By Albert Stern / BJV Editor

Big thanks to all of you who answered our call for voluntary subscribers in the last Berkshire Jewish Voice!

In a little more than month’s time, we have raised more than $17,500 in additional gifts directed to supporting this publication. If you can believe it – and I can’t quite – that’s already a larger total than we raised in the entire 12 months of last year’s voluntary subscription drive. And not only that, that sum is meaningfully larger than the one you'll find in the hardcopy paper printed just last week.

If you haven’t already contributed, we hope you’ll consider doing so. You can use the form on page 4 of the latest BJV if you prefer to mail in your gift, or donate online.

Special thanks to all of you who have signed on at the Honorary Publisher level, which pays for our color pages. One of our new subscribers is this issue’s honorary publisher, Stuart Weitzman – a name I’m guessing will register with about 10 percent of our male readers, but that about 90 percent of our female readers will recognize immediately.

Count me among the 90 percent of men who had no clue. When his donation came in, I wanted to find out how I might thank him. So I googled “Stuart Weitzman” and got back 13,700,000 image results showing women’s pumps, sandals, boots, wedges, platforms, flats, blocks, slingbacks, bows, espadrilles, kittens, lace-ups, and on and on.

Was our new honorary publisher the “Stuart Weitzman” of women’s footwear fame?

Apparently so. A little more googling uncovered that Mr. Weitzman and his wife are noted philanthropists who generously support a wide range of worthy Jewish causes. Did the Weitzmans have a Berkshire connection?

Apparently not. So was there a way we might find out how he came to donate specifically to the Berkshire Jewish Voice?

One of the cool things about working for the Federation system – particularly in this specific Federation outpost, which is small but astoundingly cosmopolitan – is that though you may not know too many movers and shakers yourself, many of the movers and shakers you do know are the movers and shakers who literally know all the other movers and shakers in every last corner of the Jewish world.

So we contacted one such Federation-friendly mover and shaker, who indeed knows the Weitzmans very well. She reported that the couple had visited the home of a rabbi who lives in the Berkshires and, she speculated, that was where Mr. Weitzman could have noticed the Berkshire Jewish Voice.

“He must have liked the paper,” she wrote.

So thank you, Mr. Weitzman, and thanks to all of you other impressive people who have been impressed by the paper and support it as voluntary subscribers. Please turn to page 4 of the print version of the BJV for a listing of most of your fellow movers and shakers who have donated to the BJV since July.

Be assured that your help is vital in our efforts to put out this publication covering and supporting Jewish life here in the Berkshires. We are incredibly grateful.

Note: Some have suggested that the success of this appeal was due in part to the editor being pictured with dogs. So as not to mess with success, Albert Stern is shown with Max, his 9-lb. Morkie, who is criminally insane.