berkshire Chapter of Jewish War Veterans Well-Known Biblical Story Robert Waldheim, who Jewish community. He hopes

served in Vietnam with the United States Marine Corps (USMC), is the new commander of the local chapter of Jewish War Veterans of the United States of America. He says he is proud to follow in the footsteps of the late Robert Shindler, who led the group for decades. “This is not an obligation,” says the Dalton resident. “It’s an honor to carry on this responsibility.” A Berkshire native, he says he was inspired by the service of recently deceased local Jewish veterans such as Shindler, Sidney Novick (veteran of the invasion of Iwo Jima), and his own father-in-law, Bernard Snyder, among many others. Waldheim is looking to increase participation among younger veterans in the

to organize a meeting before Veterans Day in November so that local Jewish veterans can be well represented at commemorations scheduled for 2015 and beyond. Those interested in more information can contact Waldheim via email at sellit4@aol.com, or via telephone at (413) 822-4546. Waldheim has long been active in veteran’s affairs in the region, and is a member of the color guard of Vietnam Veterans of America James E. Callahan Berkshire Chapter 65. He was one of nine Berkshire residents who enlisted in the USMC in 1966, he says, “all of whom made it home.” He served overseas in the infantry as an MOS 0311 rifleman in 1967-68. The local chapter of Jewish War Veterans of the United

Robert Waldheim States of America is an affiliate member of the Jewish Federation of the Berkshires. In addition to participating in annual commemoration ceremonies, Jewish War Veterans also perform the flag ceremony at the funerals of members of the Armed Forces.

Berkshire Hills Hadassah to Support Jerusalem Hospital at its Annual Donor Brunch PITTSFIELD – Berkshire Hills Hadassah will hold its 78th annual donor brunch on October 18 at 11 a.m. at the Crowne Plaza Hotel. This year, the group will honor Helene and Larry Berke for their 32 years of dedication and steadfast support of Hadassah and the Berkshire Jewish community. Dedicated in 2012, the Sarah Wetsman Davidson Hospital Tower in Jerusalem

was Hadassah’s centennial gift to the people of Israel. Recognized throughout the world as a leading teaching and research inpatient facility, the hospital has healing gardens, 500 innovative patient rooms, and 20 state-of-the-art below ground operating rooms that are fortified against attack. Berkshire Hills Hadassah hopes to equip and furnish these rooms to help the hospital fulfill its mission to serve

all patients throughout the Middle East. The entire Berkshire community is invited to share an afternoon of joy and giving. For more information on attending the brunch, donations, and Berkshire Hills Hadassah, please email: Berkshirehillshadassah@ gmail.com. The Crowne Plaza is located at 1 West Street in Pittsfield.

PITTSFIELD – On Sunday, October 18 at 2 p.m., Temple Anshe Amunim will present a professional staged reading of The Trial of Aaron, an original courtroom drama in which Aaron is accused of violating the Ten Commandments by constructing the Golden Calf. Written by temple member Jesse Waldinger, The Trial of Aaron focuses on the wellknown biblical story about how, while Moses was atop Mount Sinai receiving the Ten Commandments, his brother Aaron constructed a golden calf that the fickle Children of Israel proceeded to worship. Witnessing this transgression, an enraged Moses threw the tablets to the ground, and retribution followed. But Aaron was never called to account for violating the mandate against idolatry. What was Aaron thinking? Was he guilty of a capital offense? Why was he never punished? These questions will be theatrically explored, and Aaron’s fate will be determined by a jury of select audience members, based on evidence drawn largely from biblical text. Actors performing in The Trial of Aaron include Paul Carter, Kate Hettesheimer, Andrew Joffe, Hana Kenny, Ted Phelps, John Romeo and John Trainor. Jesse Waldinger is an attorney, playwright, and author of The Finaly Affair, which debuted at Temple Anshe Amunim last fall as part of

the Kristallnacht observance. He is co-director of the Hudson-based play development group Plays in Progress. The play will be directed by Dr. Barbara Waldinger, a director and professor of Theatre. Dr. Waldinger has taught at Hofstra University, Marymount College, and Queens College, and is presently an OLLI instructor. She serves as artistic director of HRC Showcase Theatre, an Equity-approved company that performs staged readings of new plays in Hudson, NY. She also directs new plays for the Association of Theatre in Higher Education, the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, and Plays in Progress, in addition to teaching and directing at Temple Anshe Amunim. Refreshments will be served while the jury deliberates, and a discussion, featuring Rabbi Josh Breindel, will follow the verdict. Admission is $25; members $20, and students free. Proceeds will benefit Temple Anshe Amunim’s religious education programs. Temple Anshe Amunim is a Reform Jewish congregation that promotes engaging and widespread participation in services, education, and social action programs. TO RSVP or for more information, contact the Temple Anshe Amunim office at (413) 442-5910, email templeoffice@ ansheamunim.org or visit www.ansheanumim.org.

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As my parents planted for me before I was born, so do I plant for those who come after me. – Talmud Thank you to these individuals who through their gift to the Legacy Circle will ensure that the Jewish Federation of the Berkshires thrives long into the future. May your name be a Blessing, and may the example you set inspire others to create their own Jewish Legacy.

Anonymous (9) Ed Abrahams Norman Avnet Barbara Bashevkin Robert Bashevkin Linda J. L. Becker Robert Berend Shelley Berend Helene Berke

Lawrence Berke Lee & Sydelle Blatt Betty Braun Cipora Brown Barbara Cohen Mark Cohen Mimi Cohen C. Jeffrey & Judith Cook Gerry & Lynn Denmark Jonathan & Lara Denmark Sheila K. Donath Melva Eidelberg Monroe England, in memory of Monroe B. & Isabel England Dr. Armand V. Feigenbaum, of blessed memory Dr. Donald S. Feigenbaum, of blessed memory Steven Feiner Diana & Stanley Feld

Stuart M. Fischman Lynn & William Foggle Elaine Freidman Eiran Gazit Jeffrey Goldwasser & Jonquil Wolfson Jordan & Laura Green Harold Grinspoon Ellen Heffan Ed Jaffe, of blessed memory Elihu Katzman Marilyn Katzman Howard & Nancy Kaufman Lawrence Klein Sarah Klein Arthur Kriger, of blessed memory Fred & Brenda Landes Beth Laster-Nathan Andrew S. Levine

Toby H. Levine Erna Lindner-Gilbert Amy Lindner-Lesser Helen Maislen Ellen Masters Stuart Masters Estelle Miller Robert Newman, of blessed memory Ken & Fran Rubenstein Stella Schecter Arlene D. Schiff Gary Schiff Stephen & Deborah Schreier Martin Silver Sylvia Silverberg, in memory of Jerome Silverberg Richard A. Simons & Marcie Greenfield Simons Mark & Elisa Snowise

Harold Sparr Lisa Fletcher-Udel Edward Udel Michael & Joan Ury Mark & Judy Usow Henry & Beate Voremberg, of blessed memory Alexandra Warshaw Florence Wineberg, of blessed memory Rabbi Deborah Zecher & Rabbi Dennis Ross

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OBITUARIES PITTSFIELD – Mrs. Irene Schwalbe 84, of 20 Strong Avenue died Sunday, July 12 at Sweetbrook of Williamstown Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Williamstown. Born in Pittsfield on July 26, 1930, a daughter of the late Harry and Letty (Honigman) Mindlin, she attended Pittsfield schools, graduated from Pittsfield High School with honors, and graduated from Pittsfield Secretarial School. Mrs. Schwalbe was employed as a legal secretary for Attorney Albert Silverman for 15 years. She was a homemaker who enjoyed cooking, reading, and spending time with her family. She was also an avid skier and ice skater. Survivors include her husband Norman Schwalbe, married July 1, 1962; one son, Hal Schwalbe and his wife Liane of Indianapolis, IN; brother Irving Mindlin and his wife Esther of Pittsfield; and several nieces and nephews. She was predeceased by four brothers; Robert Mindlin, David Mindlin, Herman Mindlin, and Arthur Mindlin. Graveside services took place Thursday, July 16 at Ahavath Sholem Cemetery, Pittsfield, with Rabbi David Weiner, spirtitual leader of Congregation Knesset Israel, officiating.

Charlotte Gross, 80, rarely missed a performance at Tanglewood SOUTH ORANGE, NJ – Charlotte Gross passed away on Wednesday, July 22, surrounded by her family. Born in White Plains, NY on January 21, 1935 to John and Gertrude (Nurick) Edelstein, Mrs. Gross graduated from Cornell University with a BA in English. She was a salesperson with Sheldon Gross Realty of West Orange, NJ and the

Berkshires. She volunteered with the NJ Philharmonic Orchestra, the Special Olympics, and The Bach Society of the Berkshires, as well as with Temple Israel’s Women’s Group (now Sharey Tefilo Israel) of South Orange. She loved spending time with her many friends and large family at her weekend home in the Berkshires for more than 40 years. She and her husband, Sheldon, rarely missed a performance in the music shed at Tanglewood. Mrs. Gross is survived by her husband, Sheldon Gross, to whom she was married for 55 years. She leaves her brother, Mike Edelstein and wife, Evie; her children, Jon Gross and Marcy Gross Glick; stepdaughters Barbara Gross (Michael) Franklin and Jackie Gross (Stuart) Siris; and five grandchildren, Adam, Lorah, Travis, Alex, and Jennifer. Funeral services were held at Bernheim Apter, Livingston, NJ on Friday, July 24. Donations can be made to the Adam Goodkind NF2 Family Fund at the Children’s Tumor Foundation, 120 Wall Street, 16th floor, New York, NY 10005-3904 or via the internet at https://grow.ctf.org/familyfund and selecting the Adam Goodkind NF2 fund.

Donald Shack, 86, champion of the underdog NEW YORK – Donald Shack died peacefully at home on Sunday, July 12, after a short illness, surrounded by his family. Mr. Shack graduated from Williams College (Phi Beta Kappa) and Harvard Law School before serving in the Korean War. For more than 60 years he had a distinguished career practicing law in New York City as the managing partner of Golenbock and Berell, a founding partner of Shack, Siegel, Katz & Flaherty, and a partner of Blank Rome.

Create a Jewish Legacy Campaign Please remember the Jewish Community in your will.

Irene Schwalbe, 84, legal secretary and homemaker

He was an indispensable adviser to his clients, many of whom became lifelong friends. Actively involved for years in the New York Civil Liberties Union, Mr. Shack was a champion of the underdog. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he was heartbroken when his Dodgers moved west but quickly shifted his “wait until next year” brand of fandom to the Mets. He loved tennis, sailing, swimming, lively conversation, theater, music, good books, good food, and good Scotch. He was most of all devoted to his family. He lost his loving wife of 61 years, Barbara, barely a month ago. Mr. Shack was a rock in the lives of his children, David and Laura; a beacon for his grandchildren, Nicole, Joseph, and Francesca, to whom he was affectionately known as Papa; and looked forward to providing direction to his great-grandchildren, Emma and Olivia. The family will miss his penetrating mind, his social conscience, his deep love for his family, and his loyalty to his friends. A memorial service was held at Plaza Jewish Community Chapel, New York, NY on Sunday, July 26 Contributions may be made to The American Civil Liberties Union.

Helen Tallen, 97, registered nurse and x-ray technician PITTSFIELD – Mrs. Helen D. Tallen, 97, of 64 Merriam St., died Friday, July 24 at her home. Born in Boston on October 16, 1917, a daughter of the late Reuben & Tillie (Cohen) Sandler, she attended Boston schools and graduated from the former Beth Israel Hospital School for Women, class of 1939, and received her registered nurse degree. In 1961, she graduated from Northeastern University and received an x-ray technician degree. Mrs. Tallen was employed at Boston Hospital for 32 years, moved to Cape Cod in 1971, was employed at Cape Cod Hospital from 1971-1974,

and then retired and moved to the Berkshires in 1979. She was a member of Congregation Knesset Israel and a member of the Beth Israel Hospital Boston Nurse’s Alumni and the Verizon Huga-Bear. She enjoyed crocheting and made baby hats for the nursery at Berkshire Medical Center. Her husband, Harry Z. Tallen died on April 27, 2007. They were married on April 5, 1941. Mrs. Tallen was predeceased by a brother, Joseph Sandler, in 1954. Funeral services took place on Monday, July 27, at Congregation Knesset Israel, with Rabbi David Weiner, spiritual leader, officiating. Burial followed in Knesset Israel Cemetery. Memorial donations may be made to Berkshire Humane Society in care of Flynn & Dagnoli-Bencivenga Funeral Home, 5 Elm St., Pittsfield, MA 01201. The Jewish Federation of the Berkshires extends its condolences to one of our most dedicated and cherished volunteers, Merle Ferber, whose mother Ethel passed on July 22 in Bronx, NY.

Eugene Wein, 93, Drury High School’s #1 Sports Fan NORTH ADAMS – Eugene Wein, longtime Northern Berkshire civic and business leader and devoted Drury High School sports fan, died on Sunday, August 2 at Williamstown Commons, surrounded by his loving family. Born in North Adams on February 7, 1922, a son of the late Harry and Anna (Kronick) Wein, he attended schools in North Adams, graduating from Drury High School in 1939. He then attended Massachusetts State College (now UMass) where he was the manager of the football team. After graduating in 1943, he enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps and served during WWII as a corporal.

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Mr. Wein was the longtime owner and operator of Wein’s Shoe Store on Eagle Street in North Adams. He was an active member and former president of Congregation Beth Israel, where he coached basketball in the North Adams church league. His love of basketball extended to Drury High School, where he was acknowledged as Drury’s #1 sports fan. He served as master of ceremonies at many endof-year sports banquets and in 2002, Drury High School renamed its annual Christmas tournament the “Gene Wein Holiday Tournament.” Mr. Wein married Jacqueline Diana Winer on October 12, 1947, in Springfield, MA. She died on May 2, 2006. Survivors include a son, Lawrence Wein of Palo Alto, CA, and three daughters, Sherry Wein and Roberta Sullivan of North Adams and Paulette Wein of Adams; sons-in-law, John Sullivan and Robert Wray and daughter-in-law, Anne Wein; and six grandchildren, Andrew Sullivan, Aaron Wray, Emily Sullivan Pace, and Alexander, Nicole, and Natasha Wein. He also leaves his sisters, Selma Weitz of Brookfield, CT, and Gertrude Silverstein of Needham, MA. He was predeceased by a brother, Dr. Stanley Wein of Valley Stream, NY. The family would like to thank the Williamstown Commons staff for its extraordinary care and compassion, and to express their deepest gratitude to friend and caregiver Stephen Michalenko. Funeral services were held Wednesday, August 5 at MCLA’s Church Street Center. Burial followed at Beth Israel Cemetery. Memorial donations may be made to Congregation Beth Israel or the Drury High School Basketball Booster Club, in care of the Flynn & Dagnoli Funeral Home, 521 West Main Street North Adams, MA 01247. The Jewish Federation of the Berkshires extends condolences to the family of Boris Berlin who passed way unexpectedly. A graveside funeral took place on Wednesday, August 5 at Knesset Israel cemetery.

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Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

September 4 to October 13, 2015

SEE the Berkshire Jewish Voice in at

COLOR

Programs take take place place Mondays Mondays and and Thursdays Thursdays at at 10:45 10:45 a.m. a.m. Lunch Lunch is is served served Mondays, Monday and Thursday Programs Tuesdays at 12Thursdays p.m, through September 3. Tuesday lunch resumes on September 8. and at noon. Venue: Congregation Congregation Knesset Knesset Israel, Israel, 16 16 Colt Colt Rd, Rd, Pittsfield, Pittsfield, MA. MA. Venue:

www. jewishberkshires. org

SEPTEMBER

OCTOBER

Monday, 7...............Closed for Labor Day

Thursday, 1..............10:45 a.m., Author Ruth Sidransky will talk about her life as a writer. Lunch: Hot dogs and beans, cranberry juice, salad, hot dog rolls, pineapple, and tea.

Tuesday, 8................ Falafel**#, pineapple juice, Tahini sauce and/or yogurt sauce, simple cabbage slaw, pita bread, sugar cookies, coffee, tea, and milk for coffee. Thursday, 10............10:45 a.m. “I am Glad There are Books. They are Better than Heaven” with Jane Wald, Executive Director of the Emily Dickinson Museum. Lunch: Roasted chicken**#, noodle soup, Parve kugel with apples and cinnamon, asparagus cuts n tips, salad, Challah, honey cake, and tea. Monday, 14.............Closed for Rosh Hashanah Tuesday, 15..............Closed for Rosh Hashanah Thursday, 17............10:45 a.m. Qigong with Jeffrey Gordon. Lunch: Tuna fish and cottage cheese platters**, potato salad, whole wheat bread, pudding, coffee, tea, and milk for coffee. Monday, 21.............10:45 a.m., “Jazz in Blues and The American Songbook” with guitarist, Sam Rosen and pianist, Richard Evans. Lunch: Chicken with sundried tomatoes and artichokes**#, salad, Italian vegetables, rice pilaf, French bread, mandarin oranges, and tea. Tuesday, 22..............Salami and pastrami frittata#, celery rice soup, vegetable medley, multi-grain bread, peaches and gingersnaps, and tea. Thursday, 24............10:45 a.m., “A Festival of Non-Fiction: A Look into Wind-up Fest” with Paul Sturtz, Artistic Director of Williamstown Film Festival. Lunch: Vegetable lasagna, salad, beets, garlic bread sticks, strawberry shortcake, coffee, tea, and milk for coffee. Monday, 28.............Closed for Sukkot Tuesday, 29..............Closed for Sukkot Linking Young Jewish Women in Their Fight Against Breast Cancer (866) 474-2774 www.sharsheret.org

Monday, 5...............Closed for Shemini Atzeret Tuesday, 6................Closed for Simchat Torah Thursday, 8..............10:45 a.m., “The Jewish Author Series” with Hugh Black. Lunch: Chicken tenders#, tomato soup, green beans, sweet potato fries, potato bread, tropical fruit salad, and tea. Monday, 12.............Closed for Columbus Day Tuesday, 13..............Spaghetti and meat sauce#, salad, broccoli, Italian bread, pears, and tea. Thursday, 15............10:45 a.m., Program to be Announced. Lunch: Spinach mushroom quiche, pineapple juice, beets, salad, rolls, raspberry pillow cookies, coffee, tea, and milk for coffee. Monday, 19.............10:45 a.m., Program to be Announced. Lunch: Chicken piccata**#, Italian wedding soup, rosemary potatoes, green beans, French bread, grapes, and tea. Tuesday, 20..............Sloppy Joes#, chicken noodle soup, baby carrots, salad, hamburger rolls, brownies, and tea. Thursday, 22............10:45 a.m., Program to be Announced. Lunch: Fresh fish**, curried asparagus soup, mixed vegetables, lentils & rice, rye bread, bread pudding, coffee, tea, and milk for coffee.

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Your Federation Presents Jewishly Delicious from Jewish Farm to Jewish Table GREAT BARRINGTON – On Thursday, October 8, the Jewish Federation of the Berkshires hosts its latest Jewishly Delicious event at Hevreh of Southern Berkshire. The theme is “Jewish Farm to Jewish Table,” and this installment features both a hands-on cooking class and a talk about Jewish farming principles. At 10 a.m., chef-instructor Julie Gale, owner of At the Kitchen Table Cooking School, will use locally-sourced produce to teach participants how to prepare a beautiful, healthy, and delicious Israeli Mediterranean mezze of salads and spreads. The class costs $20 and is limited to 14 participants, who must reserve and pre-pay for their spots by October 2 through the Federation at (413) 4424360, ext. 10. At 11 a.m., all are invited to attend a free talk by Shamu Sadeh, director of the Adamah Fellowship program at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center. Sadeh will discuss Jewish farming and how Adamah relates these Jewish principles into their organic farming and farm-to-table philosophy. Tastings of the mezze salads, plus preserves and pickled items from Adamah’s farm, will follow the event. Items from Adamah’s farm store will also be on sale. Hevreh is located at 270 State Street in Great Barrington.

About Julie Gale, Chef and Cooking Instructor In 2001, after working as a social worker, Julie followed her lifelong passion for cooking and opened her own cooking school in Westchester County,

NY. In January 2010, she opened At the Kitchen Table Cooking School in a teaching kitchen in Hillsdale, NY. In addition to private and group lessons, Julie caters small events such as wedding rehearsal dinners, anniversary celebrations, and private cooking parties, and has been retreat chef for the Won Dharma Retreat Center in Claverack, preparing vegetarian Korean meals for visiting groups. Gale is the author of the children’s cookbook I Want to Cook, and is currently at work on a memoir with recipes.

Chef Julie Gale

About the Adamah Fellowship The Adamah Fellowship is a threemonth leadership training program for Jewish adults ages Adamah fellows 20-32 that integrates organic agriculture, farm-to-table living, Jewish learning, community building, and spiritual practice. Adamah is located in Falls Village, CT, where fellows live surrounded by the beauty of the natural world and the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center.

hailing a cabbage Shamu Sadeh co-founded Adamah and has been its program director since 2004. He has led the growth of Adamah into the most productive Jewish educational farm in the country, with a transformative fellowship program that has produced dozens of

leaders in the Jewish farming, environmental education, and food movements. Adamah’s 200 alumni include food justice advocates, rabbis, farmers, community organizers, teachers, chefs, and green business leaders. Before coming to Adamah, Sadeh was a professor of environmental studies, writer, Jewish educator, and wilderness guide. He directed the Teva Learning Center in its early years and completed a doctorate in Educational Leadership. Sadeh has the yichus – ancestral connections – for Adamah from his great-grandparents and father, Jewish farmers and gardeners who practiced the mystical arts of composting and soil conservation. In 2010, the Forward named Sadeh one of the “Forward 50” who made significant contributions to Jewish life in America.

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Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

September 4 to October 13, 2015

Your Federation Presents

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Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

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Your Federation Presents 1

Thank You, Major Donors The Jewish Federation of the Berkshires hosted more than 170 supporters at its Major Donors Breakfast on July 12 at Cranwell Resort & Spa in Lenox. Co-chair Natalya Yantovsky recounted the moving story of how her family fled anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe and the impact the Jewish Federation of the Berkshires had in helping them create a better, stronger Jewish life for themselves and their children. While Natalya expressed gratitude for the past, she also emphasized the urgent needs of the present. “Right now there are thousands of Jews caught in conflicts fleeing anti-Semitism in Europe,” she said. “Sergey and I feel deeply that through Federation we can provide the support they need for a better life.” Natalya identified the vital role that major donors play in ensuring future success. Major donors, she said, provide 80 percent of the Federation’s campaign funds. She added: “I also want to recognize the many second homeowners who are with us today. More than 40 percent of the 1,200 gifts Federation receives come from you. We want you to know how grateful we are that you have chosen to be part of what we do.” Attendees were treated to an inspiring performance by violinist Yevgeny Kutik, Natalya’s cousin, whose family was also resettled here. He gives back by advocating on behalf of the Jewish Federations of North America to raise awareness about the worldwide refugee crisis. About his past, Kutik says: “As a kid, I always remember thinking that I had two families – my immediate one and then the Jewish community of the Berkshires. It was a wonderful way to grow up.” In advocating for Federation, Kutik shared “the most important thing I learned from this community is that when people come together, they truly can heal the world.” The event raised critical dollars for the Federation’s local programs and services and for the growing needs of Jews in the Ukraine, France, and Israel.

1. Amy Lindner-Lesser, Jewish Federation of the Berkshires president, with Co-Chairs Natalya & Sergey Yantovsky 2. Yevgeny Kutik 3. Natalya telling her family’s story 4. Ellen Silberstein, Helene Berger 5. Howard & Judy Levin, Ed & Carol Oshinsky 7. Paul & Joan Gluck, Gloria Luria

6. Michael Albert, Ken Stark

8. Robert & Elaine Baum, Joan & Michael Ury

14. Eitan & Malka Evan, Sharon & Ira Siegel

9. Jill & Hal Gaffin, Mimi Cohen

15. Hal Gaffin, Mimi & Saul Cohen

10. Jane Glaser, Elihu & Marilyn Katz 11. Anne Schnesel, Elaine & Ben Silberstein 12. Howard Levi, Alan & Toby Morganstein, Ruth Glazerman 13. William & Lynn Foggle, Stan Greenfield, Gaye Moelis, Hope Silverman

16. Arnold &Tatyana Mazurenko (Natalya’s parents) and Lyubov Kutik (Natalya & Yevgeny’s grandmorther) with the Yantovskys 17. Alan & Toby Morganstein 18. Phyllis & Robert Yawitt, Judy & Howard Levin 19. Ellen Masters, Gary Schiff

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Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

September 4 to October 13, 2015

Your Federation Presents Affiliate with a Congregation.

You, the congregation, and the Jewish community benefit when you do. • YOU GET the Jewish enrichment and spiritual nourishment you are seeking. • YOU GET the rabbinical support you need in times of joy and sorrow. • YOU RECONNECT with your community and your Jewish roots. • YOU CAN PARTICIPATE in a variety of services, classes, and programs that keep Judaism alive and flourishing in Berkshire County. • THE CONGREGATION IS THE INSTITUTION that has sustained the Jewish people for two millenia throughout the world. Orthodox, Conservative, Reconstructionist, or Reform, the Jewish community wins when you join the congregation of your choice.

The Jewish Federation of the Berkshires encourages you to affiliate.

Inspired Jewish Learning for Children of All Ages Everyone Welcome

join us for

High Holy Day Services

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call to speak with Rabbi Jodie Gordon or Joan Goldberg Munch today 270 State Road / Great Barrington, MA 01230 / 413.528.6378 Member, Union for Reform Judaism

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Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

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BERKSHIRE JEWISH VOICES

Raising the Bar in Bar (and Bat) Mitzvahs: How Much Is Too High? By Mara Goodman-Davies

I remember sitting in my obstetrician’s office in Manhattan’s Lenox Hill Hospital almost 12 years ago. “Congratulations,” the doctor said, smiling as he showed me the sonogram images. “You’re going to have a baby girl.” If you ask a cross-section of expectant mothers what they were thinking when presented with this exact scenario, I am sure you’d get answers such as “Thrill! Wonder! Pink hearts! Sweet kisses! Golden ringlets!” My all-consuming thought, however, at that profound instance was: “BAT MITZVAH!” And not just any old balloon-twisting, line dancing, kasha knishes and franksin-a-blanket-bat mitzvah. Right then and there, I knew I wanted a bat mitzvah blowout! Without shame, I envisioned a knock-your-socks-off, black tie, bank-busting three day extravaganza of champagne toasts feting 12 years of my soon-to-be daughter’s glorious existence. I wanted a parade of ice sculptures, huge floral centerpieces, and invitations with rhinestones and purple fake fur. I imagined music and dancing. Glamour and glitter. A chocolate fountain. Even then, I knew that above all I wanted to invite as many friends and family from around the world to share in my happiness at having brought a little girl into this world, who OF COURSE would grow up to an “aishes chayil,” a woman of valor, if not the doctor who cured cancer and/ or the president of the United States. Doesn’t every Jewish mother think the same things? Yes, all these crazy, wonderful ideas ran through my head as I wiped the ultrasound jelly off of my round stomach. Walking out onto the

streets of New York, trying not to step in pigeon droppings as subway steam blew in my face, I soon came back to reality. I knew that however high my hopes, I could not control my not-yet-born daughter’s fate – but I could still give her a heck of a bat mitzvah. This was my right as a mother-to-be! You see, I had more than dreamed of a fairytale reception for myself. Years prior, I had planned two gorgeous, romantic destination weddings, one in the English countryside and the other at the Breakers Hotel in my hometown of Palm Beach, FL. What happened? My engagement to the same creep got called off twice. (You bet I kept the ring.) So, when I finally met, Justin, my bashert and Prince Charming, I had ice cold feet about planning another big wedding. In the end, we had a lovely and sensible low-key luncheon wedding at my uncle’s country club on Long Island. But I told my husband that someday I was going to want to throw a lavish party to celebrate a happy family occasion. My dear one agreed to this, and we went about creating the necessary financial “party-savings plan” for our future. And when my husband came home on the day I visited my OB-GYN, I met him at our front door waving the sonogram printout ecstatically while screaming: “We’re having a BAT MITZVAH!!!!” Eleven years later, I am deep into planning my daughter’s bas mitzvah (we like to use the more sibilantly hamish-sounding “bas” instead of “bat”). While my nearest and dearest are thrilled for an event they know is SO important to me, I’ve also heard comments like: “Oh Mara, today bat mitzvahs are subdued affairs. Nobody spends much or makes that big of a deal anymore.” And: “The food doesn’t have to be that good. As long as they have something to hold in their hands and eat, it will be fine.” Plus: “The focus should be on the ‘mitzvah,’ not the ‘bar.’” Finally: “After all, too much is too much. It just isn’t done in the Berkshires.” Well guess what folks? Yes it is!

Rather than being diverted by this band of bleak-andbland-blah bat-mitzvah bummers, I instead see rainbows when they try to rain on my parade. Really, who has the right to put the price on my joy or tell me how spirituality should look? You want to try to convince me that a 12 year old girl is going to have a life-changing, soul-shaking epiphany from davening for endless hours on one Saturday morning? Not unless Taylor Swift is the rabbi. I can’t remember exactly what I was thinking during my bat mitzvah, but I definitely wasn’t sitting on the bimah contemplating my future life as a committed Jewish woman, a supporter of Israel, and a Jewish community leader. I was probably daydreaming about what Sean Cassidy, John Travolta, and Leif Garret would look like in a tallis and yarmulka. Sure, my daughter will learn a lot about our Jewish history and customs from her preparation. I also know she’ll become a better person from the two mitzvah projects she’ll be doing. But let’s get real folks – my bat mitzvah girl is still just a kiddo. As she grows up, she will process G-d, Judaism and the whole religion thing at her own pace. So why shouldn’t we make her bat mitzvah about bringing

our family and friends together to revel in a fan-tab-u-lous life-affirming party? We could easily take the money we’ve carefully saved and go on a big trip all by ourselves. We don’t have to entertain over 100 people for three full days. But we don’t want to ask everyone to come from far and wide just to feed them cold fish on a semi-stale bagel. Our joy surrounding this bas mitzvah will not just come from our daughter’s big achievement. It will be the collective consciousness of love, support, and giving that will fill our hearts for many years to come. So what if we want to do it in a glammed-up, jubilant style? Funny enough, my mother from Florida will be eightynine years old next year. She is the only close relative I have left. Although she is considered a mighty force of nature, the truth is she may not be around for my daughter’s wedding, just like my father wasn’t around for mine. Thank goodness, my father shared our same “live now” philosophy and gave me his version of “Bat Mitzvah of the Century,” so many years ago. Looking back, I know he enjoyed and appreciated my bat mitzvah way more than I probably did at my young age. I believe that too was a blessing, because he got to experience an amazing

level of joy in his all too short life. I am also glad to say I am not alone in this thinking. I have been to some beautiful bar and bat mitzvahs here in the Berkshires that have fit all budgets, families, and religious requirements. The constant that has made them all so special is the love that was shared when people came together. Those of us who make a big production might leave ourselves wide open for ridicule. Sure, it can be quite amusing to poke fun at a flamboyant family event that resembles “My Big Fat Jewish Bat Mitzvah.” On the other hand, my attitude is that we’re not showing off for our friends and family – what we are really doing is showing up for them. Life throws us all a lot of unexpected tzuris and angst. Therefore, I am fortified by knowing I am taking advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime simcha to create joyful merriment for the irreplaceable people in our lives. Now what could be more spiritually rewarding than that? Let the party begin! Mara Goodman-Davies is the author of two novels and two works of non-fiction. She is on the board of directors of the Jewish Federation of the Berkshires.

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Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

September 4 to October 13, 2015

BERKSHIRE JEWISH VOICES

Monumental Shifts in Reform High Holy Day Liturgy by Rabbi Neil P.G. Hirsch Each year just before the High Holy Days, I find myself having this conversation: “Rabbi, I really look forward to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services each year,” the other person will say, “but I struggle with my belief in God. All I read in the prayer book is about fearing God, and trembling before the gates. Avinu Malkeinu, our Father our King – I can’t believe in that sort of God.” I relate to what the other person tells me. I, too, get stuck in the difficult theological language. Prayers like Unetanei Tokef, where we talk about who shall live and who shall die, challenge a prayer’s personal theology. Still, I take comfort in knowing that our tradition has space for a flexible relationship with God. The High Holy Days are an opportunity to explore that relationship. Much of the language of the High Holiday liturgy revolves around the concept of Yirat Shamayim, the fear and awe of Heaven. We read about the Binding of Isaac, in which God commands Abraham to make a terrible offering of his son. This serves as one version of what our tradition means by fearing God. For many, loving a fearful God is unrealistic. Why bother trying? In truth, if we can confront that which challenges us, per-

haps we can overcome it. Our tradition teaches that there are two aspects fearing of God, one of which is a sense of awe when witness to majesty. It’s about wonder. Suddenly, fearing God does not seem so fearful. Many moments of day-today life contain these opportunities for awe. It’s there in a beautiful hike, in the quieter moments on the front porch with the morning coffee and daily crossword, or in witnessing children at play. Those sweet moments conjure up a sense of simple wonder; surely something sacred is happening. Our prayer lives, too, offer the opportunity for awe-filled moments—when a particular phrase in our liturgy resonates for us, when we feel the uplift that comes from a community’s collective singing voice, or when we hug friends and family as we enter the shul for services. So, when we arrive at the High Holy Days, and encounter language that describes a God whom we should fear, a God who is wrathful and violent, we long for a counter-text. God can also be kind, loving, and patient. The High Holy Days invite us into a relationship with that God, as well. This year, for the first time in a generation, the Reform

movement releases a new machzor, entitled Mishkan HaNefesh. At Reform congregations all around North America, including Hevreh, congregants will have both the text and counter-texts. At Hevreh, we will begin to use the new machzor in select services — on the second day of Rosh Hashanah and on Yom Kippur afternoon. This new High Holiday prayer book is a significant milestone in our community, as it also challenges each of us who prays with it to consider the different aspects of our relationships with God. The editors of the new machzor intentionally include varied theologies, because, as Rabbi David Stern, senior rabbi at Temple Emanu-El of Dallas, writes, “Names delimit, and God is limitless.” Each year, as the High Holy Days arrive, I am reminded that our relationships with

PHOTO: DAVID A.M. WILENSKY/JTA

God—our attempts to firmly believe in God—are complicated. Language can be sticky, so I am grateful that there are opportunities to both challenge and complicate God. The Reform movement’s new machzor is an awesome opportunity, in the truest sense of the word, to unstick ourselves from

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problematic language, and to further explore our personal relationships with God. Rabbi Neil P.G. Hirsch was installed as spiritual leader at Hevreh of Southern Berkshire during the summer.

Elul 5775 - Tishri 5776

Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

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BERKSHIRE JEWISH VOICES

Traveling with Jewish Taste Jewish Soul Food: From Minsk to Marrakesh – Global Cooking to Satisfy Guf and Nefesh By Carol Goodman Kaufman It was such fun cooking my way through Ottolenghi and Tamimi’s cookbook, Jerusalem, that I’ve decided to try another. This time it’s Janna Gur’s recent volume, Jewish Soul Food: From Minsk to Marrakesh (Schocken, 2014), a large format, beautifully illustrated volume whose photographs are cause for salivating. Anybody who comes within ten feet of my kitchen, whether family, friend, or plumber, must sample the results of my experiments. I started my journey with Gur’s version of krupnik. No, not the honey-spiced vodka of the same name, but the delicious Polish mushroom barley soup. More like a stew than a soup, it is chock full of stick-to-your ribs ingredients perfect for a chilly night (luckily – or not – we had a cold streak in June): barley, two kinds of mushroom, onions, garlic, carrots, celeriac, parsnip, potatoes, and more. Fall will be here sooner than we like to admit, so try this soup. I had noticed that many recipes from both Gur’s and Ottolenghi’s cookbooks call for preserved lemons, a condiment commonly used in Indian, North African, and Cambodian cuisine, so I decided to try my hand at making them. I was, frankly, a bit nervous to pull out the mason jars – visions of botulism poisoning dancing in my head – but then relieved to learn that the Bell company now advises that putting them through a cycle in the dishwasher is good enough to prevent a hideous death. The lemons sat for a month in the fridge steeping in spices and chili peppers, at which point said flavorings were removed. Then they sat alone in their lemon juice bath for another couple months. The lemons’ inaugural appearance came in the form of a Moroccan Spicy Carrot Salad, an appetizer commonly seen on mezze platters – and for good reason. Their bright color makes for a sunny visual contrast to the darker eggplant and tabouli salads, while the lemons add a notable punch to the salad, assisted ably by garlic, cumin, and mint. Another salad I tried was Blue Ones and Red Ones, a Romanian dish from Gur’s childhood that she claims is the best eggplant salad she’s ever tasted. It is not that for me, but the combination of eggplants, tomatoes, onions, and garlic provides tang and texture. As for the onions, I would recommend using a sweet variety such as vidalia, so as not to overpower the other ingredients. Our first entrée from the book was Salona, an Iraqi sweet and sour fish casserole made with eggplant and tomatoes. The house smelled wonderful and the dish featured an interesting blend of flavors. The eggplant, however, was a bit tough, so using the long and thin ichiban variety, cut into coins, might yield more tender results, and eliminate the extra step of peeling. T’bit (Stuffed Chicken and Rice Hamin with Honey and Spices), is a Sephardic version of cholent, the long-cooking stew observant Jews prepare for the Shabbat afternoon meal. This Iraqi version calls for baharat, a mix of spices that includes cardamom, nutmeg, ginger, allspice, cinnamon, salt, and pepper. The heady aroma of the chicken cooking in spiced rice filled the house with anticipation, and we were rewarded with an excellent meal (I was thrilled, because the mehutanim were with us for the weekend). The chicken fell off the bone, so much so that I would recommend letting the bird cool after taking it out of the oven so that you can remove the skin and bones before serving. The two former recipes both call for grated tomatoes and onions in addition to chopped, something I had never encountered before. I’m not sure that this step actually added much to the recipes, so you can probably skip this if you are short on time. My favorite recipe in the book (so far) was Bulgarian Peppers Stuffed with Rice and Meat. We don’t use red meat in our house very often, so preparing this recipe was a special occasion, and I prayed that it would be worth the cholesterol. Was it ever. The variety of textures – onions, pine nuts, ground beef – paired beautifully with the savory flavors and aromas. Be forewarned that the recipe is way off on several points, however. The called-for ten to twelve peppers for ten ounces of meat is pretty stingy. I used a pound of ground beef for seven large peppers. And, the recipe’s call for a cooking time of one and a half hours would have rendered my peppers into mush. I found they were perfect at forty-five minutes. As a bonus, the orange peppers looked like cheerful little pumpkins with jaunty caps, making me file this recipe away for use on Sukkot, when stuffed foods are traditional fare to honor the harvest holiday. The first Jerusalem kugel I ever saw was actually in Jerusalem, at the Yeshurun synagogue on King George Street. Tall and imposing, it was unlike any kugel I had ever tasted, a contrast of sweet and spicy. The very few ingredients in Gur’s Ashkenazi Jerusalemite Jerusalem kugel recipe include a full tablespoon of black pepper that, combined with caramelized sugar, made for an unusual result. The family loved it. I could take it or leave it. For dessert, I decided on Bonnie’s Jam and Pecan Rugelach, an American twist on the traditional Ashkenazi pastry. Using apricot preserves, toasted pecans, brown sugar, and cinnamon in a dough made with lots of butter and cream cheese, it was decadently rich – and delicious. We and the mehutanim polished off three dozen in three days. Deadline loomed, so I had to stop before trying more dessert recipes. My bathroom scale is heaving a sigh of relief, but I’ve given it notice that I still have Sep-

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hardic date-filled cookies and flourless double almond cookies on my to-do list. Jewish Soul Food, while providing a nice selection of recipes from Diaspora kitchens, suffers from a lack of thoroughness in the editing. Throughout the book, I found several glaring errors and omissions that were frustrating. Gur, for example, tells the reader that it is okay to put the eggplant into the oven or broiler for Blue Ones and Red Ones, but doesn’t say for how long or at what temperature to do so. In the rugelach recipe, her neglecting to advise the reader to roll the dough out on a floured surface can lead to messy results for the inexperienced baker. And sometimes, the title of the recipe and its components don’t match. Honey was in the long name of T’bit, but was not listed among the ingredients. The stew was fine without the honey, but could it have been so much better with it?

Moroccan Spicy Carrot Salad Serves 6 to 8 I chose to make the pickled lemons myself because I like to do stuff like that. To make this recipe a lot faster (the lemons take several months to cure), hie thee to your nearest specialty grocer and buy them.

Ingredients: 6 medium carrots, sliced into ¾-inch (2-cm) coins 3 cups water 1½ teaspoons sugar 1½ teaspoons salt 3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice 1 to 2 tablespoons harissa 1 tablespoon pickled (Moroccan) lemons, finely chopped (see

below or store-bought) 5 garlic cloves, minced 3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice 1 teaspoon ground cumin ¼ cup extra virgin olive oil Salt ¼ cup fresh cilantro or mint leaves, chopped

Directions: Put the sliced carrots in a saucepan and add the water, sugar, salt, and lemon juice. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat, and simmer, partially covered, for 10 to 12 minutes, until the carrots are tender but still have some bite. Transfer the carrots to a bowl (save some of the cooking liquid). Add the harissa, pickled lemons, garlic, lemon juice, cumin, olive oil, salt, and about ¼ cup of the cooking liquid and mix. Let cool. Taste and adjust the seasoning. Refrigerate for a few hours, preferably overnight, to let the flavors meld. The salad will keep for 3 to 4 days in the fridge. Before serving, bring to room temperature and toss with the cilantro or mint. Excerpted from JEWISH SOUL FOOD by Janna Gur. Copyright © 2014 by Janna Gur. Excerpted by permission of Schocken Books, a division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Carol Goodman Kaufman is a psychologist and author with a passion for travel and food. She is currently at work on a food history/cookbook, tracing the paths that some of our favorite foods have taken from their origins to appear on dinner plates and in cultural rites and artifacts around the world. She invites readers to read her blog at carolgoodmankaufman.com and to follow her on Twitter @goodmankaufman.

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Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

September 4 to October 13, 2015

l HIGH HOLY SERVICES AND CELEBRATIONS l The Jewish Federation of the Berkshires wishes all a happy and healthy 5776. The schedules that appear were provided by local congregations, which should be contacted directly for more information, confirmation of times and events, and details about other planned holiday season programming that may not be listed. The congregational directory with contact information and addresses is on page 24. Services will take place at the locations listed in the directory, except as noted in the listings that follow. Candle lighting and Havdalah times are for Pittsfield and were taken from the Congregation Knesset Israel calendar.

High Holy Day Dates Holiday

Date

Slichot

Saturday, September 5

Erev Rosh Hashanah

Sunday, September 13

Rosh Hashanah – First Day

Monday, September 14

Rosh Hashanah – Second Day

Tuesday, September 15

Yom Kippur/Kol Nidre

Tuesday, September 22

Yom Kippur

Wednesday, September 23

Erev Sukkot

Sunday, September 27

Sukkot – First Day Yom Tov

Monday, September 28

Sukkot – Second Day Yom Tov

Tuesday, September 29

Sukkot – Chol Ha’Moed

Wednesday, September 30 – Saturday, October 3

Hoshanah Rabbah

Sunday, October 4

Shemini Atzeret

Monday, October 5

Simchat Torah

Tuesday, October 6

SERVICES Slichot – Contemplative service featuring stories, music, and guided meditations at 7:30 p.m., followed by dessert reception. Erev Rosh Hashanah – Service at 7:30 p.m., followed by oneg. Rosh Hashanah 1st Day – Family services (pre-school/grade school) at 9 a.m. Congregational service at 10:30 a.m. Rosh Hashanah 2nd Day – Outdoor nature service, with special liturgy and readings, at Pleasant Valley Wildlife Sanctuary, 472 West Mountain Road, Lenox. Yom Kippur/Kol Nidre – Service at 7:30 p.m. Yom Kippur – Service at 10:30 a.m. Study session at 1 p.m. Afternoon service at 3 p.m. Yizkor/Ne’ilah at 5 p.m., followed by breakthe-fast (please RSVP). Other Events: Memorial Service of Faith, 10:30 a.m. at Pittsfield Cemetery.

Havdalah

6:48 p.m. 7:44 p.m.

6:32 p.m. 7:30 p.m.

6:23 p.m. 7:19 p.m.

6:11 p.m. 7:07 p.m.

Hevreh of Southern Berkshire

Temple Anshe Amunim “This new year marks a unique milestone,” says Rabbi Josh Breindel. “Our sanctuary has been completely remodeled to reflect a modern esthetic. Even more importantly, with our new elevator and redesigned bimah (raised ritual space), everyone can participate equally in our worship.” Temple members leave the synagogue on the second day of Rosh Hashanah for a special outdoor service at an Audubon nature preserve in Lenox. Also new this year, Cantorial Soloist Dara Rosenblatt will join Rabbi Breindel and the temple choir to help lead the musical portions of the Reform service.

Candle Lighting

Rabbi Neil P.G. Hirsch will lead his first High Holy Day services at Hevreh, joined by Rabbi Jodie Gordon, and will use the Reform movement’s new machzor, Mishkan HaNefesh. (Please see Rabbi Hirsch’s article on page 20.)

SERVICES Slichot – Service at 8 p.m. Erev Rosh Hashanah – Service at 8 p.m. Rosh Hashanah 1st Day – Service at 10:30 a.m. Family service at 9 a.m. Tashlich/Great Barrington river walk at 4 p.m. Rosh Hashanah 2nd Day – Service at 10:30 a.m. Yom Kippur/Kol Nidre – Service at 8 p.m. Yom Kippur – Service at 10:30 a.m. Family service at 9 a.m. Afternoon service (with Yizkor and

Ne’ilah) at 3 p.m., followed by break-the-fast. Other events: Sukkot pizza party, Wed., Oct. 3 at 5:30 p.m. Simchat Torah celebration Sunday, Oct. 4 at 6 p.m.

Rimon Resource Center for Jewish Spirituality This year marks the first time Rimon will host High Holy Day services, which will be held at The Guthrie Center, 2 Van Deusenville Road in Great Barrington. Rimon services, led by Rabba Kaya Stern Kaufman, promise to be contemplative, musical, accessible and inspirational. All are welcome.

SERVICES Slichot – At 8 p.m. at the First Congregational Church of Stockbridge, 4 Main Street in Stockbridge, Slichot services will be preceded by a performance

of storyteller Amber Chand’s Searching for the Moon:Tales of Love, Despair, Faith and Forgiveness. Suggested donation $10-$20. Erev Rosh Hashanah – Service at 6 p.m. Rosh Hashanah 1st Day – Service at 10 a.m., followed by potluck vegetarian lunch and tashlich. (No service on Rosh Hashanah 2nd Day.) Yom Kippur/Kol Nidre – Service at 6:30 p.m. Yom Kippur – Service at 10 a.m. (break at 1 p.m.). Afternoon services at 5 p.m. Ne’ilah at 6:30 p.m., followed by a vegetarian potluck break-the-fast (please RSVP).

Berkshire Minyan High Holy Day services will be held at the Friends (Quaker) Meeting House, 280 State Road (Route 23), Great Barrington, a few hundred yards east of the Berkshire Minyan’s regular home at Hevreh of Southern Berkshire. Sukkot services will be held in the Hevreh library. The egalitarian Berkshire Minyan conducts traditional services with interactive discussions around personal themes, using the Conservative movement’s Lev Shalem machzor with the addition of different readings and kavvanot.

SERVICES Erev Rosh Hashanah – Service at 6:30 p.m. Rosh Hashanah 1st Day & Rosh Hashanah 2nd Day – Services at 9:30 a.m. Yom Kippur/Kol Nidre – Service at 6:30 p.m. Yom Kippur – Service at 9:30 a.m. (break at approximately 1:30 p.m.) Afternoon service and Ne’ilah at 5 p.m. Sukkot Yom Tov, Day 1 – Service at 9:30 a.m. (No service on day 2). Shemini Atzeret/Simhat Torah (combined) – Monday, October 5, at 9:30 a.m.

Elul 5775 - Tishri 5776

Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

Page 23

l HIGH HOLY SERVICES AND CELEBRATIONS l Congregation Knesset Israel

Congregation Ahavath Sholom other, the prayers, the music, and the spiritual atmosphere of this awe-filled time. (See Barbara Cohen’s article on page 3 for High Holy Day insights.)

SERVICES

The Jewish holiday season at Congregation Knesset Israel will be the last one with the sanctuary in its present configuration – renewal of the sanctuary will start after the Tishrei holiday season. Families and guests are welcomed at the tuneful, lay-led services, with commentaries on significant Torah themes by Rabbi David Weiner and members of this Conservative congregation.

SERVICES Slichot – Minchah/study session at 7 p.m. Service at 8:15 p.m. Erev Rosh Hashanah – Service at 6:15 p.m. Rosh Hashanah 1st Day – Service at 8:15 a.m. Children’s programming 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Tashlich at Pomeroy Ave. bridge at 5:45 p.m. Evening service at 7 p.m. Rosh Hashanah 2nd Day – Same as Rosh Hashanah 1st Day, sans tashlich. Yom Kippur/Kol Nidre – Service at 6:30 p.m. Yom Kippur – Service at 9 a.m. Children’s programming 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Afternoon service and Ne’ilah at 4:45 p.m. Erev Sukkot – Service at 6:15. Sukkot Yom Tov – Services both days at 9:30. Hoshanah Rabbah – Morning service at 8 a.m. Evening service 6:15 p.m. Shemini Atzeret – Service (with Yizkor) at 9:30 a.m. Simchat Torah dinner at 5:30 p.m. (please RSVP), followed by celebration/dessert at 6:30. Simchat Torah – Service at 9:30 a.m.

Congregation Beth Israel Congregation Beth Israel’s services will be led by Rabbi Rachel Barenblat and visiting student-hazzan Randall Miller. This Reform congregation will use Days of Awe, the machzor put together by Rabbi Barenblat, co-chair of ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal. Childcare will be available.

SERVICES Slichot – Service at 8 p.m., followed by pot luck dinner. Erev Rosh Hashanah – Service at 7:30 p.m. Rosh Hashanah 1st Day – Service at 9:30 a.m., children’s service at 10 a.m. Tashlich follows service, with offsite lunch following (please RSVP). Rosh Hashanah 2nd Day – Service at 9:30 a.m. Yom Kippur/Kol Nidre – Service at 6 p.m., preceded by musical service at 5 p.m. Yom Kippur – Service at 9:30 a.m., children’s service at 10 a.m. Yizkor follows morning service, with mussar study after. Afternoon service at 4 p.m. Ne’ilah at 6 p.m., followed by break-the-fast (please RSVP). Shmini Atzeret – Service (with Yizkor) at 10 a.m. Other events: Sukkot/Shabbat potluck, Friday, Oct. 2 at 5:30 p.m.

Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services take place at Berkshire South Community Center, 15 Crissey Road, Great Barrington. High Holy Day worship with the Reconstructionist Ahavath Sholom community is an inclusive experience, with members participating in myriad ways. Congregants deliver divrai Torah, and help Spiritual Leader Barbara Cohen create an atmosphere of intimacy with each

Slichot – Service at 8 p.m. Erev Rosh Hashanah – Service at 7:30 p.m. Rosh Hashanah 1st Day – Service at 10 a.m., followed by tashlich. Childcare available 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Rosh Hashanah 2nd Day – Same as Rosh Hashanah 1st Day, sans tashlich. No childcare. Yom Kippur/Kol Nidre – Service at 7 p.m. Yom Kippur – Service at 10 a.m. Childcare available 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Ne’ilah at 5:30 p.m., followed by break-the-fast. Simchat Torah celebration on Erev Simchat Torah – Tuesday, Oct. 6 at 7 p.m., followed by dessert.

Chabad of the Berkshires Now in its 11th year, Chabad of the Berkshires welcomes all to its friendly traditional services at its Pittsfield location. Co-directors Rabbi Levi and Sara Volovik say membership is not required – “According to tradition, at the New Year the Doors of Heaven are open – G-d accepts all prayers, from anyone. We open our doors, as well.”

SERVICES Slichot – Service at 9:30 p.m. Erev Rosh Hashanah – Service at 7 p.m., followed by traditional dinner (please RSVP by 9/9 – $36 adult/$12 under 12). Rosh Hashanah 1st Day – Service at 10 a.m. Children’s service 11 a.m. Kiddush following abr, c-crec, crs, green, rsps, sres service. Tashlich at 1:30 p.m. Broker Associate • Lic. in MA & NY Rosh Hashanah 2nd Day – Same 413-637-4200 ext. 16 as Rosh Hashanah 1st Day, sans 413-441-5986 cell tashlich. BarbeG333@aol.com Yom Kippur/Kol Nidre – Service at 7 p.m. oberts & ssociates ealty inc Yom Kippur – Service at 10 a.m. EXCLUSIVE LISTINGS (Yizkor at 12:30 p.m.) Children’s service 11 a.m. Afternoon HOUSES service and Ne’ilah at 5:30 p.m., 112 SPADINA PARKWAY, PITTSFIELD. Wow!! followed by break-the-fast. What a spectacular property right in the heart of Erev Sukkot – Service at 6:30 Pittsfield. A 10 room Georgian Colonial that has p.m., followed by free commusuch graciousness about it.. The grounds have nity dinner at 7 (please RSVP) been lovingly cared for and include a private pool.. Sukkot Yom Tov – Services both There is more than ample room for entertaining both inside and outside.. Close to the Pittsfield days at 10 a.m. Country Club and a short ride to Berkshire Hoshanah Rabbah, Medical Center plus many other Berkshire attractions. $595,000. R2483 Shemini Atzeret, & Simchat 157 MOUNTAIN DRIVE, PITTSFIELD A beautiful Torah – Please see the Chabad split level home in Southeast Pittsfield..roomy and website for details. meticulously cared for.. bordering Sackett Brook..

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Wishing You All A Very Healthy And Happy New Year !!

Page 24

Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

September 4 to October 13, 2015

BERKSHIRE JEWISH CONGREGATIONS & ORGANIZATIONS Berkshire Hills Hadassah P.O. Box 187, Pittsfield, MA (413) 443-4386, Berkshirehillshadassah@gmail.com B’nai B’rith Lodge, No. 326

Welcome to the Jewish Berkshires Everyone is welcome to attend services and events at any of the organizations listed here. Please call the organizations directly to confirm service times or to inquire about membership. Learn more about our Jewish community and find great events on the community calendar at: JEWISHBERKSHIRES.ORG ________________________ Berkshire Minyan Lay-led egalitarian minyan held at Hevreh of Southern Berkshire, 270 State Rd., Great Barrington, MA (413) 229-3618, berkshireminyan.org Services: Saturdays at 9:30 a.m.

Chabad of the Berkshires 450 South St., Pittsfield, MA (413) 499-9899, jewishberkshires.com Check website for service times and locations. Congregation Ahavath Sholom Reconstructionist North St., Great Barrington, MA (413) 528-4197, ahavathsholom.com Services: Fridays at 5:45 p.m., Saturdays at 9:30 a.m. Congregation Beth Israel Reform 53 Lois St., North Adams, MA (413) 663-5830, cbiweb.org Services: Saturdays at 9:30 a.m. Congregation Knesset Israel Conservative 16 Colt Rd., Pittsfield, MA (413) 445-4872, knessetisrael.org Services: Fridays at 5:45 p.m., Saturdays at 9:30 a.m.

Hevreh of Southern Berkshire Reform 270 State Rd., Great Barrington, MA (413) 528-6378, hevreh.org Services: Fridays 7:30 p.m., except first Friday of month, 6 p.m., Saturdays, Torah Study at 9 a.m., services at 10 a.m. Call to confirm. Israel Philatelist Society c/o Rabbi Harold Salzmann 24 Ann Dr., Pittsfield, MA (413) 442-4312 Jewish Federation of the Berkshires 196 South St., Pittsfield, MA (413) 442-4360 jewishberkshires.org Jewish War Veterans Commander Robert Waldheim (413) 822-4546, sellit4@aol.com Rimon: Resource Center for Jewish Spirituality PO Box 502, Great Barrington, MA (413) 274-1034, rimonberkshires.org Temple Anshe Amunim Reform 26 Broad St., Pittsfield, MA (413) 442-5910, ansheamunim.org Services: Fridays at 5:30 p.m., Saturdays, Torah Study at 9:30 a.m., services at 10:45 a.m.

BEYOND THE BERKSHIRES Congregation Anshe Emeth Conservative 240 Joslen Blvd., Hudson, NY (518) 828-6848, congregationansheemeth.net Services: Fridays at 7:30 p.m., Saturdays at 9:30 a.m. Congregation Beth El 107 Adams St., Bennington, VT (802) 442-9645, cbevermont.org Services: Saturdays at 10 a.m. Nassau Jewish Community Center & Synagogue Route 20, Box 670, Nassau, NY (518) 766-9831 nassausynagogue.org Services: Saturdays at 9:30 a.m. Temple Israel of Catskill Reform 220 Spring St., Catskill, NY (518) 943-5758, templeisraelofcatskill.org. The Chatham Synagogue Route 28, Box 51, Chatham, NY (518) 392-0701, chathamsynagogue.org Services: Saturdays at 9:30 a.m.

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~ Weekly classes begin Monday September 21st ~ Monthly Pre-school Family classes begin Sunday October 18th For more information and a registration packet: call 413/663-5830 or email office@cbiweb.org 53 Lois Street North Adams, MA 01247 www.cbiweb.org

Rachel Barenblat, Rabbi David Arfa, Education Director Member of the Union for Reform Judaism

Elul 5775 - Tishri 5776

Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

Page 25

Calendar – Ongoing Events Around the Community Continuous – Chabad of the Berkshires “Smile on Seniors,” or “S.O.S.,” volunteer program to serve senior citizens in the Berkshires. Information for families who can benefit and volunteers: Rabbi Levi Volovik at (413) 499-9899 or visit www. jewishberkshires.com. New England Holocaust Institute & Museum – Artifacts from the collection of founder Darrell English are now on view at the Adams Free Library, 92 Park Street, Adams, telephone (413) 743-8345. Mr. English remains available to bring selections from his collection of Holocaust artifacts to presentations for organizations, schools, and private functions. To schedule offsite presentations, call Ed Udel at (413) 4468409. Monthly – Ruthie’s Lunch Bunch meets at Congregation Beth Israel, or a local restaurant. Call for details. Congregation Beth Israel, 53 Lois Street, North Adams. Information: (413) 663-5830. Monthly – Volunteers from various congregations, provide a Jewish service, social interaction, and entertainment to residents at Great Barrington’s Fairview Commons and the Great Barrington Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. Information: Don Victor at (413) 528-3742. Monthly, fourth or fifth Sunday – Volunteers from Congregation Beth Israel, 53 Lois Street, North Adams “Take and Eat” program cook, package, and deliver hot meals for all North Adams clients of “Meals on Wheels.” Information: (413) 663-5830 or office@cbiweb.org. Monthly – One Monday a month (date varies according to length of book), the CBI Book Discussion Group meets at Congregation Beth Israel at 7 a.m. Check the CBI Newsletter for current books and

schedule. Information: Chaim Bronstein at (917) 609-6732. Sundays (second of each month) – Berkshire Hills Society of Israeli Philatelists meet. Discuss Israeli and American stamps. Coffee and donuts. Information: Ed Helitzer, (413) 447-7622, daytime. Sundays, 10:15 a.m. (every six weeks) – Congregation Ahavath Sholom Book Club. Contact Walter Orenstein: ptcpa@roadrunner.com for titles, dates, and location. Sundays, 10:30 a.m. (every seven weeks) – Congregation Ahavath Sholom’s “Bagels and Brainstorms.” Contact Guy Pancer, GPancer2@sbcglobal.net or (860) 435-2821 for topic and location. Tuesdays, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. – Torah Portion of the Week study group at Congregation Knesset Israel, 16 Colt Road, Pittsfield. Facilitator Myrna Hammerling guides the group through the triennial cycle, year-round in the K.I. Library. Newcomers always welcome to this gathering of students of diverse ages, backgrounds, and perspectives who search together to deepen understanding of our foundational text. Free. Information: (413) 445-4872, ext. 16. Tuesdays at 1 p.m. beginning October 13 – “Beginner Hebrew”. Learn to speak Hebrew from a native Israeli with Esther Benari-Altmann at Temple Anshe Amunim, 26 Broad Street, Pittsfield. Open to the community at large. Registration, full information: (413) 442-5910, extension 12, or eba@ansheamumim.org. Wednesdays, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. – optional meditation 11:30 a.m. to noon – “Yoga @ KI” with instructor Jane Rosen at Congregation Knesset Israel social hall, 16 Colt Road, Pittsfield. $5 per class for

Knesset Israel members; $10 for non-members. Open to the public. Information: Jane Rosen at (413) 464-0173 or janerosen@ berkshire.rr.com. Wednesdays, from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. – Hevreh of Southern Berkshire, 270 State Road, Great Barrington, offers “an hour of morning stillness” with Nina Lipkowitz, a certified Kripalu Yoga Teacher. Donation of $10 is asked for from non-members. Information: (413) 528-6378. Wednesdays at 12:30 p.m. – Explore the stories behind the story of the weekly Torah portion at Tea and Torah, at Chabad of the Berkshires, 450 South Street, Pittsfield MA. Led by Sara Volovik, the course is intended to outline a spiritual road map for day to day life. Using the weekly Torah portion as a starting point, participants will learn from the Talmud, Midrash, and Chasidic masters, as well as from the insights of others in the class. The course is free of charge, and no prior background in Hebrew or the subject matter is necessary. Wednesdays at 6:15 p.m. beginning October 7 – “Conversational Hebrew”. Practice speaking Hebrew with native Israeli Esther Benari-Altmann, Temple Anshe Amunim, 26 Broad Street, Pittsfield. Open to the community at large. Information and registration: (413) 442-5910 ext. 12 or eba@ansheanumim.org. Thursdays, from 10:45 a.m. to 12 p.m. – The Book of Kings, with Rabbi David Weiner. This class explores this literary chronicle of the history, ideas and personalities of Ancient Israel. Wide-ranging discussions explore themes that arise from the text and our encounter with it. Please bring your own copy of Tanakh to the KI Library. Information and Schedule: (413) 445-4872. Thursdays (fourth of each month) – Hadassah Book Club. For times, locations of meetings, and further information about the books: Jane Rosen at (413) 464-0173 or janerosen@berkshire.rr.com. Thursdays at 6:15 p.m. beginning October 8 – “Intermediate Hebrew,” with Esther Benari-Altmann. Teens and adults join together for lively study of Modern Hebrew with an expert instructor. Temple Anshe Amunim, 26 Broad Street, Pittsfield. Open to the community at large. Information and registration: (413) 442-5910 ext. 12 or eba@ansheanumim.org. Fridays, last of month, time varies with candle lighting – Chabad of the Berkshires’ “Friday Night Live,” traditional Kabbalat Shabbat service. Information: (413) 499-9899 or visit www.jewishberkshires.com. Fridays, at 9 a.m. – Meditation with Rabbi Rachel Barenblat in the Congregation Beth Israel sanctuary, 53 Lois Street, North Adams, overlooking the Berkshire mountains. Silence, chanting, and meditation designed to help prepare for Shabbat. All welcomed. Information: (413) 663-5830 and www.cbiweb.org.

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Fridays, usually first of each month at 5:30 p.m. (followed by a family style Shabbat dinner at 6:15 p.m.) – Congregation Knesset Israel, 16 Colt Road, Pittsfield. Shirei Shabbat (“Songs of Shabbat”). Unique service combines melodies from Carlebach, Debbie Friedman, and Camp Ramah to create a ruach filled (“spirited”) family friendly experience. Cost $18 per adult, $36 family maximum. Dinner reservations are due by the Monday before services. Full information: (413) 445-4872, ext 11. Saturdays from 9-10 a.m., (when Congregation Knesset Israel’s Hebrew school classes are in session) – Facilitator Judith Weiner guides a journey though Jewish texts on justice. All texts will be presented in English translation. Fall: a survey of the development of Jewish language for believing in, speaking about and working for justice. Winter: Mapping Jewish language onto contemporary American politics. Spring: Focus on issues. In the KI Library, 16 Colt Road, Pittsfield. Saturdays at 9:30 a.m. – “Torah Plus: Exploring Jewish Text and Culture.” Join Rabbi Josh Breindel for a conversation based on the texts of the Jewish people and reflection on what it means to be Jewish. All texts are offered in English. Temple Anshe Amunim, 26 Broad Street, Pittsfield. Free. Open to the public. Information (413) 4425910 or templeoffice@ansheamunim.org. Saturday afternoons/evenings in September (time varies with sundown) at Congregation Knesset Israel – “Dimensions of Loss and Healing,” with Rabbi David Weiner. Discussion group covers topics such as: Why does evil exist? How do we live in faith, even though…? How do we heal from loss? Discussions will stem from readings of a passage from the ancient midrash, Lamentations Rabbah, c. 400CE. Check exact times with KI office, (413) 4454872 ext. 10 or www.knessetisrael.org.

Congregation Knesset Israel 16 Colt Road, Pittsfield ONGOING MINYANS Sunday....... 8:45 a.m. and 7 p.m. Tuesday............................. 7 p.m. Friday......... 7 a.m. and 5:45 p.m. Saturday, 9:30 a.m. and evenings approximately 30 minutes before sunset CANDLE-LIGHTING

September 4.....................................7:03 September 11...................................6:51 September 18...................................6:39 September 25...................................6:26 October 2.........................................6:14 October 9.........................................6:02

See “Berkshire Jewish Congregations and Organizations” on page 24 for information on all regularly scheduled services in the area. Contact a congregation directly if you wish to arrange Worry-Free an unscheduled minyan.

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Fridays, from 9:30 to 11 a.m. (2nd and 4th Fridays through fall) – “Talmud Study for Everyone,” with Sid Freund. Read Talmud (Steinsaltz ed.) and engage in spirited debate on the merit of cases. Knowledge of Hebrew is not a prerequisite. “Don’t say, ‘When I’ll be free, I will study,’ lest you never be free.” (Pirkei Avot 2:4.) Hevreh of Southern Berkshire, 270 State Road, Great Barrington. Information: (413) 528-3280 or hindacbodinger@gmail.com.

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Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

September 4 to October 13, 2015

WORLD NEWS

‘Miracle’ Babies Born in Israel to Identical Twin Parents

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JERUSALEM (JTA) — The Breslov Hasidic community in Israel is calling the birth of two baby girls 20 minutes apart a miracle. The girls born in July in Netanya are the daughters of two couples – identical twin brothers born 20 minutes apart and married to identical twin sisters born 20 minutes apart. The births at the Laniado Hospital were first reported by the haredi Orthodox website Kikar HaShabbat. Hospital staff “came to the delivery

room to see the wonders never before witnessed in the world,” Kikar HaShabbat reported. The brothers, Niv and Ran Cohen, became religious about two years ago under the tutelage of the Breslov community’s rabbi, Eliezer Shlomo Schick, who died recently. Schick introduced them to their wives, Leah and Rebecca, and the couples were married last year, four days apart. They live in the Breslov community in Yavneel, south of Tiberias.

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Elul 5775 - Tishri 5776

Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

Page 27

WORLD NEWS

MAZEL TOV

Chickens Were First Commercialized in Ancient Israel, Researchers Say

PHOTO: SUBRAMANYA C K VIA WIKIPEDIA COMMONS

Mazel tov to Nancy Stoll of Berkshire United Way on being promoted to the position of vice president of Community Impact. ~ Mazel tov to Robyn Rosen on being recognized as Temple Anshe Amunim’s Member of the Year. ~ Mazel tov to both Temple Anshe Amunim and Hevreh of Southern Berkshire, who were honored at Eisner and Crane Lake Camp’s 6th annual stakeholder assembly for both sending 10 or more campers.

Daryl Messinger, Union for Reform Judaism’s Chair-Elect; Debby Shriber, Crane Lake Camp Director; Nancy Gagnon, TAA co-President; Rabbi Josh Breindel; Rachel Alemany, TAA coPresident; Louis Bordman, Eisner Camp Director. The red jungle fowl

Daryl Messinger, Union for Reform Judaism’s Chair-Elect; Debby Shriber, Crane Lake Camp Director; Shelly Rolf; Suzanne Sawyer, President of Hevreh; Louis Bordman, Eisner Camp Director.

(JNS.org) Chickens were first commercialized in southern Israel during the Hellenistic period around 2,300 years ago, according a study published by researchers from the University of Haifa. “Chicken remains found from the Hellenistic period (4th century BCE) in the Judean lowlands shed light on the beginnings of this economic revolution, and show the earliest evidence of the western world’s large-scale industrial poultry,” the university said, the Jerusalem Post reported. The domesticated chicken is descended primarily from

the red jungle fowl from Asia at least 7,400 years ago and were brought to the Middle East around 5,000 years ago, although they were considered exotic and primarily used for worship and cockfights. According to the university, “Globalization that characterized the Hellenistic regime in our region, compounded with developments in international science and commerce, created the right conditions for change in the status of the rooster to generate income, and serve as food.” Researchers professors Ayelet Gilboa and Guy BarOz of the University of Haifa

unearthed large quantities of chicken bones near the Judean town of Lakhish. Along with signs of fire and slaughter, the bones indicate that the chickens were also eaten at the site. “The large quantity of bones reinforces the assumption that some of the major industries used the chickens for export,” the researchers said. Researchers also found evidence that female chickens were raised to produce mass quantities of eggs. Similar chicken facilities did not reach Europe for another two centuries.

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Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

September 4 to October 13, 2015

WORLD NEWS

New Mosaics Discovered in Synagogue Excavations in Galilee GALILEE – This summer, excavations directed by UNC-Chapel Hill College of Arts and Sciences professor Jodi Magness revealed stunning new mosaics that decorated the floor of the Late Roman (fifth century) synagogue in the ancient Jewish village of Huqoq. “The images in these mosaics — as well as their high level of artistic quality — and the columns painted with vegetal motifs have never been found in any other ancient synagogue,” Magness said. “These are unique discoveries.” The Huqoq excavations, located in Israel’s Lower Galilee,

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are co-directed by Shua Kisilevitz of the Israel Antiquities Authority. The mosaics were first discovered at the site during a 2012 excavation. A mosaic discovered in the synagogue’s east aisle in 2013 and 2014 depicts three horizontal registers (strips) containing human and animal figures, including elephants. The top register, which is the largest, shows a meeting between two men, who perhaps are intended to represent Alexander the Great and a Jewish high priest according to Magness’s findings. It was the first time a non-biblical story had been found decorating any ancient synagogue. During this summer’s dig, Magness and her colleagues uncovered additional portions of this mosaic, as well as the rest of a mosaic immediately adjacent to it, which is connected with a Hebrew dedicatory inscription that was uncovered in 2012. New digging reveals that the inscription is in the center of a large square panel with human figures, animals and mythological creatures arranged sym-

metrically around it, Magness said. These include winged putti (cupids) holding roundels (circular discs) with theater masks, muscular male figures wearing trousers who support a garland, a rooster, and male and female faces in a wreath encircling the inscription. Putti and masks are associated with Dionysus (Bacchus), who was the Greco-Roman god of wine and theater performances, she said. In 2012, a mosaic showing Samson and the foxes, as related in the Bible’s Judges 15:4, was first discovered in the synagogue’s east aisle. The next summer, a second mosaic was found that shows Samson carrying the gate of Gaza on his shoulders, from Judges 16:3. “It is not clear if there is a thematic connection between the Samson scenes and the other mosaics in the east aisle,” Magness added. The mosaics have been removed from the site for conservation, and the excavated areas have been backfilled. Excavations are scheduled to continue in summer 2016.

Biblical Snail that Makes Tekhelet Color is Becoming Extinct in Israel, Government Reports (Tekhelet Foundation) The banded dye-murex (Hexaplex trunculus) carnivorous sea-snail, indigenous to the coasts of the Mediterranean and Black Seas, may be becoming extinct, reports the Government of Israel. This snail has historical and Jewish legal importance as it was used to produce the tekhelet color from which the tzitzit cords (fringes, the petil tekhelet in the blessings of the Shema), parts of the Tabernacle, the Temple, and the High Priest’s clothing were dyed in ancient times. In addition, the snail is considered food in many countries. The trunculus-tekhelet dye color has become available in recent years, due to pioneer researches conducted by Dr. Israel Ziderman, but it is not manufactured in sufficient quantities for universal use. Dr. Ziderman, founder and chairman of the Tekhelet Foundation (http://www. tekheletfoundation.com), is calling for a breeding campaign to grow the snails locally in Israel. “While the trunculus-tekhelet is available in other countries, this would mark the first time in Israel that the color would be grown and produced in a mass production

level,” he said. “We are looking for partners with vision, for whom the Jewish tradition, religion and keeping mitzvot (Jewish commandments) are close to their hearts,” Ziderman continued. The goal

is to raise $100,000 to support the R&D project and then breed the snails, create the dye and market the tekhelet products. Dr. Ziderman, since 1984, a worldwide authority in the study of tekhelet, has initiated the current project to revive this special tradition amongst all communities of the Jewish People.

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Elul 5775 - Tishri 5776

Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

Page 29

CULTURE AND ARTS

Book Review: Pepper, Silk, & Ivory, The Story of Jews in the Far East by Sigmund Tobias Pepper, Silk, & Ivory is composed of many fascinating stories involving Jews in Asia that Rabbi Marvin Tokayer collected during his long tenure as a rabbi in Japan. Readers should know that Rabbi Tokayer and I have corresponded, met for lunch once, and consider each other friends. Some readers may also remember Rabbi Tokayer from his lively presentation at Congregation Knesset Israel a few summers ago. It is a special pleasure to review this book because a good part of it deals with the Jews in Shanghai, where my parents and I also found safe haven from the Holocaust. Despite that, I learned a lot from the book about people in the Shanghai refugee community, and about a vibrant Jewish community that existed in Kai Feng, China 300 years ago, and about many other communities and people that were completely unfamiliar to me. The first story in the book, titled “Two Gun Cohen: A Jewish General in the Chinese Army” is typical of the book. It deals with the interesting story of Morris Abraham Cohen, aka Two Gun Cohen, who was a rough and ready person, educated in a Jewish reform school in England. He was send to Canada by his family where he befriended many Chinese and, in an astounding story, went on the become the body guard of Dr. Sun Yatsen, the founder of modern China. Later, he became an advisor to Chiang Kai-shek, China’s President after World War II before the Communist takeover. Surprisingly enough, subsequently he was also honored by Zhou Enlai, Premier of Communist China. To be honored by opposing sides in China’s long civil war is very unusual. In another story, we learn about Moe Berg, baseball catcher and spy. Moe played professional baseball for five major league teams, including the Brooklyn Dodgers and Boston Red Sox. He was described as a slow runner and poor hitter who, nevertheless, delivered in the clutch and had a lifetime batting average of .243. He was a brilliant

man fluent in ten languages, attended Columbia University Law School and passed the bar exam. In the 1930s, as now, baseball players went to Japan to play in exhibitions and Moe did that several times, and learned to speak and read Japanese. On one of these occasions he made his way up to the top floor of the St. Luke’s hospital, one of the higher buildings in pre-war Tokyo, dressed in Japanese clothes and took a pictures of the city with a tiny camera that were later used in the first U.S. air raid. He was selected to make a speech to the Japanese people warning them that they were misled and would lose the war. Later, he was asked to attend a talk by the German Nobel Prize winning physicist Werner Heisenberg to determine Germany’s progress towards building an Atomic bomb. If Moe determined that the Germans were close to developing the bomb (they were not) he was instructed to kill Heisenberg and then commit suicide (fortunately, he did not have to) with a poison pill so that he could not be interrogated. Quite a story for a nice Jewish boy from the Lower East Side. The book describes many other remarkable stories about Jews in Asia. The Shell Oil Company was founded by Marcus Samuel who also originated the classic Shell icon. Beate Sirota, who spoke six languages including Japanese, ended up working in the American Occupation forces and was influential in getting a clause into Japan’s new constitution guaranteeing equal rights to women and other formerly oppressed individuals. Jacob Schiff an American banker, whose family suffered in Russian pogroms against Jews, underwrote loans to Japan enabling them to beat Russia in their war in the first decade of the twentieth century. We also meet Laura Margolis, an American social worker, who was very helpful to the Jewish community in Shanghai. The exploits of Emily Hahn, a flamboyant woman who wrote for the New Yorker, are described. So are a number of Jewish doctors and

Rabbi Marvin Tokayer intellectuals who were in and out of Mao Ze Dong’s circle over the years. Readers are also introduced to Sidney Rittenberg, Yakob Rosenfield, and Israel Epstein, a trio of Jewish men who had great influence in Communist China. Many other captivating stories appear in the volume. For example, music lovers who are familiar with Joseph Rosenstock from the New York City Opera may not know that he got his start in Japan and continued to work in both New York and Japan until his death. Garcia d’Orta, a Jewish physician, botanist and pharmacologist, settled in Goa, India, in the early 1500s. In 1968, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi held a speech on the 400th anniversary of the

Dr. Tobias is Eminent Research Professor, Division of Educational Psychology & Methodology, at the University at Albany (SUNY). He lives in the Berkshires and is a member of Congregation Knesset Israel.

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synagogue in Cochin, India, and congratulated the Jewish community with the words “mazel tov.” David Marshall, former President of the Jewish community, became first minister (equivalent to first Prime Minister) of Singapore. The book also tells how the Mirrer Yeshiva made its way to Shanghai, where I studied with them from 1942 to 1947. Chiune Sugihara, Japanese consul in Kovno (now Kaunus) issued transit visas permitting them to stop in Japan – supposedly on their way to Curacao. Sugihara knew that they would never make it to Curacao but helped to get them out of Europe safely; he was justly recognized as a rescuer of Jews and is enshrined, with a little assist from Rabbi Tokay-

er, as a righteous gentile in Yad Vashem. The Amshinover Rebbe, Rabbi Shimon Shalom Kalish, exercised leadership in getting many of the people connected to the Yeshiva safely to Shanghai. The Rebbe demonstrated how quickly he thought on his feet when he was asked by Japanese military officials why the Germans hated Jews so much. It is because “We are Asians,” the Rebbe responded and indicated that the Japanese, as fellow Asians, were surely on the Germans’ list for eventual extermination. I remember him as a gentle and kindly man when we sought his blessing about a health issue while we were all living in Shanghai. In summary, this is a most interesting book about a group of fascinating Jews who had a significant impact on developments in the Far East. Even well-read individuals, or others who have lived in the region, are unlikely to have heard about most of the interesting people described in the book. You will enjoy taking the time to be introduced to them in this volume.

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The creative spirit dwells here ahavathsholom.com North St., Great Barrington 413-528-4197 barbaracohen14@gmail.com

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Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

September 4 to October 13, 2015

PEOPLE OF THE COMIC BOOK

Comics Art Museum Founder Lawrence Klein Shares His Enthusiasms Locally & Globally By Albert Stern For generations of American males, a rite of passage was coming home from college on winter break to find that Mom had thrown out all your comic books. This may have occasioned some foot stomping at the time – and perhaps some more years later, after you notice that a Silver Surfer #1 like the one Mom tossed just sold for $1,700 on ebay – but by and large, it was the kind of loss to which one could resign oneself. It was kid stuff, after all. Starting in the 1980s, however, the entire world of comic books changed. Stories and themes designed to appeal to adults started to appear. The value of the books and original drawings as collectibles started to climb dramatically, as did consciousness of comic book art as a popular aesthetic worthy of serious study. By the 1990s, comic books entered a new financial stratosphere as Hollywood began producing blockbuster movies featuring the iconic characters whose adventures had first appeared in lowly 12 cent titles aimed at children. As a lifelong comic book aficionado and masterful (if unassuming) networker, Pittsfield’s Lawrence Klein has been the right person in the right places at the right times as the comics industry morphed from a geeky subculture to a worldwide entertainment juggernaut. As an obsessive young collector, he was befriended by giants of the comic book world who appreciated his tact and enthusiasm. After law school, he founded the first museum dedicated to comic book art in New York City, and later used his legal training to ensure that the disabled creator of a key character in a megahit superhero film got appropriate recogni-

Attorney Larry Kleen defending Doubleup ARTWORK PROVIDED COURTESY OF JOE STATON AND TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

tion and compensation for his work. What’s more, Klein earned comic strip apotheosis of his own after a friend who puts out the Dick Tracy comic strip used him as model for the recurring character Larry Kleen, a ruthless high-priced criminal attorney who has lawyered for such lowlifes as B-B Eyes, Mumbles, Doubleup, and Abner Kadaver. Klein, who today travels the world as director of leadership development and general counsel for The Darrow School in New Lebanon, says that as a youngster in the late 70s, he particularly enjoyed Saturday morning cartoons and Star Wars. However, “in terms of comic books,” he says, “it was She-Hulk #1 that turned things around for me” (an admission that this writer, at least, finds poignant). “I eventually crossed a line and didn’t realize it,” Klein remembers. “I wanted to read about what these characters did before the stories I was reading.” At the time, earlier works was not being republished, and so Klein started scavenging for back issues at flea markets and garage sales. What he remembers most fondly about that time was the way his father William, a noted dermatologist and now a Berkshire second home owner,

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“also enjoyed the hunt.” Back then, he says, collecting was “not yet a business business,” and so he and his father were able to obtain original work and, more crucially for Klein’s future endeavors, develop personal relationships with some of the top illustrators and writers. When Klein was 15, he wrote the first fan letter received by the creators of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Kevin Eastman and North Adams native Peter Laird. They published the letter in the Turtles’ third issue, marking the start of a close friendship. Klein recalls that less mercenary time when artists readily corresponded with their fans and shared signed memorabilia. “Today the difference is that when an artist does something like that, they’ll see whatever it is they sent to a fan for sale on ebay the next day,” Klein laments. Eventually, this avaricious undercurrent turned Klein off, as did the comics that were being published in the early 1990s. By the time he graduated from law school, he had given up collecting. At the same time, the newly minted attorney felt the strong desire to change the world. “But I didn’t know what to do,” Klein admits. He found his path after meeting his wife Sarah, a teacher. “I saw young teachers like her leaving school, saddled with debt,” Klein says, “but still spending their own money on supplies because art and music budgets had been slashed. I wondered how I could give back?” He decided that a not-for-profit museum dedicated to the art form he loved was the way to create something positive. He established the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art in downtown Manhattan not long after the 9/11 attack in 2001, a turbulent time yet one in

which development organizations were open to new ideas about how to revitalize the city. Key to the museum’s acceptance was Klein’s creation of the MoCCA Art Festival in Soho, which was immediately embraced by both fans and cartoonists who recognized Klein’s passion and seriousness. Klein befriended the biggest names in cartooning,

Portugal and Lodz, Poland in which work by established US artists appear alongside newly commissioned drawings by international illustrators. Last August, he replicated this approach at Pittsfield’s Lichtenstein Center in collaboration with the Berkshire Art Association on Comic and Cartoon Art Presents: Re-imagined! An International Show of Comic

Salad days: Klein (far right) with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles brain trust (from left: Peter Laird [co-creator], Steve Lavigne [illustrator], Michael Dooney (illustrator, sitting), and Kevin Eastman [co-creator]) including Jules Feiffer, Art Spiegelman, Francoise Mouly, Joe Smith, Ted Rall and Roz Chast among countless others, all of whom supported the museum. Klein and his wife left New York City (and leadership of the museum) in 2006, seeking a healthier lifestyle in the Berkshires. He stayed active in the comic book world, however, bringing unusual comic themed shows to Pittsfield and appearing on a locally produced television show called “Geeks With Issues.” Between 2008 and 2011, he curated several shows in downtown Pittsfield, among them an exhibit featuring the work of Joe Staton, who has worked on Superman, Scooby-Doo, and Dick Tracy. Staton would eventually transform his friend into “Larry Kleen,” a criminal lawyer who, unlike Klein, is a germophobe who works for the Apparatus, a global criminal organization. In the past two years years, Klein has gone global, curating original shows in Lisbon,

and Cartoon Art. A community outreach component of the shows is in keeping with Klein’s original ambition to give back through comics, and he has also given back to the world of comics. One of his proudest accomplishments is his work on behalf of Bill Mantlo, a writer and lawyer who created Rocket Raccoon for Marvel Comics in the 1970s, later a principal character in the hugely successful 2014 film Guardians of the Galaxy. In 1992, however, Mantlo was struck by a car while rollerblading, and has been unable to live independently since. Working pro bono, Klein secured Mantlo a just share of the profits and a film credit. In the New York Times story about the settlement, Mantlo’s brother Michael related, without naming Klein: “My attorney is very good. I’m not going to say Marvel came to me and opened up their hearts and their purse strings.” Larry Kleen couldn’t have done it better.

Elul 5775 - Tishri 5776

Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

Page 31

PEOPLE OF THE COMIC BOOK

Seriously Funny: Roz Chast’s “Cartoon Memoirs” at the Norman Rockwell Museum By Albert Stern Roz Chast admits that part of her shtick in creating cartoons is to rely on exaggeration, to take ordinary quirks of behavior or thought and ramp up their absurdity a few notches for comic effect. Like the great cartoonists who preceded her at The New Yorker and in whose ranks she can be counted, Chast is a master of the one-panel sight gag. Consider, for example, the image drawn in her characteristically skittering style of beachgoers snapping cellphone photos of the Botticellian Venus emerging from the surf – you’ve seen it on billboards throughout the Berkshires this summer advertising the retrospective of her work now on view at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge. Perhaps more representative of Chast’s work, however, are her more verbal cartoons, those that compress the roiling and thematically oceanic inner chatter of the neurotic mind into tidy one-panel packages of angst. A perfect example on view at the Rockwell is “The Party, After You Left,” in which the guests who remain express relief at your departure just as remarkable things start to occur, including Jesus and the Buddha arriving together to join the fun. Because Chast is so accomplished as a miniaturist, her 2014 book-length memoir Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? was a revelation. An unflinching chronicle of her aged parents’ long decline and eventual demise, the book has emerged as a touchstone for people who recognize their own family challenges in the Chasts’ story. While the memoir’s themes of aging and generational responsibility are universal, the milieu in which the story unfolds is uniquely Jewish – specifically the petit bourgeoisie Jewish world of grimmest Brooklyn, within a claustrophobic family setting marked by eccentric behaviors refined and entrenched over decades. Chast, an only child who (like so many Jewish high achievers, miraculously) emerged from this kind of stultifying environment to have a brilliant career, finds herself driven back by guilt to the world that made her in order to manage her flawed and obstinate parents’ lives. In a certain sense, in Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? Roz Chast finds herself in a Roz Chast cartoon, living out the types of scenarios that she made a career as cartoonist imagining for comic effect. And the result is decidedly tragicomic. Three rooms of the Rockwell are dedicated to “Roz Chast: Cartoon Memoirs.” The first gallery showcases the New Yorker cartoons for which she is best known (as well as work in other media), while a central room features the original art of Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? installed in sequence along the walls. The third room collects work she’s done as a children’s book illustrator, and it is perhaps

these works that best illuminate her imaginative depth as a visual artist. In the cartoons, the drawings generally serve the joke, while in the memoir the art serves the narrative; in the children’s books, however, the images have a more self-contained quality and possess a charm uniquely their own. The life of a cartoonist, even one at the pinnacle of the profession, is not an easy one, according to Chast, who says that her hit-to-miss ratio of cartoon ideas that make it into The New Yorker would strike those not in the business as painfully low. “If I turn in 21 they might take two,” she says, “and I probably do better than a lot of people.” There are approximately 40 staff cartoonists all working for the magazine for the limited slots available – while once many periodicals published cartoons, today the roster of those that do is much attenuated, and so artists don’t have secondary markets for their work if The New Yorker says no. In the heyday of cartooning, Chast explained, cartoonists could start by trying to sell to The New Yorker, and work their way down the rejection ladder until they reached Gent Magazine at rock bottom. Chast shared the advice she gives to aspiring cartoonists: “If you have anything else you can do, or that you like to do, you should do that.” If exaggeration is central to her shtick as a cartoonist, so too is her fascination with stuff – the detritus of life that people accumulate and the identity it gains by being collected, displayed, and juxtaposed with other stuff. “I like interiors, and I like stuff – it’s just fun to draw,” says Chast. “I’m not really interested in drawing landscapes – I wish I were. I once had to illustrate a children’s book that took place in the woods. Alright, what’s in those woods? I know there’s trees and leaves on the ground probably. There are some logs laying on the ground in a loggish kind of way. Maybe there’s some mud or something. Twigs? Rocks? When I drew those woods, they still looked kind of empty and not woodsy. “When I draw an interior of a house, it’s like of course – they’re gonna have a couple of channel changers, not just one. They’re gonna have some books…and a bowl. And there’s going to be something in the bowl, like maybe one of the remotes will be in the bowl, maybe butterscotch candies. I like to imagine you could pull open a drawer and know what’s in the drawer. That there are pencils inside or pens that didn’t work. When I draw an interior, if I didn’t know it wasn’t a total waste of time, I’d put a title on every book. That’s fun for me.” One of the simultaneously hilarious and poignant sections of Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? is her catalogue of the stuff accumulated by her packrat

parents that choked the closets, cabinets, medicine chest, and refrigerator of their modest apartment. “I left thousands of books and records and manual typewriters and appliances and grimy liqueur glasses that were probably last used in 1963,” Chast writes in a meditation on what to keep and what to throw away. Though stuff central is central in her cartooning, working with similar material autobiographically was “a little strange,” she admits. “With the cartoons, there’s always this deniability, you know, where people say: ‘Is this about you?’ ‘Is this about your parents?’ And it’s, like, no, no, no. It’s lens, lens, lens. And that’s true. It’s rare that something [in a cartoon] is really super-direct.” Consequently, Chast says she needed some distance between the events she portrays and creating the memoir. She says the book’s form developed orA self-portrait by Roz Chast with cartoon art enthusiast Lawrence ganically. “My mother died Klein (see story on page 30). in 2009 and father died in 2007 and the book came the Baby Boom generation. out in 2014,” she says. “I knew Chast. She contrasts the way the story plays out in Ameri“There are so many of us,” well before that that I wantcan families to the experience she says, “and that definitely ed to put it some book form, of some Filipino friends where raises some questions for us but didn’t know what it was at this age as we go through the expectation was that the going to be, or how it would elders will be cared for by the it” – taking care of aging and fall together. The advantage of younger generations, all of dying parents in a culture not this kind of story is that it had whom lived close by. American really set up for that to hapa beginning, it had a middle, society is not set up that way pen easily. and it had an end.” – the idea is that once chilWith a wry and somewhat The end of the story for dren reach a certain age, the unhappy smile, she adds: “We people caring for their aging expectation is that they’ll leave know that we’re next.” fathers and mothers is inevthe house and make their own itable – the parents will die, lives, which Chast found true “Roz Chast: Cartoon Memoirs” life will go on, and those who in her experience as both a will be on view through October remain will labor to make 26 at the Norman Rockwell daughter and a mother. sense of the experience. Chast In particular, that dynamic Museum, 9 Glendale Road in says that since the publicaStockbridge. worries her as a member of tion of her memoir, she has been asked to speak to groups and organizations dealing with One Year elder care and end of life OLLI Membership issues. “It’s fine so long as people unOne FREE Class derstand that for $50 ($95 value) I’m not an expert in any •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• way, shape, or form,” she FALL SEMESTER • SEPTEMBER 16–OCTOBER 28 says, adding that she REQUEST A FREE CATALOG declines to OLLI@BERKSHIRECC.EDU / 413-236-2190 speak on any panel debating the larger social issues CLASSES IN GREAT BARRINGTON / LENOX involved. She remains most PITTSFIELD / WILLIAMSTOWN / NORTH ADAMS sympathetic Melville and Millay • Frontiers of Science • Jane Eyre to the many Epidemics: Past, Present, Future • The Art of Italian Cooking people who Wee Drams of the Great Spirits of the World • Vietnam have approached her The World of Mass MoCA • and many more. and shared their own stories. “It’s a Join over 1000 of the smartest, most engaged, story that a and active people over 50 in the Berkshires. lot of people have been Partners in Education with Williams College experiencing, Bard College at Simon’s Rock • Mass. College of Liberal Arts (MCLA) and there’s a lot of varia•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• seek. learn. live. enjoy. tions,” says

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Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

September 4 to October 13, 2015

CULTURE AND ARTS

Vayehi Or – Jewish Spirituality Inspires Local Weaver/Mixed-Media Artist Wendy Rabinowitz As a child growing up on the South Side of Chicago, Berkshires artist Wendy Rabinowitz’s Jewish life was circumscribed by both parents’ estrangement from the faith. The only Jewish ritual Rabinowitz remembers experiencing was her grandmother’s candle lighting on Erev Shabbat, when she would take out candlesticks brought with the family from Poland and mumble the blessing over the flame. Young Wendy was frustrated each time she implored her grandmother to teach her the prayers – the older woman would shush her and refuse. Years later, Rabinowitz visited her dying grandmother in the hospital. In those emotional last moments together, Rabinowitz said: “You are passing over now. Can you tell me the prayer over the candles?” “I don’t actually know the prayer,” her grandmother finally admitted. “You go and learn it.” As an artist working primarily in a Jewish mode, Rabinowitz is still exploring, still learning. Her mixed-media assemblages and weaving reflect the divine beauty she finds in nature and in Jewish mystical and religious traditions that celebrate with awe the wonders of creation. As an artist, she says, “my way is Reb Nachman’s way – go to the field.”

Rabinowitz has had a studio in Pittsfield for 26 years and has worked as an artist since the 1960s, notably contributing craftwork to Judy Chicago’s landmark Feminist installation The Dinner Party, permanently on view at the Brooklyn Museum. A series of chance encounters with an Orthodox Jew in the early 1970s while she was on a retreat at Mount Desert Island in Maine led to her engagement with Judaism. Invited to dinner at the Chabad House in Bangor, Rabinowitz befriended the rabbi and soon struck up a deal – the rabbi would teach Rabinowitz about Judaism if she would teach him about Feminism. “He was actually curious about the Women’s Movement,” she says, “and asked me hard questions.” While how the rabbi might have processed her answers is unclear, Rabinowitz stayed engaged with Judaism, eventually exploring the writings of Rabbi A.J. Heschel. In Heschel’s idea that people meet God in places and moments of awe, Rabinowitz was finally able to connect in a Jewish way to her personal spiritual understanding of nature. As she developed as a creative artist, she integrated an increasingly Jewish approach into her creative process. “Before Judaism, working for me

was almost agony,” she says. “It was difficult to start, it was difficult to finish, and it was difficult to let a piece go.” Setting her intention Jewishly has helped her overcome the anxiety every artist feels standing in front of a blank canvas – or, in Rabinowitz’s case, her loom. She starts her day by focusing on Psalm 19 (“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands”), then scans the Zohar before sitting quietly in what she calls a “Shema process” of listening. Her time at the loom she likens to wandering in the desert, sometimes aimlessly but with arrival at some destination inevitable. She cites the passage from the Genesis creation story that reads “God saw that the light was good” as conveying a supremely important message about self-accepting one’s own work. “Genesis is a blueprint for all creation,” she says. Her work was recently featured at a month-long exhibit at the Welles Gallery in Lenox, and can be found in private collection and in synagogues in the Berkshires and beyond. Images of her artwork can be found at www. livingthreadsjudaica1.com.

Vessel of Light: Shema, Hear/Listen

New Yorker Cartoonist

Roz Chast:

Cartoon Memoirs on view through October 26

open daily

nrm.org

Stockbridge, MA