Berkshire Jewish Voice November 20, 2015 - December 31, 2015

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Berkshire

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. 9

Kislev-Tevet 5776

November 20-December 31, 2015

A Short Tale’s Long Back Story at Knosh & Knowledge, December 4

jewishberkshires.org

Hands of Flame – A Short Film Making a Large Impression

Eileen Bluestone Sherman on How The Odd Potato Went From Children’s Book to All-Star Musical Recording On Friday, December 4, Knosh & long before, leaving the family with very Knowledge will host award-winning little. However, his mother, an immiplaywright, lyricist, children’s author, grant from Austria, had a lively imagitelevision writer, and theater producer nation that allowed her six year old son Eileen Bluestone Sherman, who will to have a memorable holiday. recount the journey of how her ChanuThus, The Odd Potato was born. kah-themed children’s book The Odd Sherman transformed the essentials Potato morphed from humble beginof her father’s experience into a story nings into a work of about a 14 year old girl musical theater that who lost her mother, attracted the participaand who has an idea tion of Broadway’s bigon how to penetrate gest stars. This Jewish her family’s gloom Federation of the Berkwhile buying potatoes shires program will to make latkes. take place at Hevreh of She turned the Southern Berkshire at story into a book, 10:45 a.m., and will be which was rejected by followed by lunch. numerous publishers Eileen Bluestone over a period of years, Sherman’s career is a but was eventually study in the power of published and ended patience and perup being a success. sistence. A native of Sherman, who was Atlantic City, Sheralso writing musicals man in the mid-1970s for Hallmark’s Coterie Eileen Bluestone Sherman found herself living Theatre at the time, with her young family sensed that the story in Kansas City, where she was asked might have another life, and worked by local leaders of the Jewish comwith her sister, Gail C. Bluestone, to munity to write a Hanukkah tale for turn it into a stage production. Shera local cable television program. For man penned the book and lyrics, while inspiration, Sherman drew on a story her sister composed the music. that her father told her about a memoAt Knosh & Knowledge, Sherman rable Chanukah he experienced when will share the twist-filled story of how he was six years old, during the Great the musical went from being staged at Depression. His father had died not ODD POTATO, continued on page 5

Hands of Flame, a Holocaust-themed short film that writer and director Steven Markowitz developed as an undergraduate, has been collecting best animated film awards at festivals across the country. The film portrays his maternal grandmother’s experience at Auschwitz as a teenage girl, and is a compelling example of how young descendants of survivors are creatively retelling their families’ wartime stories. For more on Markowitz, his film, and his Berkshire connection, see page 25.

This Israeli Ex-Diplomat is Kenya’s Biggest Pop Star

By Cnaan Liphshiz

JEWISH BOOK MONTH

Interview: Rabbi Jonathan Sacks — ‘Jews need to stop navel-gazing’

By Uriel Heilman NEW YORK (JTA) – Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, a philosopher and member of the UK House of Lords who served as Britain’s chief Orthodox rabbi from 1991 to 2013, is in America lecturing and promoting his latest book, Not in God’s Name: Confronting Religious Violence. The publisher encapsulates the theme of the book as follows: When religion becomes a zero-sum conceit, violence between peoples of different beliefs is the only natural outcome, argues Rabbi Sacks. But by looking anew at seminal biblical texts in the Book of Genesis… that recount how Abraham’s immediate descendants resolved their various sibling rivalries, Rabbi Sacks

Inside Your Federation Presents............ 3-8, 15-16 Local News..............................................9-14 Roaming in Rome......................................19 World News................................................24 Jewish Book Month.............................25-28

Gilad Millo, left, with DJ HYPNOTIQ and Kiptoo ‘k4 Kirwa at a Nairobi recording studio, Oct. 14, 2015. (Courtesy of Gilad Millo)

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks teaches us a powerful lesson in the existence of multiple pathways to God. If religion is perceived as being part of the problem, he argues, then it must also form part of the solution.

JTA’s Uriel Heilman caught up with Sacks in New York for a conversation about his prolific writing pace — 25 books and counting along with a new line of Koren Sacks prayer books — the crises facing Jews today and whether RABBI SACKS, continued on page 27

(JTA) — Zipping between meetings at Nairobi’s five-star hotels wearing a suit and tie, Gilad Millo looks every bit the ex-diplomat he is.

But looks can be deceiving: Though he may be balding and slightly pudgy, Millo is one of Kenya’s hottest pop stars.

He’s so popular, in fact, he’s known throughout the country simply as Gilad, a la Madonna or Prince.

“The word ‘celebrity’ feels strange, but, yeah, people now ask me to pose for selfies with them,” said Millo, the former deputy head of mission at the Israeli Embassy in Kenya, speaking to JTA by telephone from his home in Nairobi on Monday.

Millo made his musical debut in April with the song “Unajua” — “Do

You Know” in Kiswahili, one of Kenya’s four official languages.

By May, “Unajua,” a mellow tune about the lingering attachment of ex-lovers, topped the weekly chart of X FM, a popular Kenyan radio station, and stayed on the top 10 lists of other stations for months.

By August, the track received a rave review in the Daily Nation, one of Kenya’s largest newspapers.

In the video, Millo, an Ashkenazi Jew, walks with his bicycle and guitar around the Nairobi neighborhood where the song’s producer lives. A classier indoors set is used for the song’s guest artist: Wendy Kimani, a KENYA POP STAR, continued on page 24

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Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

November 20 to December 31, 2015

Rabbi Reflections Last year in Jerusalem, This Year in the Berkshires

By Rabbi Jodie Gordon Last year, my family and I landed at Ben-Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv just as the sun began to set on the 24th of Kislev. By the time our sherut had reached the hills of Jerusalem, Chanukah had arrived. We made it to my mother-in-law’s apartment in Talpiyot just in time to light the chanukiyah (menorah) with her, my sister and brother-in-law, niece and nephews, extended family, and friends. It was my daughter’s first Chanukah, and I closed my eyes as we sang the words of Shehehiyanu, feeling truly grateful for having reached that moment.

We continued singing: “Al ha’nissim v’al ha’purkan v’al hag’vurot, v’al hat’shu-ot, v’al ha milchamot…”

These words are translated in Mishkan T’filah: A Reform Siddur (CCAR Press) as: “WE THANK YOU for the miracles, for the redemption, for the mighty deeds and saving acts, brought about by You, and for the wars which You waged for our ancestors in the days of old, at this season.”

Sung as part of our Chanukah candle lighting liturgy, these words come from the Amidah, the central part of our t’filah, and are recited at both Chanukah and Purim. It is a liturgical insertion for the holidays that fits into the section of the Amidah known as “Hoda’ah,” blessings for gratitude and thanks.

I was taken by the power of these words, sung by my family as we looked out over the mirpesset onto the Old City of Jerusalem. The light hit the Jerusalem stone, creating a rose gold glow. The overwhelming sense of gratitude I felt at that moment was an amalgam of so many things – it was about the people, about the location, it was about the awe I felt holding my infant daughter up to see the flames dancing from the multiple chanukiyot.

But looking closely now at the words, I can’t help but notice the real spiritual core of this liturgical addition to our prayers. It feels uncomplicated, even inspiring, to offer gratitude for miracles and redemption. It is core to our Jewish consciousness to give thanks for the saving acts and mighty deeds that have brought us out of the narrow straights of our history. But the words V’al ha milchamot

she’asita la’avoteinu ba’yamim hahem baz’man hazeh – “wars that God waged for our ancestors in those days, and in our time” – are not pareve words of gratitude.

What does it mean to offer thanks for war?

Looking to the world around us, I find it personally challenging to give thanks for war. And yet as I write these words, Jerusalem, the sacred backdrop to so many of our prayers, is not a city of peace. It is a city at the heart of a country that is torn by violence and hatred. It is a city where this week, our family helped to bury the father of their dear friend, a man who had dedicated his life to coexistence and peace. Richard Lakin was killed by terrorists on the 78 Bus in Armon haNatziv, though he fought for his life for nearly 2 weeks following the attack.

Words of hate, incitement to violence, and panic have become part of the course of daily life for many in Israel. Those who have clung most strongly to ideals of non-violence and coexistence are shaken by the undeniable vitriol and incitement.

And still, even as we pray for peace and work towards a Jerusalem whose inhabitants are protected and secure, can we offer gratitude for war?

As Jews, we wrestle. We wrestle with our present-day reality and we wrestle with the words of prayer that our tradition offers us. As my teacher Rabbi David Ellenson writes, “Thanking God expressly ‘for the wars’ has been difficult.” Some prayer books have followed the precedent set by Sefardi tradition and simply omitted the phrase. Others (including the conservative Sim Shalom, as an example) preserve the Hebrew phrase, but leave it un-translated. Still others have sought to render these words of gratitude in a way that is more spiritually accurate: instead of milchamot, prayer books such as Ha’avodah Shebalev and Kol Haneshama substitute the word “n’chamot” – consolations, or comfort.

This Chanukah, what are the miracles for which we will be able to offer gratitude with a whole heart? I pray that as the sun sets on the 24th of Kislev 5776, we will find ourselves truly moved by the miracles that come when we share light.

I pray that a sense of security will infuse Jerusalem, and our world with the redemptive power of Shalom – of peace and wholeness.

Wishing you and your families a Chanukah filled with miracles, light, and peace in full abundance.

Hevreh of South Berkshire’s Rabbi Jodie Gordon also serves as education director, and will be leading a lunchtime seminar on Yiddish short stories in December (see page 12).

Letters to the Editor Thanks for Camp Dear Jewish Federation of the Berkshires: Thank you so much for the generous scholarship that you gave to our son Ari Drayman so he could attend his last year of Crane Lake Camp. Ari has attended camp for the past seven years. He would not have been able to experience this amazing opportunity without your help.

We have always encouraged Ari to be proud of his Judaism. Due to his wonderful experiences at Crane Lake, our son is an active member of NFTY Northeast and our temple youth group. Because of his strong leadership skills, Ari has been asked to be a NFTY representative for our local chapter this year, and will be a voting member at several events. Next summer, Ari is looking to go to Kutz Camp so he can learn more about becoming a Jewish leader.

Thank you again for your support.

Sincere regards, Cherie & Eric Drayman

Summer Camp Magic – Israeli Friends and Pool Parties Out on the Migrash Dear Jewish Federation, Thank you so much for allowing me to go to Camp Ramah this past summer.

Without your support, there would be no possible way for me to grow this way as a young Jewish adult and have the ability to make great friends and memories that will last a lifetime.

This past summer to date was the best summer of my life and because of the work you do, I had this wonderful experience. I made new friends, many of whom are Israeli. Especially one – his name is Itay Zehavi and he was my counselor at camp. He has become an older brother of sorts for me. And now we are the best of friends, and I have a person I can go to for help. Without you I would have never met Itay, or any of my other new friends. Or have a pool party out on the migrash, or get to experience the magic of camp.

Thank you, for all that you do Caleb Duffy

Camp – Fun and Nice with New Experiences You Haven’t Done Yet Dear Jewish Federation, Thank you Jewish Federation for helping me to do the activities to get to go to Camp Ramah. It is awesome of you to do that. I like camp because it is fun and nice place to be. It’s nice when you see your friends you haven’t seen in a long time. And the new experiences that I have not done yet. Once again, thanks for everything.

From Cormac Duffy

Caleb Duffy patrols the migrash during a heated game of Ultimate Frisbee

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Cormac Duffy (center), awesome in his own right

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.

Kislev-Tevet 5776

Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

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In My View Hoping for the Best, Planning for the Worst How This Federation Supports Israel in This Time of Crisis

By Dara Kaufman The current terror attacks in Israel are deeply concerning. I know so many in our community who have family and friends living there. So do I. As the attacks began and the horrific images and videos were shown on the news, in newspapers, and on social media, I was deeply worried. Soon that worry turned into anger, as I heard the incitement coming from the Palestinian leadership claiming that Israel was seeking to change the “status quo” of the Temple Mount. It has been this pattern of innuendo and lies that fueled this latest round of violent attacks.

These random acts of terrorism are horrifying.

People waiting at a bus station murdered by gunfire, an elderly man struck by a car, a bystander hacked with an ax, innocent people mowed down as they waited for a bus. Men, women, and children all randomly stabbed.

The entire country is on edge, tense and waiting. But that tension can’t be compared to the suffering of the victims and families left to pick up the pieces – physically, emotionally, and financially.

But as these chilling events began to unfold, I had another feeling, as well. I was grateful that our Federation system had a program in place that would bring comfort and relief for the victims and their families at a time when it would be needed most.

The Jewish Agency for Israel’s Fund for Victims of Terror offers immediate emergency financial grants, as well as long term grants helping victims overcome their trauma and establish skills for future success. Assistance through the Fund is fully coordinated with the government of Israel to avoid duplication of service.

We should not need such a fund. We should not need to plan for such emergency assistance in response to terror. But we do. I am grateful that the Federation system understands that and prepares for it. I am also grateful that the Berkshire Jewish community understands our collective responsibility to help provide this type of assistance – unfortunately, we have to prepare for it, too.

A portion of each annual campaign goes to the Jewish Agency for Israel to support this important program and many others. This past year, our annual summer concert was dedicated to raising additional funds specifically for the Fund for Victims of Terror. Together we raised $17,000 for the fund, which I forwarded to the Jewish Agency just a few weeks before the attacks began.

Because of this community’s caring support, the victims and the families

affected by these violent terrorist attacks are now receiving the immediate and direct assistance they need.

We all remember the 13-year-old boy who was just leaving a candy store when he was attacked by a teenaged assailant. This incident in particular received significant media coverage when the president of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas inflamed the situation by falsely reporting that the young terrorist had been murdered by the Israelis, with no reference to the fact that he had stabbed not only the 13-year-old boy, but a 24-year-old man, as well. The Israelis released a photo of the young terrorist, who was alive and well and receiving treatment at an Israeli hospital.

Just two days after the stabbed Israeli boy was rushed to the hospital, special counselors from the Jewish Agency met with his parents. The boy’s father, who is divorced from his mother, was at the hospital caring for his injured son, but the boy’s mother needed to be at home caring for her four other children, trying to keep the normal routine of preparing lunches, sending everyone to school, and making sure they all kept up with their homework. These were tasks she did every day, but that seemed even more important now for her children, who are afraid to leave the house.

Unaccustomed to receiving help (she was usually the one helping others), the mother realized that she and her children needed immediate help. The funds she received from the Fund for Victims for Terror will help her get through the days ahead until certain government funds begin.

When asked what else she needs, she noted a few things. She was deeply grateful for the assistance but she wished that there would be no more need for such a fund. That the terror would stop and there would be no more suffering for mothers and children. And that her son would recover and she would be able to buy him the suit he had been asking for. She wants him to have it to wear for his bar mitzvah, which is set to take place in a few months.

In a recent conversation, my sister-in-law in Israel shared that the streets that usually bustle with people are nearly empty. Life goes on, but it has changed, at least for the moment. She holds her son, my sweet nephew Leor, a little tighter and they are staying close to home.

I have no doubt that it won’t stay this way. Israel is one of the most resilient countries in the world and Israelis among the bravest and most resourceful people. I pray that terror will not strike again, but I know that may not be the case.

We don’t want to have to be prepared for such emergencies, but with generous commitment of community members who support the Federation’s Annual Campaign, we will be there to help when it does.

Dara Kaufman is the executive director of the Jewish Federation of the Berkshires.

Jewish V ice Berkshire

DEADLINES The next Berkshire Jewish Voice (Vol. 24, No. 1) will cover the period January 1, 2016 through February 13, 2016. The following edition (Vol. 24, No. 2) covers February 14, 2016 through April 2, 2016. The deadline for press releases and other written submissions, all of which are subject to being edited, is January 13, 2016. 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 January 27, 2016. For a complete Berkshire Jewish Voice schedule, contact (413) 442-4360, ext. 11, or e-mail jfb.berkshirevoice@verizon.net.

You may request that the Berkshire Jewish Voice be mailed to your home.

Just email us at jfb.berkshirevoice@verizon.net for information.

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

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 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.

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Serves the Jewish community in Berkshire County and neighboring New York, Connecticut, and Vermont. Voluntary subscription donations: $18, $36, $72, $108, other.

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Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

November 20 to December 31, 2015

Guest Commentary The Jewish Future

By David Harris Seventy thinkers, leaders, and clergy were asked: “What will be the condition of the Jewish community 50 years from now?” Below is AJC Executive Director David Harris’s response: Let me be honest. I have no clue what the Jewish condition will be in the year 2065. In fact, I am hard-pressed to predict what things will look like tomorrow.

Indeed, had I been asked to participate in a similar Commentary symposium in 1965, could I have foreseen the Six-Day War only two years later, and its aftermath?

Or the astonishing success of the Soviet Jewry movement at a time when the word emigration was absent from the Kremlin’s lexicon?

Or the downfall of the USSR and its satellites, and the rebirth of Jewish communities in places where Jewish life was assumed to be nearing its end?

Or, on a related note, that nations such as Bulgaria, Poland, and Romania would one day speak of Israel as a “strategic” partner?

Or that Germany would become the home of the fastest-growing Jewish community in the world?

Or that Israel would sign peace treaties with Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994?

Or the remarkable flourishing of U.S.-Israeli relations, even as France’s close ties with Israel withered?

Or the recrudescence of anti-Semitism in Western Europe, fueled principally by elements of a growing Muslim presence and an extreme right-wing backlash to this immigration?

Or Israel’s population more than tripling from 2.5 million to more than 8 million?

Or the rescue of tens of thousands of Ethiopian Jews, who for centuries dreamed of Zion but, in their isolation, thought they might be the only Jews on Earth?

Or the toppling of the remaining barriers to full Jewish participation in American life, with Fortune 500 executive suites, Ivy League presidencies, and presidential candidacies now wide open to Jews?

Or Israel’s foreign-policy pivot to Asia, with India as a showcase of new friendships?

Or the emergence of the Internet, creating previously unimaginable forms of Jewish connectivity, JDate among them?

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Or the ordaining of women rabbis, the establishment of LGBT-friendly congregations, or the development of Chabad’s worldwide outreach network?

No, I could not have foreseen these startling developments in 1965.

So what is even remotely foreseeable from today’s vantage point?

First, Israel will continue to grow and thrive. True, the religious, social, and ethnic fault lines in Israeli society will not suddenly disappear. But the state will somehow manage them and blaze a trail in the 21st century as a global, sought-after leader in entrepreneurship, cybersecurity, water management, counterterrorism, renewable energy, medical research, and breakthrough technologies.

Second, while Israel’s neighborhood might possibly improve one day, affording new opportunities for regional cooperation, in the meantime the Jewish state will be ready for whatever ominous new threats surface from both state and non-state actors. As the story goes, God was so angry with the world that he announced, in two weeks’ time, a massive flood as punishment. On hearing this news, the French president told his citizens that the world would come to an end in 14 days, so there would be no more work, just joie de vivre, until the last minute.

Meanwhile, the Israeli prime minister informed the Israeli people that “we have exactly two weeks to learn how to live underwater.”

Third, the universal vaccine against anti-Semitism is unlikely to be discovered by 2065. For a while, many thought that post–World War II liberal democracy was the antidote, but the rise of Judeophobia in several Western countries, abetted by the receding memory of the Holocaust and its lessons, means that all bets are off.

Fourth, America’s special ties with Israel will come under increasing challenge.

There are seismic demographic changes happening in the United States, many college students are being exposed to the BDS movement on campus, and, with the passage of time, fewer Americans are able to recall the events of 1967 and how Israel unexpectedly became an “occupying power.” Absent an Israeli–Palestinian peace accord, the battle for American public opinion will grow still more intense.

Fifth, even as Jews confront the inevitable external challenges, there will be no shortage of internal debates and divisions that stretch the notion of am echad, “one people,” to the breaking point. To cite just one telling example, the fast-growing Haredi population at one end of the spectrum will be matched by the equally fast-growing population of Jews with an attenuated identity, two groups with essentially nothing in common. Then again, we’ve just about always been an argumentative and fractured people, sometimes, alas, to the point of self-destruction, so why should that suddenly change?

And sixth, in 2065, Commentary will hold a symposium on the next 50 years of Jewish life, and the magazine will have no difficulty identifying another group of contributors willing to ignore the late Yogi Berra’s sage words: “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”

“Aging: A Lifelong Process” – A Discussion and Support Group with Therapist Maggie Bittman, Dec. 21 On Monday, December 21, at 10:45 a.m., the Jewish Federation of the Berkshires presents “Aging: A Lifelong Process,” with therapist Maggie Bittman. This free program at Congregation Knesset Israel, 16 Colt Road in Pittsfield, is part of the Federation’s Connecting With Community series.

Explaining her outlook and approach, Bittman writes: “From birth, we begin to age with time. Along the way, we develop strategies to help manage the stressors that come with living life – those ‘existence pains’ or ‘existential stressors.’ Along the way

Mention this ad and receive a gift certificate for Dinner for Two in One West Restaurant

we find meaning and purpose, experience aloneness, confront mortality, and develop self will.

“Within this context, participants will discuss, share, and offer support to one another.”

IF YOU GO Sponsor: Jewish Federation of the Berkshires / Connecting With Community Venue: Congregation Knesset Israel Date & Time: Monday, December 21, at 10:45 a.m., followed by lunch (see page 18).

Maggie Bittman

Kislev-Tevet 5776

Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

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Your Federation Presents ODD POTATO, continued from page 1

regional Jewish Community Centers to its Emmy-winning incarnation on Chicago television to well-received showcases in New York City to a 2005 recording for charity that attracted 20 Tony Award winning performers, including Judd Hirsch, Jim Dale, and Sutton Foster.

Sherman will also talk about other highlights of her long and varied career, which include a National Jewish Book Award for her young adult novel Monday in Odessa and a play about eating disorders, Deep Dark Secrets, that toured nationally. Of particularly Berkshires interest, Sherman and her sister Gail in 2013 premiered Perfect Picture, a musical inspired by the life of Norman Rockwell. The

duo is currently developing on children’s CD called Listen Up, a project with Tony and Emmy winner Lillias White.

Sherman, who currently resides in Bennington, VT, is a natural raconteur with engaging and inspiring stories that prove that big dreams and

big plans can come true. Join her for what is sure to be an enjoyable Chanukah season Knosh & Knowledge. She says she might even sing a number or two.

Jewish Federation of the Berkshires’ 2015 Annual Campaign GOAL $750,000

IF YOU GO

300

Sponsor: Jewish Federation of the Berkshires Venue: Hevreh of Southern Berkshire, 270 State Road, Great Barrington Date: Friday, December 4, at 10:45 a.m. (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 fresh buffet lunch. Program only, $5.

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DOING YOUR ANNUAL EXTRAORDINARY IMPACT CAMPAIGN

IS REAL 2015

THINGS

IMPORTANT NOTICE

Connecting With Community Series / Kosher Hot Lunch

Knesset Israel renovations

Programs in the Jewish Federation of the Berkshires’ Connecting 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 18.

Due to renovations taking place at Congregation Knesset Israel, the Federation’s “Connecting With Community” series and kosher lunch program may experience some minor disruptions beginning November 2015 through March 2016. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

We will do our best to keep the community apprised of changes as they develop and appreciate your flexibility as we work to maintain the high quality of this valuable community program.

SAVE ON YOUR

CHANUKAH CELEBRATION 5

$ 99

Empire Fresh Kosher Boneless, Skinless Chicken Breasts Kedem Apple Juice

/lb.

Yellow Potatoes Large Size, Great for Latkes, Roasting or Mashing, 5 lb. bag

Kedem Grape Juice

Selected Varieties, 64 fl. oz. btl.

4

6

4

Gefen Chestnuts

1

Golden Potato Pancake Mix

3/$

Elite or Manischewitz Chocolate Coins

4/$

6 oz. pkg.

5.2 oz. pkg.

Selected Varieties, 10.6 oz. pkg.

4 2/$ 6

44 ct. pkg.

Season Sardines Selected Varieties, 3.75–4.37 oz. can

While Supplies Last, 8 oz. pkg.

1

5 2/$ 5

Paskesz or Liebers Draidel

Golden Blintzes Selected Varieties, 13 oz. pkg.

/ea.

2 oz. pkg.

5

2/$

5/$

4

$ 49

Barton’s Million Dollar Bar

4.2 oz. pkg.

6

Streits Candle

/ea.

Schick’s Chanukah Cookies

Kedem Tea Biscuits

2/$

2/$

4

Previously Frozen, 4 oz. pkg.

Selected Varieties, 25.4 oz. btl.

2/$

Manischewitz Potato Pancake Mix

/ea.

$ 99

Acme Smoked Nova Salmon

Kedem Sparkling Juice

Selected Varieties, 64 fl. oz. btl.

2/$

3

$ 49

5/$

5

4

5/$

Lipton Soup Mixes

2/$

3

Tabatchnick Broth

2/$

$ 99

Selected Varieties, 1.9–2.4 oz. pkg.

Selected Varieties, 32 oz. pkg.

4

Use your card and save on items on this page. We sell both kosher and non-kosher foods. Some items not available in some stores. While supplies last. Prices valid November 20–December 17, 2015.

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Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

November 20 to December 31, 2015

Your Federation Presents Rabbi Talk – Exploring (and Exploding) the Myths of Chanukah On Thursday, December 3, at 10:45 a.m., join Rabbi Jan Caryl Kaufman for “Bursting the Bubble of the Bubbe Meises of Chanukah,” a certainto-be thought provoking class about the much loved but incompletely understood Festival of Lights. This free program at Congregation Knesset Israel, 16 Colt Road in Pittsfield, is part of the Federation’s Connecting With Community series.

How did a story about a priestly family of religious zealots evolve into a cruise of oil lasting for eight days in the newly rededicated Temple?

Rabbi Kaufman will examine documents recording the historical evolution of the story of Chanukah from the most contemporaneous – the Books of the Maccabees to the writing of the historian Josephus – to the Midrash and the Talmud.

Participants will explore how this story was narrated and developed over at least five

On Thursday, December 24, at 10:45 a.m., musician Lee Rogers will mine his repertoire of folk songs and share some favorites and also some lesser known tunes that stem from the older folk tradition. As 2016 approaches, Rogers says this classic American music will put everyone in a cheerful and festive holiday mood.

This free program at Congregation Knesset Israel, 16 Colt Road in Pittsfield, is part of the Federation’s Connecting With Community series.

Lee Rogers is also a professional photographer who works at Bard College of Simon’s Rock. He plays music in and around Berkshire County at various indoor and outdoor venues.

IF YOU GO Rabbi Jan Caryl Kaufman centuries.

Rabbi Jan Caryl Kaufman recently celebrated her 30th year of ordination as a Conservative rabbi.

IF YOU GO Sponsor: Jewish Federation of the Berkshires / Connecting With Community Venue: Congregation Knesset Israel Date & Time: Thursday, December 3, at 10:45 a.m. followed by lunch (see page 18).

For further information on all Jewish Federation of the Berkshires programs, please call Nancy Maurice Rogers, Program Director, at (413) 442-4360, ext. 15.

“Just Plain Folk” – American Music with Lee Rogers, December 24

Sponsor: Jewish Federation of the Berkshires / Connecting With Community Venue: Congregation Knesset Israel Date & Time: Thursday, December 24, at 10:45 a.m. followed by lunch (see page 18).

Musician Lee Rogers

Author Ruth Bass on Fictionalizing Her Grandmother’s Life, Dec. 10 On Thursday, December 10, columnist and novelist Ruth Bass will speak about her writing at a Connecting With Community program starting at 10:45 a.m. at Congregation Knesset Israel. She’ll talk about her columns and two published novels about her grandmother’s life, and also read from the books, Sarah’s Daughter and Rose.

Bass’s grandmother was born in Charlemont, MA, and grew up on a farm. After her mother died at an early age, Bass’s grandmother, then 14 years old, was expected to take over the house and care for two younger siblings, the

chickens, the garden, and whatever else went with being a housewife.

“It must have been a hard time for her,” Bass relates, “but despite all the days we spent together, she never talked about it. Only a couple of kernels from that era came my way, but the things I knew were intriguing enough to make me want to write Sarah’s Daughter. So I fictionalized my grandmother’s teen years, using the few things I knew and making up the rest.” She says she just finished the third book in the series.

Bass worked as a police and court reporter for the Berkshire Eagle prior to her marriage to Milton Bass, returning in 1977 to the paper after a hiatus and eventually holding the position of Sunday Editor before leaving in 1996.

Her Monday column has been published for 35 years.

Ruth Bass

IF YOU GO Sponsor: Jewish Federation of the Berkshires / Connecting With Community Venue: Congregation Knesset Israel Date & Time: Thursday, December 10, at 10:45 a.m. followed by lunch (see page 18).

Berkshire Jewish Youth Unite

Jewish youth groups from Hevreh of Southern Berkshire, Temple Anshe Amunim, and Congregation Knesset Israel came together for a day of teambuilding sponsored by the Jewish Federation of the Berkshires. Teens got to know each other through interactive activities and a low ropes course before they celebrated Havdallah and enjoyed a pizza dinner together.

www.jewishberkshires.org

Kislev-Tevet 5776

Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

Page 7

Your Federation Presents Historical Society Director to Discuss Melville’s Berkshires Legacy, December 7 On Monday, December 7, at 10:45 a.m., the Jewish Federation of the Berkshires hosts Will Garrison, executive director of the Berkshire County Historical Society, who will present “Arrowhead: Preserving a National Historic Landmark.” This free program at Congregation Knesset Israel, 16 Colt Road in Pittsfield, is part of the Federation’s Connecting With Community series.

On June 29, 1851 Herman Melville wrote to his friend, Nathaniel Hawthorne about his Pittsfield home, Arrowhead: “Since you have been here, I have been building some shanties of houses (connected with the old one) and likewise some shanties of chapters and essays. I have been plowing and sowing and raising and painting and printing and praying, and now begin to come out upon a less bustling You can also call him Will Garrison time, and to enjoy the calm prospect of things from a fair piazza at the north of the old farm house here.”

Melville’s Arrowhead, a National Historic Landmark, is a point IF YOU GO of pride for Berkshire County residents. Here Herman Melville, Sponsor: Jewish Federation looking out his study window at Mt. Greylock, wrote the great of the Berkshires / Connecting American novel, Moby-Dick. Says Garrison: “It is the privilege With Community and responsibility of the Berkshire Historical Society to preserve Venue: Congregation Knesset Arrowhead to reflect the Melville family’s time here, the years Israel 1850 to 1863.” He will summarize the changes to the house from 1790 to the present, and describe how the Berkshire Historical Date & Time: Monday, DecemSociety preserves it for the public. ber 7, at 10:45 a.m. followed by lunch (see page 18).

For Your Health: Core Stability, Flexible Feet and Balance on December 28 Good postural stability is the basis for comfortable, pain-free movement but, says body worker Carol Bennett, “before we can move freely it is important to reestablish stability through the center of the body – the core.”

After a career in theater and movement, starting in her 60s Bennett obtained certifications and degrees in such body work practices such as the Feldenkreis method, aquatic exercise, and kinesiology. She’ll share her experience at the Connecting With Community workshop starting at 10:45 a.m. on Monday, December 28, at Congregation Knesset Israel.

She explains: “We will begin

with chair work to strengthen deep abdominals, hip stabilizers and scapular muscles. Our feet connect us to the ground on which we stand. Feet are the beginning of one body part supporting the other. We can stand more comfortably in flexible feet. Using rollers, balls and varied foot exercises our feet can become more moveable and responsive.

“Using the chair as support, we will prepare for static and dynamic balance.

Strengthening individual muscles isometric ally reawakens postural muscles to enable full body weight bearing movements. Finally, we will integrate what we have done in varied walks.”

Carol Bennett

IF YOU GO Sponsor: Jewish Federation of the Berkshires / Connecting With Community Venue: Congregation Knesset Israel Date & Time: Monday, December 28, at 10:45 a.m. followed by lunch (see page 18).

How At-Risk Veterans Cope in Berkshire County – Meet Soldier On Execs on Nov. 23

Soldier On’s Gordon H. Mansfield Veterans Community in Pittsfield On Monday, November 23, at 10:45 a.m., the Connecting With Community program will host local representatives of Soldier On, a provider of comprehensive services and permanent affordable housing for homeless and at-risk veterans in five states. This free program will take place at Congregation Knesset Israel, 16 Colt Road in Pittsfield.

With housing in Leeds, MA and Pittsfield, Soldier On provides emergency and transitional housing to 250 veterans, including twelve female veterans in separate housing, on any given night. Supportive services including case management, mental health treatment, addiction counseling, transportation, and assis-

tance with employment and education are delivered to the veteran where he or she lives.

On hand to explain the group’s mission will be Chief Executive Officer John F. Downing, Community Life Manager Michael McMahon, and Sara Scoco, director of Soldier On’s women’s program.

In 2010, Soldier On opened the 39-unit Gordon H. Mansfield Veterans Community in Pittsfield, a national model that offers permanent supportive housing to formerly homeless veterans. Among the numerous awards and acclaim the project has garnered is the 2011 Housing and Urban Development Door Knocker Award for innovation and quality.

IF YOU GO Sponsor: Jewish Federation of the Berkshires / Connecting With Community Venue: Congregation Knesset Israel Date & Time: Monday, November 23, at 10:45 a.m. followed by lunch (see page 18).

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Page 8

Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

November 20 to December 31, 2015

Your Federation Presents Volunteers are Vital!

Never Too Busy to Help Howard Kaufman’s Community Pride and Jewish Engagement Create a Lasting Legacy in the Berkshires

By Susan Frisch Lehrer, Coordinator of Volunteers News travels fast in the Berkshires. When I heard that Howard Kaufman was going to hang up his hat as volunteer driver for our Kosher Meals on Wheels lunch program, I didn’t want to believe it. Howard has been a driver for about 11 years and is always at the ready. He’s not just the driver, but enjoys kibitzing with the recipients and sharing news.

Says former Federation executive director, Arlene D. Schiff: “Howard Kaufman’s commitment to the Berkshire Jewish Community, and in particular the homebound residents who receive kosher meals through the Federation’s lunch program, is an inspiration to all who have had the benefit of working with him. While the meals are of utmost importance, Howard has always understood that delivering them is just a vehicle for exhibiting the Jewish value of caring for those in need and providing dignity and hope to those who are aging. His care for these individuals never stopped with providing a nutritious meal. He always took the time to check in with them, see if there were any other things they needed, and then take whatever steps he could to address these needs.

Without the volunteer efforts of Howard, and Ed Skoletsky, of blessed memory, many seniors would not have been able to independently live in their own homes for as long as they did.”

Dara Kaufman, the Federation’s current executive director said: “Howard has been the gentle, steady guardian over our homebound residents. Every meal he delivered was served up with a side of compassion and true concern that these individuals had what they needed. He has been a guiding force for this community for so many years and that will never go away. We will definitely miss his presence in the kitchen, and I am sure the recipients of the meals will too, but we are so grateful for his many years of service.”

Howard has been making connections his entire life. Growing up in the Berkshires, he was well aware of how small this Jewish community is. He said that while he was not very religious, he was acutely aware of his Jewish heritage and fondly remembers his family holidays and Shabbat both at home and with his Brooklyn grandparents. His family owned a wholesale candy business that Howard had no interest in joining. After attending and graduating from Williams College, with a two-year break to serve in the Army during WW II and attend graduate school at the University of Michigan, Howard returned to the Berkshires in the 1950s. He then took on the challenge of running the family business, which had reinvented itself as a retailer of toys. He also married his wife Nancy and began a family – now grown to 5 children, 18 grandchildren, and 20

(soon to be 21) great-grandchildren.

Howard turned what was a small toy company into one of the largest chains of its kind in the nation – Kay-Bee Toy & Hobby Shops, Inc. (later KB Toys). It grew to over 200 stores located in many malls across the country with Howard at the helm.

Even while busy building the company, Howard was busy volunteering for numerous local organizations in the Berkshires. He chaired capital fundraising campaigns for Berkshire Medical Center, Berkshire Museum, Lenox Library, Berkshire Center for Families and Children, and American Red Cross, to name a few. He also served on the boards of the Friends of the Berkshire Athenaeum and the MA Council for the Arts and Humanities.

At the same time, he also served as an active volunteer and president for Temple Anshe Amunim, The Jewish Federation of the Berkshires and chaired the annual campaigns of United Jewish Appeal (now the annual campaign at the Federation) and Berkshire County Israel Bonds Committee.

He was honored with the Man of the Year Award in 1979 from the Jewish Community Council (precursor to the Jewish Federation of the Berkshires).

Howard has never been just a name on a list, but has always maintained an active presence chairing events, raising funds, and fulfilling other leadership roles. After he retired, he felt that he needed to become a full-time volunteer. Howard was involved with the former Sinai Academy day school and Chabad of the Berkshires. In addition he became a driver for Berkshire Elder Services’ Meals on Wheels program (our senior lunch program partner).

Howard joined the Monday Morning Boys hiking club with other retirees, and one of their community projects was baking challot before Rosh Hashanah and hamantashen before Purim.

About 15 years ago, the late Joe Madison started bringing, with Howard, Bob Baum, and others, gift bags of baked goods to homebound folks and those in senior living sites throughout the county. Howard and some of the others had never baked before, but in a short time learned the details of baking from Joe. We now refer to this program as “Joe’s Project” and this year it reached 340 Jewish seniors. And Howard is still involved – while he may not be baking these days (Susan Gordon from Bagels Too oversees that), he’s out delivering these treats to many delighted seniors.

Howard and Nancy have supported many organizations both in the U.S and Israel. Their largess reaches far and wide, but as Howard wrote about our Jewish Federation’s Legacy Circle recently:“The Berkshire Jewish Community remains strong because our Jewish Federation of the Berkshires is a vigorous, vi-

“Howard has been the gentle, steady guardian over our homebound residents. Every meal he delivered was served up with a side of compassion and true concern.”

— Federation Executive Director Dara Kaufman

VOLUNTEERS, continued on next page

Kislev-Tevet 5776

Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

Page 9

Your Federation Presents Dispatch from Kathmandu: Ricky Bernstein on Helping Youngsters Escape Poverty in Nepal, Dec. 17 On Thursday, December 17, at 10:45 a.m., the Jewish Federation of the Berkshires will host Ricky Bernstein, the director of Hands in Outreach, which is a small nonprofit literacy program for very poor girls in inner-city Kathmandu, Nepal. This free program at Congregation Knesset Israel, 16 Colt Road in Pittsfield, is part of the Federation’s Connecting With Community series.

Bernstein will speak on the origins of his interest in the education of girls living in poverty on the other side of the planet, and how Hands in Outreach and education can make a profound difference in the lives of

girls and their families. He will also talk about the politics of poverty and privilege, and then share a few stories about the girls and families sponsored by the organization through a presentation of images of life in Nepal.

IF YOU GO Sponsor: Jewish Federation of the Berkshires / Connecting With Community Venue: Congregation Knesset Israel Date & Time: Thursday, December 17, at 10:45 a.m. followed by lunch (see page 18).

Chabad’s Sara Volovik Talks Community, Caring, and Kosher Cooking, December 14 On Monday, December 14, at 10:45 a.m., the Connecting With Community program will host Sara Volovik, co-director of Chabad of the Berkshires.

Wearing many hats – educator, organizer, program director, Chabad emissary, and kosher cook/caterer sans pareil – Volovik works to create community every day. In this program, she will highlight some of the outreach services that she organizes and presents in the Berkshires.

As a Chabad emissary, Volovik says her ultimate mission is to bring more Judaism to the Berkshires, which she strives to accomplish through hands-on programs and activities provided at Pittsfield’s Chabad House and other venues.

Volovik will also talk about the Chabad movement, and how its sheluchim (emissaries) adapt to the far-flung locations around the globe to which they are sent. She says

that each Chabad’s approach is to reflect the unique needs of the community in which it is located. Sara herself holds a master’s degree in Special Education, and runs Chabad of the Berkshires’ Hebrew school.

She’ll talk about her experiences serving this community.

Sara Volovik, her husband, and their five children have resided in the Berkshires since 2004, and are part of a network of over 4,000 Chabad centers worldwide. Her passions are community service and culinary creations. She has catered events for Shakespeare & Company, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel, and has prepared thousands of kosher meals for Berkshire County residents and tourists.

IF YOU GO Sponsor: Jewish Federation of the Berkshires / Connecting With Community

Sara Volovik Venue: Congregation Knesset Israel Date & Time: Monday, December 14, at 10:45 a.m. followed by lunch (see page 18).

Above: Nepalese participants in Hands in Outreach.

Bottom: Ricky Bernstein

VOLUNTEERS, continued from previous page brant, and vital force – the ‘sticky glue’ that holds our local Jewish community together.”

Howard, we now honor you and thank you for your many years of devoted service to our community. You have inspired us all with gemilut chasadim (acts of loving kindness), tzedakah (justice and righteousness) and tikkun olam (repairing the world). Todah Rabah – thank you!

B’shalom, Susan Frisch Lehrer, Coordinator of Volunteers (413) 442-4360, ext. 14 jfb.volunteer@verizon.net

Drivers Wanted!

I would like to add that we are actively recruiting volunteers to deliver our Kosher Meals on Wheels programs. Please contact me if you can help with this program or one of our other volunteer programs at the Federation. Thank you.

bensinlee@gmail.com

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Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

November 20 to December 31, 2015

LOCAL NEWS

Do It Yourself – Interactive Menorah Workshop at Home Depot PITTSFIELD – Chabad of the Berkshires will partner with The Home Depot to offer a Chanukah menorah workshop at Home Depot, 555 Hubbard Avenue, on Sunday, December 6 at 10:30 a.m.

Participants will receive a free worker’s apron and then craft their own unique menorah from wood and a host of other supplies available at The Home Depot. The menorah building is not just for kids – it’s a family project where parents and children work together. There is no charge for attending, and Chanukah refreshments will be served.

Partnering with Chabad na-

tionally, major hardware store chains such as The Home Depot, Lowe’s Home Improvement, and Ace Hardware will bring Chanukah crafts to dozens of locations across North America.

“The kids love the menorahs that they create on their own,” says Sara Volovik, program director at Chabad of the Berkshires. “They treasure them and they then feel more involved in the holiday.” Moreover, it’s a way for parents to participate in a project with their children.

“Partnering with these hardware chains,” says Rabbi Levi Volovik, “gives families

who may not participate in traditional synagogue activities the opportunity to prepare for and celebrate the Chanukah festival within their own comfort zone, in a familiar store, while meeting others who are doing the same thing.”

Home Depot looks forward to the Chanukah event. “Seeing the kids smile is what is important to me. It’s all about the kids,” says the store manager, Chris Somppi. “They are our future.”

This workshop is sponsored by Home Depot and coordinated by Chabad of the Berkshires

Latke Good Times Roll With a Fifth Night Chanukah Fest PITTSFIELD – Enjoy the Chanukah season at Congregation Knesset Israel on Friday, December 11, the 5th night of the holiday. There will be a Kabbalat Shabbat service, with a team of talented musicians and vocalists leading the prayers – participants of all ages and sizes can sing along and even play rhythm instruments. The 5:30 p.m. service

transitions into dinner at 6:30 p.m. that features the festival’s highlighted specialty, potato latkes. A traditional and modern medley of seasonal songs will be heard as dessert is served.

Dinner reservations are requested by December 9.

Children up to 13 years are free; dinner for ages 13-21 is $15. Adult meals are $18, with

a nuclear family maximum of $54. The meal is catered by the Knesset Israel Men’s Cooking Team for a joyful occasion celebrating the rededication of the ancient Temple in Jerusalem. Register at www. knessetisrael.org or at the synagogue office at 16 Colt Road, Pittsfield.

Temple Anshe Amunim to Hold Annual Chanukah Shabbat Dinner and Community Crib PITTSFIELD – Temple Anshe Amunim will hold its annual Chanukah Shabbat Dinner and Community Crib on Friday, December 11 at 26 Broad Street, Pittsfield.

The evening will begin at 5:30 p.m. with a family-friendly Shabbat service led by the Religious School and Youth Group to celebrate light amidst the darkness, and will feature music from the choir under the direction of Dr. Alan Gold. A latke dinner will follow.

In conjunction with the

event, the YACHAD Youth Group will be collecting new clothing, books, toys, baby formula, diapers, and other new items for children aged 6 months through 18 years old for donation to local charities.

The youth group will also be soliciting donations of wrapping paper and boxes from area retailers. All Community Crib presents will be labeled and distributed by members of the Temple community and YACHAD to the Christian Center in Pittsfield.

Reservations for the dinner are required and should be made before December 7 by calling the Temple Anshe Amunim office at (413) 4425910 or emailing TempleOffice@AnsheAmunim.org. The cost of the dinner is $15 for adults, $6 for children, and a maximum of $35 for families.

Those interested in donating items for the Community Crib may contact the office for a list of gift requests.

Second Annual Hevreh Lights Up the Berkshires

Chanukah fun last year in Lenox Starting on Sunday, December 6 through Sunday, December 13, Hevreh congregants and Rabbi Neil Hirsch and Rabbi Jodie Gordon will spread the light of Chanukah to fulfill the mitzvah of pirsum ha’nes (publicizing the miracle) with candle light-

ing celebrations throughout Berkshire County. Individuals and families will serve as hosts at each site, helping to lead candle lighting, blessings, and Chanukah songs.

Locations and times are available at www.hevreh.org.

Hevreh Celebrates Its 40th Anniversary at a Special Chanukah Event, Dec. 11 GREAT BARRINGTON – On Friday, December 11, Hevreh of Southern Berkshire invites all in the community to join a special Kabbalat Shabbat in celebration of the synagogue’s 40th anniversary.

A festive potluck dinner will begin at 6:00 p.m., with plenty of latkes and Chanukah gelt for everyone. The Shabbat service will start at 7:30 p.m., and will feature Joshua Zech-

er Ross as cantorial soloist backed by a band that will provide festive holiday music.

Capping off the celebration will be the premier screening of Hevreh’s historical documentary, created by the Berkshire Film & Media Collaboration.

Hevreh is located at 270 State Road in Great Barrington.

www.jewishberkshires.org

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

Kislev-Tevet 5776

Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

Page 11

LOCAL NEWS

Festival of Lights Annual Family Chanukah Festival at the Celebration in North County Berkshire Mall Takes Place on December 13

A chanukiyah at CBI, captured by Len Radin NORTH ADAMS – Congregation Beth Israel will host a Chanukah party on Friday, December 11, at 5:30 p.m.

Bring a chanukiyah and be prepared to sing some Chanukah songs and also welcome Shabbat.

A dairy potluck follows the

service, with latkes provided by CBI. Organizers say, “Please RSVP so we know how many potatoes to peel.” Call (413) 663-5830 or visit the website at www.cbiweb.org.

CBI is located at 53 Lois Street in North Adams.

LANESBOROUGH – A family-friendly Chanukah celebration, highlighted by a public menorah kindling of the holiday’s 8th candle, will take place on Sunday, December 13 at 4 p.m. at the Berkshire Mall. Community leaders will attend the ceremony and assist in kindling the giant “Menorah of Freedom.”

The free program, co-sponsored by Chabad of the Berkshires and the Jewish Federation of the Berkshires, is open to the public, and will include live music, face painting, dancing, hot potato latkes, donuts, chocolate Chanukah coins, a grand raffle, and dreidels.

Rabbi Volovik with the “Motion Man” Jody Scalise Mime/Circus/Illusion/ Menorah of Freedom Comedian Jody Scalise – aka, “The Motion plunger, step ladders, jugco-director of Chabad of the Man” – will entertain with gling balls, juggling eyeballs, Berkshires. “In ancient times giant bubbles, a ten foot toilet our ancestors rededicated the a rubbery face, juggling clubs, a rolla bola, invisible stairs/ Temple in Jerusalem with the escalator/elevator, physical Menorah. Today, we rededicate ourselves to making this world gyrations, malleable dancing, step ladders, gibberish, a better and brighter place.

“The Festival of Lights a ukulele, impish sleight of hand, spinning plates, 12 foot brings back fond memories of streamers, a parasol, a floating childhood and serves to renew hat, things that float over the a sense of identity,” Volovik of Chabad centers across the audience, and inspirational adds. “The Chanukah lights globe that are staging similar provide warmth, joy, strength improvisation. public displays of the menorah Chanukah, a celebration and inspiration, which we and its symbolic lights. From of freedom, is highlighted by hope to share with the entire Australia to Africa, Colombia the kindling of the menorah community.” to Hong Kong, New York City’s each night of the holiday. “It For more information, visit Ground Zero to the White www.Jewishberkshires.com or is a holiday that enriches our House lawn, hundreds of lives with the light of tradicall (413) 499-9899. thousands will experience the tion,” said Rabbi Levi Volovik, joy of Chanukah 5776 with Chabad.

The Gateways Inn, co-sponsor of this event, is located at 51 Walker Street in downtown Lenox. For more information, visit www.Jewishberkshires. com or call (413) 499-9899.

Luminescence in Lenox to Brighten the Berkshires on Chanukah’s Penultimate Night LENOX – A Chanukah celebration on the 7th night of the holiday will take place on Saturday, December 12 at 6 p.m. at the Gateways Inn. The free program, sponsored by Chabad of the Berkshires is open to the public, will include live music, dancing, hot potato latkes, donuts, chocolate Chanukah coins, and dreidels.

Chanukah, a celebration of freedom, is highlighted by the kindling of the menorah each night of the holiday. “It is a holiday that enriches our lives with the light of tradition,”

said Rabbi Levi Volovik, director of Chabad of the Berkshires. By coming together and lighting the Menorah, which has eight branches out of one shaft, we want to emphasize the fundamental unity and goodness, which is inherent in the world. “Many people light the menorah in their home. We assemble outside in the public to light the menorah to tell all people that the lesson of Chanukah is universal.”

In its Chanukah outreach campaign, Chabad of the Berkshires joins thousands

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.

www.jewishberkshires.org

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Page 12

Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

November 20 to December 31, 2015

LOCAL NEWS

Klezmer Kabbalat Shabbat Congregation Beth Israel Honored for Its Celebration, with Paul Green Efforts to Combat Hunger in North County GREAT BARRINGTON – On Friday, November 20, at 5:30 p.m., Congregation Ahavath Sholom welcomes clarinetist Paul Green, who will join Spiritual Leader Barbara Cohen in a musical Shabbat service celebrating the life and soul of klezmer music.

Congregation Ahavath Sholom is located at 15 North Street in Great Barrington. For more information, visit their website at www.ahavathsholom.com or call (413) 5284197.

Paul Green

NORTH ADAMS – For the past five years, Congregation Beth Israel has been part of the Take and Eat program, preparing and delivering hot meals to 95 homebound residents in North Adams one Sunday each month. On October 21, all 50 volunteers from the congregation were recognized for their efforts with a Neighborlies Award, presented by the Northern Berkshire Community Coalition (NBCC).

The NBCC awards the Neighborlies twice a year to recognize residents from across northern Berkshire County for their neighborly acts in four categories: Businesses/Agency Support, Groups Pulling Together, Neighborly Acts, and Youth Taking the Lead.

Leaders of this ongoing community outreach at CBI are Helene Armet, Grace Bowen, Robin Brickman, Alice Cande, Amy Filson, and Ed Oshinsky, who each oversee aspects of the cooking, pack-

CBI congregants honored for their ongoing participation in the Take and Eat program aging, driver coordination, fundraising, and baking.

NBCC’s biannual awards ceremony is always hosted by CBI, and congregants reported it was a special experience that the latest Neighborlies honored 50 volunteers from their own ranks, along with

100 other north Berkshire residents. North Adams Mayor Richard Alcombright was on hand to present the awards.

CBI’s worthy efforts on behalf of Take and Eat are in part supported the Jewish Women’s Foundation of Berkshire County.

“Blues for Challah” – A Grateful Dead Shabbat at Isabella Freedman FALLS VILLAGE, CT – Rabba Kaya Stern-Kaufman of RIMON: A Collaborative Community for Jewish Spirituality will lead a Shabbat retreat at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center called “Blues for Challah,” a weekend of Renewal-style, Grateful Dead inspired services.

This 5th annual Jewish Grateful DeadFest explores and celebrates the universe embodied by the Grateful Dead and makes the connection between their music and worldview and Jewish tradition and culture.

The retreat will feature farmto-table gourmet kosher meals featuring homemade chal-

lah, pasture-raised meats, fresh-harvested veggies, Adamah pickles, and the joyous community of Deadheads of all generations.

The retreat begins on Friday, December 11 at 4 p.m. and will continue through to Sunday, December 13 at 2 p.m., Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center is at 116 Johnson Road in Falls Village, CT. For more information and to register, visit www.hazon.org.

“Funny, he doesn’t look not Jewish…”

Trio of Yiddish Short Stories to Be Examined at Lunch and Learn Series GREAT BARRINGTON – What’s modern about Yiddish short stories? Join Rabbi Jodie Gordon of Hevreh of Southern Berkshire for a close look at the works of three influential writers:

S.Y. Abramovitch (Mendele Moykher Seforim), Y.L. Peretz, and Sholom Aleichem. This program will take place over three consecutive Wednesdays – December 2, 9, and 16 – beginning at 11:45 a.m.

Rabbi Gordon says: “Our conversations will be enriched by your participation, so please read the stories in advance of each session.” All stories are available by email (via pdf) or in printed copies available in the Hevreh office. Please contact Janet Lee, jlee@hevreh.org, for more information.

Please bring your lunch.

December 2: “The Little Man, or Portrait of a Life” by S.Y. Abramovitch December 9: “If Not Higher” by Y.L. Peretz

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December 16: “Hodl” by Sholom Aleichem All are welcome. Hevreh is located at 270 State Road in Great Barrington.

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Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

HAPPY CHANUKAH! Visit Your Local

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Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

November 20 to December 31, 2015

LOCAL NEWS

Have Fun, Stay Fit, Make Friends – Hadassah Groups Forming The Berkshire Hills Chapter of Hadassah invites everyone to have fun! The group has just announced a wide-ranging list of ways participants can learn new skills while staying fit physically and mentally. All events, classes and groups are open to members, associates, non-members, women, men, and children.

Planned activities include a walking group, a group on wheels (bicycles, skateboards, and rollerblades), bowling, and yoga, plus beginner classes in mah jongg, bridge, and ca-

nasta. In addition, Hadassah is forming a knitting group, a crocheting group, and a Hadassah Magazine discussion group. For outdoor enthusiasts, winter sports groups will include Alpine skiing, Nordic skiing, and snowshoeing.

The group is also offering stained glass lessons (6 weeks, 2 hours per class, mid-week evenings). The $200 per person fee includes lessons, tools and materials.

Study groups will explore the following topics:

• The City of David in Modern Hebrew Literature • The City of David in Classical Texts • Jewish Ethics • Loshon Hara (evil speech) • Zionism: Land, People, Covenant.

Contact Ellen Silverstein at (413) 443-4987 or essilverstein@gmail.com to indicate interest in any of these groups.

Meeting dates and times are being tailored to the needs of the participants.

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.

Sylvia Allan Jeffrey and Judith Cook Claudia Coplan Patti Goldman Annette Gordon Maurice & Judith Joseph Larry and Carolyn Kaplan

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Tea and Torah: Exploring How to Tap Into the Power of Prayer PITTSFIELD – On December 2, Chabad of the Berkshires will begin another six-week semester of Tea and Torah led by Sara Volovik, this time focusing on the power of prayer. The course is intended to outline a spiritual road map for day to day life, and will delve into Torah and Talmud, as well as the Siddur. Participants will explore questions like: “Why do we pray?” “Does G-d need our prayers?” “Can one change their fate through prayer?”

“Jewish women have always played a pivotal role in Jewish life,” says Sara Volovik,

who is co-director of Chabad of the Berkshires. “On a personal, familial, and communal level, Jewish women have created and developed the aura of Judaic life.”

Classes will commence on December 2, and will be held each Wednesday at 12:30 at Chabad of the Berkshires, 450 South Street in Pittsfield. The course is free of charge, but those interested in attending are asked to RSVP. No prior background in Hebrew or the subject matter is necessary.

For more on Sara Volovik, please see page 9.

Weekly Torah Study through Tikkun Middot and Mussar LENOX – On the Wednesday nights of December 2, 9, and 16, RIMON: A Collaborative Community for Jewish Spirituality offers a series of classes exploring the weekly Torah portion through the lens of Tikkun Middot and Mussar. Classes will be held at 7 p.m. at the Chapel of the Church on the Hill.

The Mussar tradition emphasizes the refinement of one’s personal attributes and the development of spiritual qualities (middot) such as humility, mindful speech, patience, gratitude, and compassion. Each week, class members will explore the Torah portion from the vantage point of a particular quality and learn spiritual exercises for developing these aspects more fully as life unfolds.

These classes are inspired by the work of Rabbis Pamela Wax and Marc Margolis through the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. All classes are taught

by Rabba Kaya Stern-Kaufman.

The fee for each class is $20, with scholarships available upon request.

Each class is free standing. For more information, call (413) 274-1034 or visit the RIMON website www.rimonberkshires.org.

The Chapel of the Church on the Hill is located at 55 Main St., Lenox.

Please note that the Chapel of the Church on the Hill is the small, brown shingle building opposite the Village Center parking lot, not the main church building.

_____ $360 Mensch & Honorary Publisher (Supports color printing in one edition of the Voice)

_____ $108 Sponsor _____ $72 Patron _____ $36 Friend _____ $18 Supporter­­­­

Mail check payable to: Jewish Federation of the Berkshires 196 South Street, Pittsfield, MA 01201

(Please add Berkshire Jewish Voice in the memo)

Name to be listed: _____________________________________________ p I wish to remain anonymous

Embodied Judaism: Exploring Jewish Spirituality through Movement PITTSFIELD –Temple Anshe Amunim will host an innovative program to engage participants with Judaism intellectually and spiritually on Sunday, December 6 at 10:00 a.m. at 26 Broad Street, Pittsfield.

Embodied Judaism uses the method developed by Israeli physicist and martial artist Moshe Feldenkrais to explore spirituality through movement.

Certified Feldenkrais teacher Josh Schreiber Shalem will lead this program for adults and teens.

Participants should wear comfortable clothing that allows freedom of movement, and should bring a yoga Josh Schreiber Shalem (right) works frequently mat if they have one. with musicians “Together with Josh Schreiber Shalem, we’ll honor the coming holiday by explorprepare for Chanukah with an engaging our concept of light and darkness ing program that guides us to celebrate through text, spiritual exploration, and Judaism with our bodies, hearts and embodied experience of our own eyes minds,” says Rabbi Josh Breindel, spirand bodies in motion.” itual leader at Temple Anshe Amunim.

There is a fee of $10 for non-mem“We are commanded to love God bers, with proceeds to benefit the with all our being,” says Josh SchTemple Anshe Amunim Religious reiber Shalem. “What could that mean Education Program. Reservations are other than a call to be present in our suggested. For more information, conbodies when we pray? And yet, our tact the Temple Anshe Amunim office experience of prayer is more often one at (413) 442-5910, or email templeofof words and thoughts, rather than fice@ansheamunim.org, or visit www. physical, lived experience. ansheanumim.org.

“In this particular workshop, we’ll

Kislev-Tevet 5776

Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

Page 15

Your Federation Presents 1

Middle East Update – A Paucity of Positive News from a Region in Crisis LENOX – “My wife doesn’t let me talk at parties anymore,” confessed Middle East expert Ralph Nurnberger in his opening remarks at the Federation’s Middle East Update, “because I depress people.”

Fortunately for the nearly 200 attendees who packed Shakespeare & Company’s Elaine P. Bernstein Theatre on October 25, Dr. Nurnberger is still at liberty to speak elsewhere. In an entertaining and wide-ranging talk, the Georgetown University professor delivered an overview of the myriad upheavals currently roiling the Middle East, presenting in-depth (and underreported) factual information and his own analysis in a manner free of the heated rhetoric Middle East topics so often elicit.

Though his long term view about the current phase of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict did indeed skew toward the depressing – this wave of “violence will peter out,” he said, “but the resentments will remain” – he was able to demonstrate how the events of today fit into the broader sweep of Middle East history and also explain how the international community might respond to the slew of crises going forward.

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1. Professor Nurnberger at the podium 2. Simon Peimer and Arnold & Tanay Mazurenko 3. Attendees filled the Bernstein Theatre 4. Hershy Volovik (top left) talks with Floyd & Marcia Tuler before the lecture 5. Alan & Judy Benjamin

6. Federation’s Dara Kaufman and Amy Lindner-Lesser with Professor Nurnberger 7. Stephen Friedberg, Howard Gorham, and Sumner Milender 8. Mordi & Monica Lapin 9. Harvey Ganot, Alan Jaffe, Bonita Ganot, and Liz Jaffe 10. Alexandra Warshaw and Suzanne Gorham

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Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

November 20 to December 31, 2015

Your Federation Presents Artist Demonstration: “The 3-Dimensional Watercolors of Robin Brickman,” Nov. 30

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

1.

2.

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.

Discover how paintings can lift off of the page on Monday, November 30, at 10:45 a.m., when the Jewish Federation of the Berkshires hosts a visual presentation titled “The 3-Dimensional Watercolor Paintings of Robin Brickman.”

This free program at Congregation Knesset Israel, 16 Colt Road in Pittsfield, is part of the Federation’s Connecting With Community series.

Robin Ms. Brickman, a picture book artist specializing in natural science, will show how she creates three-dimensional paintings for her illustrated books. Participants will also have the opportunity to make their own cut and shaped paper leaf or flower, using materials provided at no extra cost.

Robin Brickman grew up in Northern Virginia, where the Smithsonian Institution and local countryside were regular inspirations. At Bennington College, Robin majored in graphic arts and botany.

She has long experimented in different art techniques, especially painting, drawing, printmaking, fiber arts, bookbinding, calligraphy, and

Brickman’s 3-D creations papermaking.

These explorations are a foundation for the sculpted watercolor technique Robin developed in the 1990s. This unique method of illustrating children’s books is created by painting, cutting, and hand sculpting paper into 3-dimensional art.

Her books and paintings

have won many awards, including a New York State Museum Purchase Prize, Outstanding Science Trade Book, National Science Teachers Association, Children’s Book Council, John Burroughs List of Nature Books, and Reading Rainbow selections. Ms. Brickman’s original art is in public and private collections.

IF YOU GO Sponsor: Jewish Federation of the Berkshires / Connecting With Community Venue: Congregation Knesset Israel Date & Time: Monday, November 30, at 10:45 a.m., followed by lunch (see page 18).

Kislev-Tevet 5776

Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

Page 17

OBITUARIES

SOUTH EGREMONT – Dr. Marvin Ira Shapiro, 76, passed away on Thursday, October 8.

Son of Benjamin and Lillian, Dr. Shapiro received a B.S. from the City College of New York and PhD from Wayne State. He also served in the US Army.

Dr. Shapiro was a lover of the arts, a man of the stage with a huge, unabashed presence. In recent years, he trained and performed as an actor and singer, appearing in several community theater productions in the Berkshires.

Never one to shy away from the spotlight, he performed at many family functions and social gatherings.

He enjoyed a long and fruitful career as a psychologist and professor at Kingsborough Community College, a specialist in family therapy and a published author. He had so many interests and his curiosity was insatiable. He marveled at the pace of technology and innovation, and felt so privileged to bear witness to such extraordinary advances during his lifetime. He was a bike rider, a poker player, a stellar omeletier, and a world traveler.

He cared deeply for his family, friends, and his fur babies, and was available at any hour for anyone who needed an ear to bend, who was lost or broken, or exuberant with optimism and possibilities.

Raised Orthodox by Russian immigrant parents, Dr. Shapiro was a devoted member of the Jewish community at Hevreh in Great Barrington, where he and his wife, Roberta, lived since 2001. Dr. Shapiro left this orbit too soon, and will be sorely missed, but his family is so grateful for the extraordinary legacy he leaves behind.

Dr. Shapiro was adoring husband to Roberta; loving father and father-in-law to Gregg and Renee, Rachel and Brandon, and Lori and Neil; doting grandfather to Sam, Colbie, Ari, Miriam, Laurel, and Davis; devoted brother to Barbara and Marty (deceased), Stan and Margaret; proud uncle to Jenny (deceased) and Mark and Eric and Helene, Sarai and Ben; and a wonderful friend, confidant, and advisor to so many.

Funeral services were held on Sunday, October 11 at Hevreh of Southern Berkshire, Great Barrington. Burial immediately followed at Ahavath Sholom Cemetery, Great Barrington. Donations may be made to Hevreh of Southern Berkshire or Jacob’s Pillow through Finnerty & Stevens Funeral Home, 426 Main St., Great Barrington, MA 01230.

Ellen J. Shafer, 70, life member of Hadassah TERRE HAUTE, IN – Ellen J. Shafer, 70, passed away on Sunday, September 27.

Born January 13, 1945, in Pittsfield to Herbert and Mildred Kay Covel, she married Ronald Shafer in 1972. Mrs. Shafer held masters degrees in both social work and elementary education.

She had numerous hobbies, including basket weaving, sewing, knitting, and shooting at the Riley Conservation Club. She was a life-long member of Hadassah.

She also loved and doted on her dogs, Lucy and Jesse.

Mrs. Shafer is survived by her husband, Dr. Ronald Shafer of Terre Haute; children, Nicholas Altomonte and wife Lisa of Cherry Hill, NJ, Drs. Cindy Feiler and husband Alan of Asheville, NC, Dr. Tami Shafer of Pueblo, CO, Hara Wendy Shafer of Terre Haute, Becky Shafer, RN, of Springfield, MO, Helena Root and husband Dave of Portland, OR, and Harris Shafer and wife Emily of Bloomington, IN; grandchildren, Dylan and Carson Altomonte, Julia and Logan Feiler, and Riley and Kacie Boedecker; her mother, Mildred Kay Schultz of Pompano Beach, FL; brothers, Peter Covel and wife Karen of Pittsfield, and Jeff Covel and wife Cele of Arlington, VA; her best friend, Sandy Green of Gouverneur, NY; mother-in-law, Mildred Shafer of Albany, NY; and several nieces, nephews, great-nieces, great-nephews, and cousins. She was preceded in death by her father, Herbert Covel DDS and her step-father, Donald Schultz.

Graveside services were on Friday, October 2 at Highland Lawn Cemetery. Memorial contributions may be made to Hadassah or the Terre Haute Humane Society.

Ruth Bashevkin Kelman, 103, North Adams native NORTH ADAMS – Ruth Bashevkin Kelman, 103, the daughter of Annie (Feder) and David Bashevkin, a native and long-time resident of North Adams, died after a brief illness on Friday, September 4. She was the wife for 51 years of Joseph Kelman, proprietor of National Furniture Co., formerly located on Main Street, North Adams.

A graduate of Drury High School, Mrs. Kelman worked as bookkeeper in her family’s business, Butler Coal & Grain, Co. and later with National Furniture Co. She was a member of Congregation Beth Israel, the Sisterhood of Beth Israel, and Hadassah while in North Adams.

In 1973, she and her husband retired to North Miami Beach, FL. In 1997, she relocated to NJ and most recently resided at Lions Gate Health Center in Voorhees, NJ. Mrs. Kelman is survived by her children, Sander Kelman (Marybeth) of Manasquan, NJ and Myra Kelman Hirschhorn (Stuart) of Willingboro, NJ; three grandchildren, Caryn Hirschhorn, David Hirschhorn (Moire) and Seth Hirschhorn (Tara); sister, Helen Yulman of Palm Beach, FL and brother, Robert Bashevkin (Barbara) of Williamstown. She was predeceased by three sisters: Sadye Levine, Esther Lipton, and Hilda Betten and three brothers: Albert, William, and Irving.

Funeral service and burial took place at Lakeside Memorial Park in Miami, FL on Sunday, September 6. The Shivah memorial period was observed at the home of Mrs. Kelman’s daughter in Willingboro, NJ. Contributions in her memory may be made to Congregation Beth Israel, 53 Lois Street, North Adams, MA 01247; the Northern Berkshire Community Coalition, 85 Main Street, Suite 624, North Adams, MA 01247; or Parkinson’s Action Network, 1025 Vermont Avenue, NW, Suite 1120, Washington, DC 20005.

Mildred Pevzner, 92, co-founder of Jack’s Department Store GREAT BARRINGTON – Mildred Pevzner, 92, passed away peacefully in Kensington, MD on Friday, October 16.

Born in Newburyport, MA

on November 10, 1922, she was a daughter of Jacob and Dora Cohen. She graduated from Newburyport High School in 1940 and moved to Great Barrington after her marriage to Jack B. Pevzner in Roxbury, MA in 1946.

In 1954, the couple founded Jack’s Department Store in Lee. In 1970, along with their son David, they opened Jack’s Country Squire in Great Barrington. Millie, as she was most commonly known, was a long time member of Hevreh of Southern Berkshire, and previously a member of the Ahavath Shalom Synagogue and an active member in their Sisterhood. She was also a lifetime member of Hadassah.

She was singularly devoted to her family and having spent most of her life in Great Barrington, she took great joy in the beauty of the Berkshires.

Upon retirement, she and Jack spent winters in Lake Worth, FL. Survivors include: daughters Lynne Kaplan (David) of Kensington, MD, Paula Pevzner of New York City, and Dr. Holly Schneider (Jeff) of Waban, MA; daughter-in-law Sue Pevzner of Great Barrington; grandchildren Dan Pevzner, Matt Pevzner, Lisa Pevzner, Amy Pevzner, Rachel Reicher, Ben Kaplan, Aaron Greenwald, Marcus Schneider, and Andrew Schneider; and great-grandchildren Victoria and Elizabeth Pevzner and Eli and Avi Reicher. Her husband, Jack, and her son, David, predeceased her.

Funeral services were held on Monday October 19 at Finnerty & Stevens Funeral Home. Burial followed at Ahavath Sholom Cemetery.

Donations in Mildred’s memory can be made to the Caring Community Fund of Hevreh of Southern Berkshire and Project Native, Great Barrington, MA through Finnerty

& Stevens Funeral Home, 426 Main Street, Great Barrington, MA 01230.

Phyllis (Steiner) Katz, 78, active at Hevreh of Southern Berkshire LENOX – Phyllis (Steiner) Katz 78, of South Florida and Lenox passed away peacefully on Tuesday, October 27.

A graduate of Weequahic High School, University of Chicago, and Columbia University, Mrs. Katz was predeceased by her beloved husband of 55 years, Eli G. Katz. She was an adored Girl Scout leader and skilled clinical social worker. She co-owned and grew a business renting baby furniture to visiting families. She also worked with her husband at Maintenance Automation Corporation.

Mrs. Katz was an active member and dedicated choir participant of Temple Sinai of North Dade and Hevreh of Southern Berkshire. She volunteered as a docent in various museums and interviewed Holocaust survivors to document their stories.

Mrs. Katz is survived by her three children; Heidi Katz (Edward Scott), Daniel Katz (Lisa Klein), and Linda Sotnick (David); five grandchildren, Julie (Chris Merrill), Hilary, Hannah, Elliot and Jacob.

A graveside service was held on Thursday, October 29, at Ahavath Sholom Cemetery in Great Barrington. Donations can be made to National Parkinson’s Foundation, Michael J. Fox Foundation, or HospiceCare in The Berkshires c/o Finnerty & Stevens Funeral Home, 426 Main Street, Great Barrington, MA 01230.

The Jewish Federation of the Berkshires extends its condolences to Paul Gluck on the passing of his mother Sylvia Eileen Gluck.

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Dr. Marvin Ira Shapiro, 76, many interests, insatiable curiosity

Page 18

Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

November 20 to December 31, 2015

IMPORTANT NOTICE Knesset Israel renovations Due to renovations taking place at Congregation Knesset Israel, the Federation’s “Connecting With Community” series and kosher lunch program may experience some minor disruptions beginning November 2015 through March 2016.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

We will do our best to keep the community apprised of changes as they develop and appreciate your flexibility as we work to maintain the high quality of this valuable community program.

Unique bird feeders, birdhouses, birdseed, binoculars and bird guides.

Outdoor furniture and birdbaths.

783 South Main Street Great Barrington, MA 01230 413-644-9007 www.wild-birdstore.com Across from Guido’s

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:

NOVEMBER Monday, 23.............10:45a.m., “Soldier On” with John F. Downing, CEO of Soldier On, Inc. Lunch: Chicken enchilada casserole#, black bean soup, yellow rice, salsa & avocado, croutons, tropical fruit salad, and tea.

Tuesday, 24.............. Veal Stew**#, noodles and onions, salad, farmer’s loaf, fruit cocktail, and tea.

Thursday, 26............Closed for Thanksgiving Monday, 30.............10:45a.m., “The 3-Dimensional Watercolor Paintings of Robin Brickman” with picture book artist, Robin Brickman. Lunch: Vegetable lasagna, minestrone soup, beets, salad, Italian bread, assorted cookies, coffee, tea, and milk for coffee.

DECEMBER Tuesday, 1................ Fish sticks, tomato soup, French fries, green beans, cranberry muffins, peaches, coffee, tea, and milk for coffee.

Thursday, 3..............10:45 a.m., “Bursting the Bubble of the Bubbe Meises of Chanukah” with Rabbi Jan Kaufman. Lunch: Vegetarian moussaka, rice, salad, garlic bread sticks, rice pudding, coffee, tea, and milk for coffee.

Monday, 7...............10:45 a.m., “Preserving a National Landmark” with Will Garrison, executive director of the Berkshire County Historical Society, on changes at Arrowhead. Lunch: Meat loaf**#, celery rice soup, mashed potatoes, peas, pumpernickel bread, pears, and tea.

Tuesday, 8................ Hot dogs and beans**#, vegetarian beans, salad, hot dog rolls, ginger snaps, and tea.

Thursday, 10.............. 10:45 a.m., “Fictionalizing My Grandmother” with journalist, Ruth Bass. Lunch: Chicken tenders#, zucchini rice soup, sweet potato fries, mixed vegetables, multi-grain bread, tropical fruit salad, and tea.

Monday, 14.............10:45 a.m., Chabad and Community in the Berkshires with Sara Volovik. Lunch: Brisket**#, noodle soup, latkes, broccoli, applesauce, rye bread, dessert TBD, and tea.

Tuesday, 15..............Turkey piccatta**#, salad, peas & carrots, rice pilaf, rolls, grapes, and tea.

Thursday, 17............10:45 a.m., “Building strong, lasting relationships with the mothers, girls, families and partner schools in Kathmandu” with Ricky Bernstein, founder of Hands in Outreach. Lunch: Fresh fish**, mushroom soup, mixed vegetables, noodle kugel, scones, lemon pudding, coffee, tea, and milk for coffee.

Monday, 21..............10:45a.m., “Process of Aging” with therapist, Maggie Bittman. Lunch: Turkey stew**#, salad, rosemary potatoes. Potato bread, brownies, and tea.

Tuesday, 22.............. Meat chili**#, brown rice, salad, corn bread, apricots, and tea.

Thursday, 24............10:45 a.m., “Just Plain Folk” with photographer and musician, Lee Rogers. Lunch: Fish chowder, grilled cheese sandwiches, tomato medley, whole wheat bread, assorted dairy desserts, coffee, tea, and milk for coffee.

Monday, 28.............10:45a.m., “Core Stability, Flexible Feet, and Balance” with Carol Bennett. Lunch: Stir fried chicken**#, Udon soup, fried rice, pumpernickel bread, pineapple, and tea.

Tuesday, 29.............. Salami and pastrami frittata#, chef’s choice soup, salad, beets, rolls, grapes and tea.

Thursday, 31............No program. Tomato goat cheese pasta, celery rice soup, salad, garlic bread sticks, mandarin oranges, coffee, tea, and milk for coffee.

JANUARY Monday, 4...............Program TBA. Salisbury steak**#, mushroom barley soup, brown rice, wax beans, multigrain bread, apricots, and tea.

Tuesday, 5................ Chicken cacciatore**#, wide noodles, salad, Italian bread, applesauce, and tea.

Thursday, 7..............Program TBA. Fresh fish**, potato leek soup, roasted Brussels’ sprouts, lentil rice pilaf, whole wheat bread, ice cream and cookies, coffee, tea.

Monday, 11.............Program TBA. Meat loaf**#, noodle soup, peas & carrots, mashed potatoes, Challah, pears, and tea.

Tuesday, 12............... Roasted chicken**#, chef’s choice soup, broccoli, parve noodle kugel, salad, rolls, brownies, and tea.

Kislev-Tevet 5776

Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

Page 19

BERKSHIRE JEWISH VOICES

Traveling with Jewish Taste Roaming Through Rome

By Carol Goodman Kaufman We had been in Rome before and had seen all the major, must-see sites on the tourist route. This time, we decided to focus on the area surrounding our hotel.

Roaming through the neighborhood, we first hit a couple of churches. Yes, I know, this is Rome, where churches are as popular as Dunkin Donuts shops. But the Basilica Sacro Cuore was particularly interesting for a painting featuring Mary and Joseph with a young Jesus learning his basic Judaism, including the Fifth Commandment and the first line of Genesis – all in Hebrew.

After the churches, we happened upon a wrought iron fence with a sign indicating that we were at the National Museum of Rome. This treasure was inexplicably not pictured – or even listed – on our walking map. I write inexplicably because this institution, which is housed in multiple buildings in the eastern part of the city, has an outstanding and enormous collection.

As we admired the lush entry garden at the Baths of Diocletian venue and its central fountain, statues, and other decorative pieces, we noticed that virtually every gravestone lining the perimeter had a water pitcher engraved on it. Was this a Roman idea, or was it borrowed from the Jewish custom of putting a ewer on Levite headstones to commemorate their hand-washing for the Cohanim? After all, Jews have been in Rome since the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE – some intermingling of practices must have occurred.

Inside the museum itself, we were practically hypnotized by the sheer number of amphorae, busts, bracelets, and oil lamps, and so almost missed one tiny artifact. Tucked in among scores of other items in a glass display case was a signet carved with the name Theodora – and a menorah. The woman must have been of the upper classes if she had documents important enough to need a seal signifying ownership. Was she a wealthy Jew, or a Roman matron glorifying the devastation of the Jews?

We of the Tribe have a long memory, and the Romans feature strongly in it.

One of the most powerful stops on our meanderings had to be the Arch of Titus

people look at the sculpture under the arch, they only see the misery inflicted upon a conquered race. But look again. I see not a conquered race, but a monument to one of the greatest modern nations on earth. The conquering Romans are a footnote of history, but the Jewish nation continues to thrive, within and outside the State of Israel. That is what the arch represents to me.”

An ironic grace note: In a Judaica shop in the Jewish quarter, Joel and I saw a chanukkiah fashioned from the very same relief. Living well, indeed.

Although we didn’t get there on this visit, it is worth your effort to make your way to the Great Synagogue, and the Jewish Museum housed there. Sitting on the banks of the Tiber River in the Jewish quarter overlooking the former ghetto, it is built in an eclectic style and features the only squared dome in the city.

When you go, be prepared for serious security screening before being treated to a wonderful talk and tour by a knowledgeable docent.

Roman seal with menorah

Pasta Fagioli This vegetarian version of a classic Italian soup is one you can enjoy at home while pretending to be sitting outdoors at a Roman trattoria. It is easy to prepare and wonderfully comforting on a chilly autumn or winter evening.

“Spoils of Jerusalem” relief on Arch of Titus and its “Spoils of Jerusalem” relief. Although I’ve seen it before, standing before the tremendous triumphal arch once again sent shivers up my spine. Back in the year 82 CE, the Emperor Domitian had the Arch built to honor his older brother Titus’s sack of Jerusalem, during which the Romans murdered more than a half-million Jewish civilians. The survivors were marched to Rome to be sold as slaves, and the Arch glorifies the Roman victory by depicting the victorious legions and their captives carrying the menorah and other Temple artifacts on their backs.

I learned only recently that there was at one time a ban on walking under the Arch – a ban imposed on Jews by Jews. The decree was so severe that one who defied it was considered to no longer be a Jew. However, Morton Satin writes in The Forward that when members of Britain’s Jewish Brigade entered Rome during World War II, they formed ranks and marched straight under the arch while giving the traditional the Roman salute, symbolically thumbing their noses in the face of repression and in defiance of history’s repeated attempts to annihilate the Jews.

What’s more, when the State of Israel was declared in 1947, the entire Roman Jewish community marched backwards under the arch to symbolize the beginning of the long prayed-for redemption from exile. As an embodiment of the adage that living well is the best revenge, the menorah engraved on the Arch served as the model for the menorah used on the seal of the modern State of Israel.

Then, on Erev Hanukkah of 1997, the Chief Rabbi formally lifted the 2,000-year-old ban in a ceremony in the Forum attended by the entire Jewish community of Rome, along with politicians and dignitaries. There are those who still refuse to walk under the arch, but for most it is a sign that we survived and the Romans didn’t.

In a side note to the story, Satin reports on his personal involvement with the Arch. In 1996, he was serving as a division director at the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization. In honor of the FAO’s upcoming 50th anniversary, the Italian government offered the agency, along with several other works of art, a full-size replica of the “Spoils of Jerusalem” relief. Satin was appalled, given the horrible past that it represented. He petitioned the head of the agency to refuse the offer of the relief and, after some back and forth, succeeded in getting the FAO to refuse the gift. Even to this day it remains covered by ugly orange tarps.

Satin reports that the city’s mayor, Francesco Rutelli, declared, “When many

Ingredients: 1 T. olive oil 1 large onion, diced 2 -3 cloves garlic, finely chopped (I like lots of garlic, so please suit it to your taste) 1 stalk celery, diced 2 carrots, peeled and diced 1 T. dried basil 2 t. dried oregano 1 t. dried thyme ½ t. dried rosemary

1 t. red pepper flakes 1 can diced canned tomatoes 1 8 oz. can tomato sauce 3 c. vegetable broth 1 can cannellini beans, drained and rinsed 1 cup dried pasta (small shapes) 2 T. chopped parsley freshly grated parmesan cheese salt & freshly ground pepper

Directions: In a large stockpot, heat olive oil over medium high heat.

Stir in onion and garlic with a pinch of salt and pepper, and cook for 2 minutes.

Add dried herbs and red pepper flakes and toss to coat.

Stir in celery and carrots and cook for about 3 minutes.

Add tomatoes, tomato sauce, and stock and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook for 20 minutes.

Add pasta and cook until done (according to package instructions).

Serve with parmesan cheese sprinkled over top, along with crusty Italian bread.

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.

Page 20

Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

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Kislev-Tevet 5776

Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

Page 21

MAZEL TOVS! At its donor brunch on October 18, Berkshire Hills Hadassah honored Helene and Larry Berke for their years of service and support for the local Jewish community. Thanks to the generous support of members and friends, the group was able to raise nearly $18,000 for Hadassah, and in the process exceeded the matching grant goal of $10,000 for new or increased donations.

The Berkes will be honored with a room at Hadassah Medical Center, Jerusalem.

Mazel tov to Larry and Helene, and thank you for all you have accomplished for our Jewish community.

learn. live. enjoy.

* Mazel tov to Emma and Jacob Lezberg, seniors at Pittsfield High School, who were chosen as the recipients of the MA Association of School Superintendents’ Certificates of Academic Excellence. The award is given to the top two students who have distinguished themselves with their three year grade point average, rank in class, and personal selection by the superintendent. The presentation took place at the Pittsfield School Committee Larry and Helene Berke meeting on October 14. At the same meeting, Jacob and Emma were named to the student advisory council of the school committee. Jacob and Emma are the children of Jenny Greenfeld and Bob Lezberg and grandchildren of Barbara and Elliot Greenfeld. * Mazel tov to parents Sarah and Jeff Blaugrund and their daughter Irit on the arrival of Halloween baby Dalia Joan. * Mazel tov card to Rabbi Neal Borovitz and Ann Appelbaum and family on the birth of their grandson Spencer Isaac Friedman, who was born on November 2. * Mazel tov to Josh Cutler on his re-election to the Pittsfield School Committee. * Mazel tov to Alfred and Joann Ivry on the birth of granddaughter Esther Michal.

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• Sinatra: The Man and His Movies

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• Monkeys Don’t Text: A Short Course in Linguistics • The Birth of our American Republic (1787-1800) • Exploring the Two Faces of Photography • Women and the Creative Self • A Singer’s Life: Benjamin Luxon • Advances in Medicine • Matters of the Mind • Today’s Headlines • Science Conversations • and more!

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Page 22

Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

November 20 to December 31, 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 5:30 p.m., Saturdays at 10 a.m.

Call to confirm services 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

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.

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 – A Collaborative Community 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.

I have been in The Berkshires since 2002, first as a second home owner and a permanent resident for the last six years. As well as being one of the owners of The Pittsfield Colonials Professional Baseball Club, I have been involved in many businesses: distribution, manufacturing, private equity and vacation ownership. Sales and marketing has always been my strength with an emphasis on “World Class” customer service.

Buddy Lewis

BEYOND THE BERKSHIRES

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.

distinct

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Kislev-Tevet 5776

Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

Page 23

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.

Tuesdays at 1:00 p.m. – “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.

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.

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.

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, 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 7:00 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. (Approximately every six weeks) – Congregation Ahavath Sholom Book Club. Contact Diana Richter at drpajama1@gmail.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.

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. – “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) 4425910, 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: Roz Kolodny at (413) 243-2077 or rozlk@yahoo.com.

Thursdays at 6:15 p.m. – “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.

Give the Gift of Cranwell A Romantic Dinner...A Relaxing Spa Treatment...

A Round of Golf...Cranwell gift cards are perfect for everyone on your list.

“Give the Gift, Keep the Robe.”

FREE Cranwell Robe

with the purchase of a gift card of $250 or more!* *Present this ad at the Cranwell spa shop between 12/7 and 12/18/15 to receive your free robe while supplies last.

Gift card must be purchased at spa shop to receive free robe.

To purchase a gift card, stop by, call us at 413-637-1364 ext. 736 or visit shop.cranwell.com

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 9:00 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.

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 9:00-10:00 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.

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

November 20...........................4:08 p.m.

November 27...........................4:04 p.m.

December 4..............................4:02 p.m.

December 11............................4:02 p.m.

December 18............................4:04 p.m.

December 25............................4:07 p.m.

See “Berkshire Jewish Congregations and Organizations” on page 22 for information on all regularly scheduled services in the area. Contact a congregation directly if you wish to arrange an unscheduled minyan.

Page 24

Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

November 20 to December 31, 2015

WORLD NEWS

On the Auction Block: Ben-Gurion’s Secret Letters to His Lover

CREDIT: KEDEM AUCTION HOUSE

WASHINGTON, DC – Decades after they were written, former Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion’s secret letters to his lover were set to be auctioned off by Israel’s Kedem Auction House in early November. This collection of letters, written between the years 1932 – 1935, consists of about 50 personal love letters and telegrams in the handwriting and signature of Ben-Gurion himself.

This historic Hebrew and Yiddish letter collection documents the close relationship that developed between the

Rega Klapholtz two in the years of 1932 to 1935, and the intimacy they shared. The letters shed rare insights to the character of the Iron Man and the founder of the State of Israel, as well as to the very developed romantic side he possessed. The collection, which was scheduled to be auctioned off in Washington, D.C., was estimated to sell for between $25,000 and $40,000.

“I was a very bad, bad boy, surely much worse than you imagine” – that’s how David

KENYA POP STAR, continued from page 1

young Kenyan singer who rose to fame in 2008 as a finalist on the East African version of “American Idol.”

Kimani — who recently moved to Amsterdam, where she lives with her Dutch husband — concedes that Millo does not exactly possess the looks that Westerners would expect for an up-and-coming pop star. But in Kenya,“the masses are still quite rural, so they’re not so much into looks and fashion,” she said.

“For them it’s all about the music,” Kimani said. “If someone has the music, that’s all that they care about.”

Plus, the song topped the charts before the video was released — so few people knew Millo was what East Africans call “mzungu,” a white man.

“And even after, many couldn’t believe Gilad was really singing because few white

Ben-Gurion begins one of his letters to his secret lover, Rega (Regina) Klapholtz, a 26-year old medical student from Vienna. At the time, Ben-Gurion was 47 years old and had been married to wife Paula for 15 years, with three children. The letters show that Ben-Gurion possessed a very developed romantic streak: “You were right – you did see the date 16/2 in my passport. But the official date is incorrect, and the correct day is in October. But that’s not important, what’s important and dear to me was the fact that you remembered it – and for that I would like – in Vienna I’ll tell you what I would like…”

In another letter he writes, “You don’t know how happy I was to receive the few words you wrote to me in your last letter. The day I got your letter I was very tired – I was after a difficult and tiring activity regarding the failed agreement – and your letter gave me strength.”

Ben-Gurion’s first letters to Rega were written in Yiddish, but he quickly moved to Hebrew, at the same time imploring her to study and write in Hebrew. Indeed, during 1933 he received a letter in Hebrew from Rega who had made many efforts to study his beloved language. A photograph of them both from a previous joint trip was included with the letter. Ben-Gurion responded, “I was twice as glad to receive your letter this time.

It’s very good that you write in Hebrew even if you don’t write so well. The pictures are nice, especially the one where I’m standing in the shade, and the other, showing my profile. If I can get two or three more of

these, I’d be grateful…”

The intimacy between the two strengthened over the years. One of its peaks is evident in a letter dated September 1934, where Ben-Gurion writes, “It’s difficult for me to accept the fact that I’m in Europe and so far away from you. As much as you want me to come to Vienna, I probably want it even more. Apparently, you don’t realize how much ‘my small little girl’ is dear to me, and how much I want to see her and be with her…

It would be even better if you were located in Jerusalem, but that might have been too good…You cannot understand how good and pleasant it will be in Israel, with you already there, at least for one of us.

But when will this happen?...

How easy it was during the hard times, knowing that not too far away sits a dear girl with whom I can rest and forget everything, even if just for a few moments. Maybe when you come to Israel I will lose you completely…Never mind! I could still love you….”

Up until today it was assumed that the affair ended in 1935. Ben-Gurion and Rega’s last meeting, as indicated by a telegram titled “I’ll come tomorrow. 9.17 south, David” took place in Vienna on April 24, 1935, on his way to the United States for a public diplomacy campaign for the workers’ party there. However, the word of his visit must have reached his wife Paula, who consequently wrote to him on May 12: “I write to you with trembling hands. If I don’t ask for much, please come home as soon as possible after you finish your business in America. In hopes that you respect my wish.”

Even so, it was not her request which denied Ben-Gurion to another visit to Vienna, but the fact that in that same year Rega received her diploma, she made Aliyah

people in Kenya speak Kiswahili,” Kimani said.

Music has always been a major part of Millo’s life. In his 20s, he was a member of a Jerusalem rock band, White Donkey. Millo was planning to become a professional musician rather than follow in the footsteps of his late father, Yehuda Millo, who served as a diplomat for 37 years.

But when Millo’s son was born, his wife, Hadas, said that “there’s no money in music and we need to find a real job,” Millo recalled in an interview that he gave last month to Israel’s Channel 2.

After working as a journalist, he became a diplomat in 2003. Millo served in Nairobi and Los Angeles before leaving Israel’s Foreign Ministry in 2008 and settling in Nairobi permanently.

“The connection with Kenya was instant,” Millo said. “I’ve never encountered a more open, generous people.”

It was only recently, on a quiet afternoon when his wife and teenage kids were away, that Millo called up a music producer, M.G., whom he had met through a friend. Millo showed up at the studio with a song he wrote just “to see how it goes,” he recalled.

“We realized we had a hit the second we finished recording,” Millo said.

Thanks to “Unajua,” he has landed dozens of guest appearances on Kenyan radio and television shows. There he promotes his campaign about farming for the Balton CP Group – the British firm where Millo works as head of business development and public relations — which represents mostly Israeli agriculture and communications companies.

“After we establish that I’m white, that I sing in Kiswahili and that this place is home for me, there’s still 10 minutes of airtime, so the interviewers and I often go into other things

A photograph of the Ben-Gurions at the Dead Sea that wife Paula gave to her rival and started working in a local HMO in Tel-Aviv. On July 9, Rega visited Ben-Gurion’s home, not knowing that he had yet to come back from his trip, as he was tarrying in London for two more weeks.

Therefore Paula, his wife, was the one to welcome Rega at the door. Paula, who knew about the affair and had already gathered a decent amount of information on Rega (with the help of a local doctor), avoided direct confrontation with her.

Instead, Paula chose to hand Rega a souvenir with which she would say everything – three photographs of her and David on the shore of the Dead Sea. Behind the photographs Paula wrote: “To Rega, From Paula. 9.7.35”. Afterwards, Paula would frequently attend Rega’s apartment on Ben-Yehuda Street, in the guise of social visits.

Another letter in the collection proves that the affair did not end in 1935, as previously thought. In 1938, Rega was sent to a training program in Switzerland, after having worked for two years at a health organization in the kibbutzim of the Jezreel Valley. In

a letter dated September 1938 sent from London, Ben-Gurion invites Rega to meet him in Zurich. “Rega, next weekend I’ll be in Zurich on my way to Bucharest. How long are you going to stay in Switzerland and could you come to Zurich for a day? David.” The neutral and unaffectionate language Ben-Gurion used in this letter indicates that this was a single encounter, away from Paula’s eyes. And also, during this period he was already in the midst of a torrid affair with Haim Weizmann’s secretary.

Meron Eren of Kedem Auction House concludes, “This collection of Ben Gurion letters is an exciting piece of modern Jewish history, serving as a window into the personal life of the Zionist leader who believed with all his heart in strict abstinence and public modesty. The letters expose the great solitude he felt in his many journeys in promoting his dream and the Zionist goal in Europe, as well as his romantic and caring side, which served him in conquering both his Zionist aims and his lover’s heart.”

that I’m passionate about,” Millo said.

Titled “Farming is Cool,” the campaign tries to appeal to the millions of young Africans who swapped their now-aging rural communities in favor of the perceived opportunities of big metropolises like Nairobi and its suburbs and slums, where only a third of about 6 million residents have adequate sewage systems. The aim is to attract young people to more sustainable and advanced agriculture.

Last month, Millo released his second single, “Sema Milele” (“Say Forever”), which the well-respected online magazine Afrika Nmbiu crowned as “the perfect wedding song.”

He is working on a third single with a Kenyan artist, 22-yearold HK Gachago.

He may be big in Kenya now, but Millo says he’s not making money from his music — yet. Still, whatever income his musical career may gener-

ate, he hopes to donate.

In addition to hoping to help empower youth through farming, another cause is Israel for Africa, the nonprofit that Millo and his family established in memory of his father that promotes Israeli innovation and culture in Africa.

“Europeans and Americans don’t always get the connection that many Israelis have with Africans,” he said. “But we feel it instantly, every time we crack a joke or slap one another’s back.”

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Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

CULTURE AND ARTS

JEWISH BOOK MONTH

Hands of Flame – A Short Film Making a Large Impression

Notable Jewish Books of 2015

“An animation is a dance. It is an art of motion, captured through a filmmaking lens. The greatest animations combine this wordless storytelling of dance with the cinematic language of film.”

So writes Steven Markowitz, writer and director of Hands of Flame, a Holocaust themed short film that has been collecting awards at film festivals across the country. The film is an expressionistic portrayal of his grandmother’s experience at Auschwitz as a teenage girl, and very much embodies the approach to animation reflected in Markowitz’s summation of the art – it even begins and ends with a dance.

The seven-and-a-half minute film is lyrical, visually complex, and often quite beautiful, but can turn on a dime in capturing the random violence of

ther after the war in a refugee center, and then came to the States, joining her older sister on a farm in New Jersey. “Once she got here, she had to learn how to grow up to be an adult.

She never had that education, never had people to help her and teach her.”

Because of the war, he concludes, “There was just not a lot passed down to her.” And, by extension, could not be passed down generationally to him.

Markowitz says that Magda, though reticent in sharing her story publically, would recount her story to family members – “it helps her to tell it” – and though he knew about her experience in the camps, “I hadn’t heard the story about what it was like growing up, who she was as a child, and what it was like afterward.”

Alexandrian Summer by Yitzhak Gormezano Goren

the camps. He completed the project as his 2014 senior thesis at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and its success on the independent film festival circuit, where it competes against the work of far more experienced animators, is uncommon for a student film.

Markowitz was raised in New Jersey, but has a longtime connection to the Berkshires through his grandfather, Bob Markowitz, who owned an insurance agency and real estate office on Pittsfield’s North Street. Steven’s father Frank grew up here, and summer in the Berkshires was a big part of his family life.

Both grandparents on his mother’s side were survivors, and Markowitz was inspired to honor and connect with their experiences through his own perspective, two generations removed from the Holocaust but still shaped by it emotionally through his family. The goal for artists in his generation, Markowitz says, “is telling the story in a way that is true to both the survivor and the storyteller. Bigger stories have been told – sweeping epics. What I hope to tell are smaller, more individual stories.”

After his grandfather died three years ago, he says he had a “clear vision” that he wanted to make a film like Hands of Flame. “My grandfather never spoke of what happened to him at all,” says Markowitz. “I never heard his story and now I never will.

That’s why I’m very grateful that my grandmother shared her life.” Magda Wolkowitz was 15 when she was sent to Auschwitz and later Bergen-Belsen, spending a year and a half in the camps. She met Markowitz’s grandfa-

The animated figures in Hands of Flame appear in silhouette, and have elongated limbs reminiscent of Jack Skellington in The Nightmare Before Christmas that help imbue the film with a dreamlike quality. “The lack of detail,” says Markowitz, “leaves it up to the audience to fill things in by themselves.” For the most part, emotions are conveyed through the characters’ eyes, which glow green yet are incredibly expressive, testament to Markowitz’s skill as an animator. Hands of Flame is big story condensed into 7.5 minutes that feel longer (in a good way) and richer than one might expect of a film with so short a running time.

Given the storytelling and filmmaking craft on display, it’s not surprising that the film has been earning plaudits and picking up awards at film festivals around the country. Hands of Flame has taken top prize for animated film at the Long Island International Film Expo, New Hope Film Festival, the New Hampshire Film Festival, Buffalo Niagara Film Festival, and Sedona International Film Festival, among others, and will be screened overseas in Poland and Greece. Markowitz says he considering working with the story in a bigger way, as well – for now, he will be attending USC School of Cinematic Arts in Los Angeles.

Markowitz’s film also passed muster with perhaps the most important judge, his grandmother Magda, now 90 years old. “She did like it,” says Markowitz.

“She didn’t say much, which is kind of what I expected. But she did say thank you, that she was proud, and that she hopes it will be a success.”

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These Jewish-themed books were released this year, and were greatly enjoyed by the BJV staff.

Review by Ranen Omer-Sherman / Jewish Book Council English readers finally have an opportunity to discover for themselves just why award-winning novelist and playwright Yitzhak Gormezano Goren’s Alexandrian Summer received such strong critical acclaim when it was first published in Israel in 1978. For anyone who has ever wondered why Alexandria arouses such fierce nostalgia among the tens of thousands who emigrated in the years following Israel’s establishment, this short yet expansive novel offers an indelible answer. While its richly descriptive language is often as appealingly breezy and insouciant as the seaside promenades where much of its action takes place, the novel ultimately takes us deep into the sorrows and passions, past and present, of two Jewish families just prior to the military coup that toppled King Farouk in 1952.

The story is anchored by the viewpoint of Robby, the youngest son of the family that hosts the vacationing Hamdi-Ali family. Goren is adept in depicting all of his strongly-sketched characters’ inner lives and excels in capturing young loves, erotic attractions, and tragic entanglements in this hedonistic and sensual world.

But the most powerful of the entrancing subplots concerns that of the Alexandrian mania for the racetrack and Goren makes us feel that excitement but also the overheated excitement of the crowd, its fickle propensity for turning into a dangerous mob. Though decidedly resistant to sentimental nostalgia, Goren provides many moments so palpably appealing (he can make us smell the rich interiors of home as nimbly as he does the salty air wafting from the sea at the promenade) that readers will often feel thoroughly seduced by his birthplace’s vanished charms Compact as it is, Alexandrian Summer goes far in delivering that “multi-everything” to us in unforgettable language that lingers long after the final page.

Throughout this riveting family drama, Goren often pauses to capture Alexandria’s singular ambiance: though decidedly resistant to sentimental nostalgia, Goren provides many moments so palpably appealing that readers will often feel thoroughly seduced by its vanished charms: “A pleasant breeze blew from the sea. The tumult of bathers sounded from afar: Muslims, Christians and Jews desecrating the Sabbath. On the street, cars honked hysterically. The entire city rumbled and roared; nevertheless a Sabbath serenity was felt all around.” Only the most hardened reader would not wish to linger in this place, would not ache over its tragic and abrupt ending, no matter how inevitable it might seem from the perspective of today’s endless violence.

The Seven Good Years by Etgar Keret Review by Becca Kantor / Jewish Book Council “Our life is one thing, and you always reinvent it to be something else more interesting,” Etgar Keret’s wife tells him in his memoir The Seven Good Years. “That’s what writers do, right?”

Keret does have a prodigious talent for reinventing life on the page—or perhaps not so much reinventing life as honing in on its most interesting moments, cutting and splicing them into compulsively readable tales. Internationally known for his short fiction, graphic novels, and screenplays, the Israeli author makes his first foray into nonfiction with The Seven Good Years, a series of interlinked vignettes that span the years between the birth of his son and the death of his father.

Keret’s voice, translated seamlessly from the original Hebrew, is conversational, unpretentious, and often hilarious. It is easy to get so caught up in his anecdotes that their incisive depth sneaks up on you and takes you by surprise: exploring the terrorist mentality through Keret’s family’s obsession with Angry Birds; illustrating his experience of being Jewish in Bali with a tale about a hotel worker finding a five-foot lizard in a bathtub.

In the biblical story of Joseph and the Pharaoh, the seven years of plenty are followed by seven years of famine. In Keret’s memoir, personal and political difficulties are imminent, even in joyful times. The birth of Keret’s son Lev occurs on the same night as a terrorist attack; at the playground, parents discuss whether or not their three-year-old children will eventually join the military; on book tours, Keret encounters echoes of the anti-Semitism that haunted his parents in Poland; Keret’s father, a big-hearted, high-spirited Holocaust survivor, is diagnosed with terminal cancer.

Keret would be the first to cast himself as an imperfect clairvoyant. Like the Pharaoh, he is prone to anxiety-fueled dreams, but the interpretations he receives are far less accurate. A recurring nightmare—in which he is selling hot dogs to a menacing mob—leads him to invest his money in a foreign bank for safekeeping, where it eventually turns to dust. When he and his wife become convinced that a nuclear bomb will be dropped on Israel, they forego housework and take out a huge loan before it becomes clear that they’ll have to settle for peace after all.

Underneath the humor lies a grim reality: in Keret’s Israel, unlike the Pharaoh’s Egypt, even the best of planning cannot ward off tragedy.

Remembering his father’s bedtime stories about postwar Italy, Keret realizes that they were meant to teach him “about the desire not to beautify reality but to persist in searching for an angle that would put ugliness in a better light and create affection and empathy for every wart and wrinkle on its scarred face.” Keret categorizes the seven years in his memoir as “good” even though they’re rife with mini-disasters. Like his father, he doesn’t gloss over the bad. Instead he approaches his woes with his own particular blend of compassion and humor that makes them more understandable, more human. Keret’s wife is right—storytelling does, indeed, have the power to reinvent life.

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Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

November 20 to December 31, 2015

JEWISH BOOK MONTH

*

Not Your Zayde’s Brooklyn – Joseph Trigoboff’s Memoir of Growing Up the Hard Way in East New York

By Albert Stern Scratch the surface of most American Jews’ family histories and it probably won’t take much digging to uncover a meaningful connection to Brooklyn, New York. Often the second stop (after tenement living in Manhattan) in a Jewish family’s progress toward achieving the American Dream, Brooklyn of the mid-20th Century is generally swathed in a gauzy nostalgia of spaldeen stoop ball contests, egg creams, Dem Bums, Coney Island, and on and on.

Undercutting that fond wistfulness, however, is usually a parallel narrative of how hard everyone was working to do something that would get them the hell out of Brooklyn.

That sentimentalized City of Churches is not the place Joseph Trigoboff writes about in Rumble in Brooklyn, his memoir of growing up Jewish in the rough and tumble neighborhood of East New York in the 1950s and early 1960s. It was a period of change, as families that could afford to had started deserting Brooklyn for the suburbs.

Different ethnic groups were moving into hitherto homogenous enclaves, with tensions arising as longtime residents struggled to hold on to their identity and prerogatives as the newcomers sought their own stake in the game.

When you talk to Trigoboff about his formative years in that tumultuous era, “violence” is a word that does not disappear from the conversation for very long. The Richmond Shores second homeowner (with a more than 50-year connection to the Berkshires) channeled his knowledge of street life

and the demimonde into two acclaimed crime novels, The Bone Orchard and The Shooting Gallery. His prose has been praised by luminaries such as Norman Mailer (who was a personal friend) and George Pelecanos (novelist and writer/ producer of The Wire), and his verse by poet Robert Bly. With Rumble in Brooklyn, Trigoboff revisits the mean streets of his youth, where the constant threat of conflict made it necessary for a young man to learn how to be violent in order to simply get along.

“I wouldn’t call my old neighborhood a melting pot,” says Trigoboff. “I’d call it a boiling pot.”

Pugnacity is a quality that the family brought over from the Old Country – Trigoboff’s father Leo frequently regaled him with stories like the one of how his own father used an axe to split open the head of an anti-Semitic muzihk (peasant) whose gang had attacked him. Even the (perhaps apocryphal) origin of his surname is redolent of violence: “The first Trigoboff had allegedly sauntered into a Russian bar, engaged in a fistfight, and emerged with a split lip, so the villagers started calling him Three Lips – Tri gubov.”

Upon arriving in America in the early 20th Century, the family settled in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn during the heyday of Murder Incorporated, the storied gang of Italian and Jewish enforcers for organized crime syndicates.

The Jewish contingent of the gang was based in Brownsville, then a violent milieu home to underworld notables such as Abe “Kid Twist” Reles, Louis “Lepke” Buchal-

Joseph Trigoboff

ter, Jacob “Gurrah” Shapiro, and Harry “Pittsburgh Phil” Strauss. Trigoboff says that Martin “Buggsy” Goldstein, a notorious hitman eventually electrocuted at Sing Sing (for the strangulation murder of bookmaker Irving “Puggy” Feinstein) was once beaten up by his father.

Leo Trigoboff – the most compelling character in Rumble in Brooklyn – was a dynamo, a feared street fighter who, according to his son, “was one of the strongest men who ever lived. My dad was called ‘Samson’ and ‘Popeye’ for a reason. My dad could walk over to a car, as cousins older than me would tell me, and lift the front end up to his waist.

“And when I asked ‘Did you really do it, Pop?’, he said: ‘My son…it was a small car.’”

Leo was also physically tough with his children.

“Watching him lose his temper was like watching an entire country declare war on you,” writes Trigoboff about a spanking. “What really frightened me was that he might not be able to stop himself. When my father had been ten years old, his own father had lost control and ripped off half my dad’s ear.”

Contradictorily, Leo was equally loving and warm, a man who belted out selections from Gilbert & Sullivan operas and a voracious reader who One Bite of our Famous inculcated a Potato Latkes... You’ll Know love of literature in his It’s Time to Celebrate Chanukah, son. He kept a steady job the Festival of Lights! in the public schools and

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also had an entrepreneurial streak, running a summer season bungalow colony in the Catskills called Tel Aviv. Joe Trigoboff remembers Tel Aviv as “an odd and threatening place” infested with poisonous snakes that were kept at bay by axe-wielding employees. Eventually, Leo prospered owning a summer camp in New Hampshire, where Joe spent most of his summers.

Trigoboff’s first experience of neighborhood violence came early. He writes: “New Lots Boys [the main Italian gang] looked at us young Jews as their natural prey.” He was set upon at age six by a gang of four toughs, also six, who demanded daily payment of a penny to prevent a beating. Writes Trigoboff: “I didn’t think it was unusual for boys to start a protection racket at age six.” Early on, he learned two lessons – one, that violence could strike at any time, for no reason, and two, that trying to talk his way out of harm was fruitless. “I had to deal with life on the street as it was, not how I wanted it to be.” Eventually, he and his Jewish friends formed their own gang along with some non-Jewish stragglers.

Rumble in Brooklyn chronicles Trigoboff’s early childhood as an overweight victim bullied by larger kids – he said it would not have been honest to aggrandize himself and leave out the humiliations he endured. By the time he reached adolescence, however, he had learned how to take care of himself, although life was still generally terrifying.

Trigoboff estimates he’s been in roughly 90 fights, and says that in East New York, there were two kinds of altercations. “Fist fights are what you had with your friends,” he remembers. “You each held back. You weren’t trying to kill the other person. And, most importantly, you were allowed to give. Street fights…there were no rules. Truthfully, I gave my Jewish heritage away – I mean, ‘come, let’s reason together,’ I mean ‘let’s talk it out.’ I put that behind me, and I didn’t fight clean. I dirty fought.”

Nevertheless, Trigoboff asserts he was “pretty fair minded.” He says he has been in situations where he could

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have killed someone, but didn’t. “That was morality in East New York.”

By the time he was a teenager, East New York had become even more volatile after African Americans and Puerto Ricans started moving in, creating new rivalries and upping not only the amount of violence, but also its severity. Random beatings targeted along racial lines by all parties became commonplace, as did murders – Trigoboff writes about a shadowy and particularly nefarious group that called itself S.P.O.N.G.E. (Society for the Prevention of Negroes Getting Everything) that would opportunistically abduct and murder black people.

Also setting up shop in East New York, at a candy store, were the mobsters who became well-known through the film Goodfellas, most of whom Trigoboff knew personally. In Rumble in Brooklyn, Trigoboff describes a knee-knocking encounter with Tommy DiSimone, the murderous sociopath played by Joe Pesci in the movie, who set upon a friend of his with a knife. Trigoboff watched the beating his friend endured, and says that not running away was the bravest thing he has ever done. Had DiSimone killed his friend – very much within the realm of possibility – then, Trigoboff reckons, he would have been killed, as well. He stayed, he says, to preserve the relationship he had with his buddy, if they both survived.

The obvious question is why didn’t the Trigoboffs just move out of this hellhole, especially since they had an inkling that a different kind of life existed? Trigoboff answers: “That BROOKLYN RUMBLE, continued on page 28

Kislev-Tevet 5776

Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

Page 27

JEWISH BOOK MONTH

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RABBI SACKS, continued from page 1 Sacks, 67, would consider the presidency of Yeshiva University.

JTA: You’re a member of the House of Lords, you teach at King’s College London and New York University, and you travel the world lecturing.

How do you have time to write, too?

Sacks: I used to take, when I was chief rabbi, six weeks in the summer, and instead of taking a holiday I’d write a book. You go into a kind of trance when that happens. I’d be thinking about it for the preceding year, so it wasn’t out of nothing. At the age of 40 I completed my first book, and I’ve done one a year since. I usually write the books I want to read. Long ago I made a list of the books that I think need to be written, and I just knock them off one by one.

You know what your next project will be already?

Well, I know what’s for the next 20 years, we should all live so long.

You have 20 lined up?

Oh, more. I’m sorry about that, but that’s how it goes.

What’s your next project?

I am writing a new commentary to the Chumash [the Bible]. There was a commentary — it’s still used in Anglo Jewry — called the Hertz Chumash, written by one of my predecessors. It is a commentary that asks: How do we set this against its historical background?

What does it mean to us today? Nobody’s done a Hertz Chumash since Hertz a century ago and it’s an urgent necessity. ArtScroll anthologizes traditional commentaries and it’s done tremendously well. But they have not stepped outside that world of the yeshiva and said how do we make sense of this today?

That sounds almost Reform.

If Maimonides was a Reform Jew, then I suppose it is. But Maimonides wasn’t. That is the classic tradition. The rabbis formulated it in a very simple way: There’s the Written Law and Oral Law. Although the text never changes, you always need that act of interpretation to translate the word of God for all time into the word of God for this time.

Generation after generation reads the same words and says: Was that then or is that now? There’s a mitzvah to live in our time.

There’s a lot of disagreement among Jews when it comes to interpretation.

Judaism is a religion of argument.

It’s the classic environment. Judaism is a coral symphony scored by many voices. I don’t see that as a problem. I see that as a sign of vitality.

Tell me about your new book about religious violence.

I have tried to get to the roots of the historically fraught and potentially violent relationship between Jews, Christians and Muslims. [Those roots are] highly specific narratives in the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and the Koran, all of which lead back to the stories of sibling rivalry in Genesis.

Sibling rivalry, according to Sigmund Freud, is the primary driver of violence through history. It’s a very serious book to be read seriously by people who care for the future of humanity. It took me 12 years to write.

Is this a Jewish book?

“Not in God’s Name” was very con-

sciously written for an audience that is predominantly not Jewish. It is directed to Jews, Christians and Muslims with equal emphasis on all three. I’m really trying to make a statement in the book, that navel-gazing is not necessarily the best answer for the Jewish people right now. We are living in a very dangerous world. The people of Israel are exposed to immense danger, and now is not the time for internecine, domestic squabbles. We have to stand hand in hand and shoulder to shoulder with Christians, moderate Muslims, secular humanists and people of other faiths in defense of religious freedom and humanitarian values. Because right now we are at one of the most dangerous turning points in history.

What’s the danger?

I don’t know if the West really knows what to do with radicalized political Islam. I don’t know if the Muslim world really knows what to do with it.

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Do the Jews know what to do with it?

Fundamentalism is the attempt to impose a single truth on a plural world. Jews have always stood against that. We never went with the majority.

We insisted on our right to be different. That is why Jews carry a very important message to the world. If you’re al-Qaida or ISIS, attempting soon or eventually to impose the caliphate on the world, you will have to oppose the Jews and the State of Israel because historically we were the ones who stood against them.

I imagine you’re often asked about anti-Semitism in Europe.

If it is not safe to be a Jew in Europe, it is not safe to be a human being in Europe, and if Europe ever lost its Jews it will have lost its soul. So this is a big problem. And the real trouble is that Jews continue to talk about it in a way that does not communicate itself to non-Jews. There’s a deep danger when the Jewish response to anti-Semitism is complaining to other Jews or using language that will only really be heard by other Jews. It’s the ultimate exercise in futility.

Is there a crisis of leadership in the Jewish world today?

There’s a crisis of leadership in the world. That is manifest. And there’s a great desire for magical leaders who will solve the problems of the world, and that leads to violence, tyranny and all sorts of bad things. So we are in a crisis of democratic leadership, I would say.

But what about in the Jewish world?

I’m very impressed by the rabbinate here in America. Not an easy position; it never was. I’ve traveled to a lot of communities and seen a lot of very, very impressive young Orthodox rabbis and young leaders.

Yeshiva University is beginning its search for its next president. Would you be interested in the job?

No comment.

This interview has been condensed for clarity.

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Page 28

Berkshire Jewish Voice • jewishberkshires.org

November 20 to December 31, 2015

JEWISH BOOK MONTH

Author Daniel Klein Weighs in on Jewish Jokes with Philosophical Heft Daniel Klein’s latest book, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It, was released in October. In it he reconnects, in his eighth decade, with quotations he recorded in a journal labeled “Pithies” that he kept from his late teens (while a philosophy major at Harvard) through his mid-thirties. By recording select insights of ancient and modern philosophers, Klein says was looking for wisdom about how to live a good life.

Like many of us who have looked back on the highlighted passages in our college texts, Klein found many of the passages he once found meaningful to be cringe-worthily naive. But on further examination, he recognized that his core preoccupations had not changed all that much. “Sure, time had crept on,” he writes, “and my life, with its ups and downs, had simply happened, as lives tend to do, but my appetite for philosophical ideas had not diminished in the least.” Subsequently, he began

First she made the dough out of milk, egg, and flour, giving Little Sydney a taste of it.

“Yummy!” said Little Sydney.

Then Mrs. Kushner made the filing out of apricots, orange juice, and sugar, and gave Little Sydney a taste of it.

“Yummy!” said Little Sydney.

Then Mrs. Kushner rolled out the dough, cut it into circles, and placed some filing right in the center of a circle of dough.

“Looks delish!” said Little Sydney.

Excited, Mrs. Kushner folded up one side of the circle.

“Oh, boy!” said Little Sydney.

And she folded up a second side.

“Yum, yum, can’t wait,” said Little Sydney.

And finally Mrs. Kushner folded up the final side, making a perfect triangle.

“YUCK! HAMANTASCHEN!” cried Little Sydney.

apparently, is its shape; he may even have a phobia about it. (Triangle Phobia actually exists in some people.) In any event, with a different shape, Mrs. Kushner’s filing and pastry could be an ersatz rugelach, which conceivably Little Sydney would adore.

Incidentally, the question of what makes a person essentially who he is has given rise to some hilarious new theories in contemporary philosophy. The British philosopher, Derek Parfit, says that what comprises a ‘self’ or ‘personal identity’ is a slippery notion at best. I won’t go into Parfit’s theory here (I do in my new book), but suffice it to say that a good joke illustrates Parfit’s point.

The joke is a Sardar joke from India. (Yes, other cultures have philosophical jokes too, just not as many as we do.) Sardars are the Indian equivalent of the Wise Men of Chelm – fools with a weird take on reality.

PHOTO: BILL HUGHES

Riding on the train to Mumbai, a Sardar wants to take a nap but does not want to miss his station, so he asks the compartment’s other occupant to wake him up when they get close to Mumbai.

He tells this fellow that he will give him 100 rupees for this service.

Daniel Klein collecting more “Pithies.” In Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It, Klein explores the meaning of his “Pithies,” sharing reflections both old and new.

In the bestselling Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar, Klein (with co-author Thomas Cathcart) explained weighty philosophical ideas through jokes, and so the BJV presented the Great Barrington resident with a challenge – could he use some of his “Pithies” to explore the philosophical underpinnings of two archetypal Jewish jokes? Both jokes are canonical (i.e., they appear in Leo Rosten’s The Joy of Yiddish, though Klein recasts the first one), and both possess philosophical heft. Here’s how Klein responded.

Purim was coming up and Mrs. Kushner had her usual Purim Problem: her son, Little Sydney, hated hamantaschen.

What to do? Mrs. Kushner consulted Rabbi Katz.

The Rabbi said that Little Sydney could be turned around simply by seeing exactly what goes into hamantaschen. “I’m sure he actually loves every one of the ingredients,” said the rabbi.

So when Mrs. Kushner came home, she brought Little Sydney into the kitchen and began to make a batch of hamantaschen.

Actually, Little Sydney is no fool. (He may be a meshugana, but that’s another story.)

Sydney understands the difference between what Aristotle called ‘essential’ and ‘accidental’ properties of an object. The Greek philosopher said that essential properties are those without which a thing wouldn’t be what it is; and accidental properties are those that determine how a thing is, but not what it is.

For example, Aristotle thought that rationality was essential to being a human being and, since Socrates was a human being, Socrates’s rationality was essential to his being Socrates. Without rationality, Socrates simply wouldn’t be Socrates. However, the fact that Socrates had a button nose was not essential to his being Socrates. That is an ‘accidental’ property. Give Socrates some creative rhinoplasty and he’d still be Socrates.

But let’s get back to Little Sydney’s aversion to the final hamantaschen his mother produced. That final fold of the dough is critical: it turned it into a triangle and that shape is essential to it being a hamantaschen. A triangle signifies the shape of Haman’s hat, hence the pastry’s name. Clearly Sidney hates something about the essential hamantaschen and that,

Well, the other fellow feels that 100 rupees is a lot of money just for waking the Sardar up so, being a barber by profession, he decides to give the snoozing Sardar a little something extra

ded the length of the car, filled two paper cups with water, brought them back and handed them to the woman in the lower berth.

“Madame, here. Water!”

“God bless you, gentleman; thank you.”

Fortescue crawled up into his berth, and he was on the very edge of sweet sleep when, from below, came the woman’s voice: “Oy…vas I toisty…”

for his money. While the man sleeps, the barber gives him a good trim and a clean shave, removing his entire beard.

When they approach Mumbai, the barber wakes the Sardar and gets his payment. The Sardar gets off the train and goes to his apartment where he goes to the bathroom to wash up. Looking in the mirror he becomes furious – “That son of bitch! I gave him 100 rupees and he woke up the wrong man!”

Next joke, please.

In the old days, when trains welcomed customers, when there were few bedrooms and one slept in an upper and lower berth, a Mr. Fortescue, tossing and turning in the upper, could not get to sleep because, from the berth below, came a woman’s constant, mournful krechtzing: “Oy…am I toisty…

Oy…am I toisty!”

On and on went the lament, until Mr. Fortescue got out, crawled down the ladder, pad-

The title of a wonderful book about Yiddish language and culture says it all: Born to Kvetch (by Michael Wex). Complaining seems to come easily to our people, always has. But many philosophers believe that complaining – indeed, merely dissatisfaction with one’s current state – is a sure way to miss out on a gratifying life.

In the third century BCE, the Greek philosopher Epicurus wrote: “Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.”

And in the nineteenth century, the American philosopher, William James wrote, “If you believe that feeling bad or worrying long enough will change a past or future event, then you are residing on another planet with a different reality system.”

I could quote dozens of other philosophers making the same point: kvetching dilutes your life, keeps you from enjoying what you have right in front of you.

Nonetheless, it sure does make for some very funny Jewish jokes.

BROOKLYN RUMBLE, continued from page 26 is the most puzzling thing.

But even besides the violence, from the age of 5 to 10 they put me in the bungalow colony with hundreds of poisonous snakes! I couldn’t understand why we were still there.” His father, born in 1913, was of the generation that came out of the Depression, lived through the Great Influenza, that remembered World War I, and that fought in World War II. “I think they looked at danger differently. My dad, for instance – the fact that men from the Tel Aviv bungalow colony would have to carry axes and rifles and go out two or three times a day to kill the snakes…that was his way of dealing with it.”

Trigoboff says one of his goals in writing Rumble in Brooklyn was “to show how limiting growing up in that environment was.” At the book’s close, he writes about how the East New York boys he grew up with ended up – a shockingly large proportion met sad or violent ends, though several of his fellow Jewish gang members

went on to successful careers.

His own escape, he believes, was made possible by his father’s love of books, which allowed him to understand that a wider world existed.

He remembers his first visit to Greenwich Village. “I came back to speak to my friends [in East New York]. I said – ‘would you believe there was no one on the roofs, no one lounging on cars, and whites and blacks were walking together! No one had weapons!’

“They were shocked. I was shocked!”

Rumble in Brooklyn is

a harsh, funny, and often lyrical portrait of a writer as a young man, distinguished

by Trigoboff’s honesty about himself, his family, his fears, and the utter lack of glamour of the thug life. Now 68 years old, Trigoboff says: “No matter how old you are…East New York is always in your bloodstream. You never get it out. I still have the same impulse to react to things as I did in East New York. The difference is, now I ignore them.”

Rumble in Brooklyn is available on Amazon.

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