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By Albert Stern / BJV Editor

I’ve always thought that this notion of coincidences needs to be examined more closely.

I write ‘always’ because I come from a long line of nonbelievers in coincidence. Foremost among them was my Bubbie Ida, who would have thought you deluded if you believed that the world’s goings-on were not controlled by mysterious and powerful invisible forces. Moreover, I was raised in a Jewish community that believed in a supreme being who not only operates as an almighty Lord of Hosts, but also as Micromanager of Worldly Affairs. Im yirtzeh Hashem, if it be God’s will, was not so much an expression as it was a worldview, one that also comes (at least for those familiar with the Yiddish saying about how Gott responds when der mensch tracht) with a cautionary message embedded within.

For personal reasons we will not get into here, I find the idea of a world where outcomes are determined happenstance consoling – but alas, ultimately unconvincing. So I stew over such matters.

I’ll give you a for-instance. In late June, I was walking in beautiful Stevens Glen, a Richmond preserve managed by the Berkshire Natural Resources Council (BNRC). I happened upon a huge tree that had toppled onto one of the footbridges, damaging its railings and rendering it impassable. When I got home, I reported what I’d seen on the BNRC website’s communication form and wrote that I had taken pictures I could send if they provided me with an email address that accepted attachments.

The next day, a BNRC staffer thanked me for the information and asked that I send her my pictures. That made me think that I must have been the first person to have reported the fallen tree, because if someone else had already reported it, surely in this era of ubiquitous smart phones BNRC would already have some images. And that made me think, ‘what a coincidence’ – you see, several years earlier I had also been the first person to inform BNRC that a flash flood had wiped out two of the other bridges at Stevens Glen, along with a substantial section of the trail leading to the ravine. This was a major problem – sections of the property had to be closed for months as BNRC built new stairs and bridges, refurbished the walking paths, and cleared out debris from the streams. And that made me think, ‘Was it a coincidence or yirtzeh Hashem that I be the one to have made both discoveries?’. If the latter, what might be Ha Kadosh Baruch Hu’s game plan for me and/or Stevens Glen be in all this?

When I experience this kind of coincidence, I’m reminded of an anecdote about Franz Kafka.

One night in Prague, Kafka was taking a walk with Gustav Janouch when a dog crossed the street in the distance.

“What was that?” said Kafka.

“A dog,” said Janouch.

“It could be a dog, or it could be a sign,” Kafka said. “We Jews often make tragic mistakes.”

That led me to realize that “coincidence” was going to be my way into writing this annual appeal for voluntary subscribers to the Berkshire Jewish Voice, as the most meaningful moment I had this year working as the editor of your Jewish community newspaper hinged upon a synchronicity. I’ll explain momentarily, but first some business:

This publication’s revenues do not cover all its costs. Your financial help as voluntary subscribers is essential in our efforts to bring you meaningful, positive, and entertaining stories both by and about your neighbors, as well as about Jews around the world. Your generosity as voluntary subscribers last year was phenomenal, and your support remains vital to sustaining this publication. Please see the insert in this paper for more on how you can support the Berkshire Jewish Voice.

The most powerful piece of writing we published in the last 12 months was the transcript of the remarks delivered by Shimi Roches at our community commemoration of the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 2023 attack on Israel. He described the ordeal of losing three generations of his family – his brother-in-law Ohad Cohen, Ohad’s mother Yona, and his 9-month-old niece, Mila – on that terrible morning in Kibbutz Be’eri, vividly conveying how those events unfurled in real time for loved ones of the victims. In an article I wrote to accompany Shimi’s testimony, I shared how, when I was given his remarks to review before the event, I was interrupted from reading journalist Lee Yaron’s devastating 10/7: 100 Human Stories. As I put down Shimi’s remarks and returned to the book, the first paragraph I happened to read was about the Cohen family. “This unsettling coincidence,” I wrote, “reaffirmed what I believe has been an overarching lesson of Oct. 7 and its aftermath: We live in a small Jewish world and we are all connected by fewer degrees of separation than we ordinarily comprehend.”

I also wrote about what was immediately apparent about Yaron’s narrative: “10/7 is more than ‘journalism as a first draft of history’ – it is a work of literature that contains multitudes.” Thanks to the work of my esteemed colleague Rabbi Daveen Litwin, Federation’s director of programming and community engagement, we were fortunate to hear Lee Yaron present a program for our community. I was able to interview her via e-mail, as well. 10/7 received the accolades it richly deserved, winning the 2024 National Jewish Book Award Book of the Year – but, as Yaron shared with us, it was also passed over by reviewers and booksellers who had begun to shy away from Jewish-themed books.

This reality was affirmed by nearly all the Jewish authors I spoke to this year, who added that their publishing houses were not making much effort to promote their books. And so, in 2024/2025, I focused many of the BJV’s Culture pages on Jewish books and writers, many of whom were also featured Federation presenters. Leah Lax described her journey out of the Chabad Lubavitch community and engagement with immigrant communities. In our packed spring BJV, Katka Retzke talked to me about the Jewish revival in Poland; Hasia R. Diner, a preeminent scholar of American Jewish history and immigration, shared the story of the relationship of the Jews and the Irish in America; and I had Jehuda Reinharz to myself for more than an hour to discuss his epic biography of Chaim Weizmann. I cannot tell you how fulfilling it is to be able to stretch my understanding of disparate subjects about which I may have no real awareness, and learn directly from these writers and scholars. We also featured interviews with writers living and working in the Berkshires like poet/essayist Karen Chase (Two Tales: Jamali Kamali & ZundelState) and Galina Vromen (Hill of Secrets), as well as playwright Lawrence Goodman (The Victim).

Community members pitched in when I issued an invitation for book reviews. Howie Stier shared an appreciation of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s The Penitent; Linda Davis interviewed cartoonist Amy Kurzweil; and Linda Burghardt (journalist and scholar-in-residence at the Holocaust Memorial & Tolerance Center, as well as Federation presenter) wrote about the Holocaust fiction that “enhanced [her] world and deepened [her] grasp of history.” Dr. Steve Rubin, professor emeritus and former dean at Adelphi University and moderator of Federation’s Current Events Seminar at Connecting With Community, really stepped up by contributing a regular column about Jewish books. Steve possesses that quality I value most in a reviewer – if he thinks a book is worthwhile, you probably will, too.

I also had the chance to review more books by local authors than I’ve been accustomed to, including Seth Rogovoy's George Harrison bio and Roberta Silman’s most recent short story collection. The volume that cut the deepest was Cold Crematorium, the rediscovered Holocaust memoir by József Debreczeni. I tried to assign the review, but no one would agree to take it on – “too much, too much right now” was their refrain. I had the book on my BJV lineup for three issues before I could bring myself to write about it, though I recognized that Cold Crematorium was destined to be counted among the very greatest books every written about life and death in German concentration camps. The experience of reading it was simply too devastating, not only for what the memoir conveyed, but also because I knew the translator, Paul Olchvary, who died suddenly at his home in Williamstown just as the book was set to be released. When I finally steeled myself to write my appreciation, Paul’s dear friend Jenny Gitlitz added a reminiscence that captured the heartbreak of her loss. Paul produced his masterful translation right here in the Berkshires, and to know that it will endure as the way English language readers apprehend Debreczeni’s masterpiece absolutely blows me away. Last year, Cold Crematorium was chosen by the New York Times as one of the 10 Best Books of 2024. Amazing things are accomplished in the Berkshires.

But last year was not all books. As usual, our local rabbis delivered insightful and meaty Rabbi Reflection columns that deepened our understanding of Torah and Jewish thought. This year, we were pleased to add new contributors, Rabbi Jennifer Rudin (Congregation Ahavath Sholom), Rabbi Eric Gurvis, and Harman Grossman, and one of our regular columnists, Rabbi Neal Borovitz, mixed things up a bit by sharing his experiences visiting Israel last year (as did Rabbi David Weiner). It was a year where our local clergy experienced a change of the guard. Rabbi Barbara Cohen stepped down from the pulpit at Congregation Ahavath Sholom; Rabbi Jodie Gordon assumed the role of senior rabbi at Hevreh of Southern Berkshire; and Temple Anshe Amunim welcomed Rabbi Valerie Lieber as its new spiritual leader. I had the pleasure of talking to all three about their accomplishments and ambitions. I think these columns and conversations are valuable in that they provide a window for our readers into the diversity and depth of Jewish practice in the Berkshires, and the distinction of our spiritual leaders.

And I also enjoyed Lisa Green’s reporting on another huge local development – the opening of Chabad of the Berkshires’ Jewish Center in Lenox. She captured the vision of co-directors Sara and Rabbi Levi Volovik in building this ambitious new touchpoint of Jewish life in the region. And, in the story we published last year that I found most moving, we shared the correspondence between the Volovik's daughter Chana and Rachel Goldberg Polin, who exchanged messages of support and consolation on the very morning that Hirsch Goldberg Polin was laid to rest in Jerusalem. We hope to feature an in-depth BJV Interview with Rachel in the months ahead.

Our volunteers and community leaders are the engines of Federation’s success, and this year I was able to share stories about how and why the contributors engage with this organization and believe in its mission. Super Tzedakah Week co-chairs Leslie and Roy Kozupsky described their thoughts on how the Berkshires might become not only a destination for Jews to visit, but also a place Jews will visit to engage more deeply with Jewish life. Legacy Circle participants Richard and Alyson Slutzsky eloquently conveyed the reasons why leaving a Jewish legacy was so important in a smaller community like ours, where ensuring Jewish continuity is much more precarious that it might be in place with a larger Jewish population.

Our Major Donors Celebration co-chairs Judy and Mark Usow talked about what it was like to build careers and raise a family while trying to live Jewishly in a place where there aren’t that many Jews. They conveyed something important about the Jewish Berkshires to folks who might not understand what living here full-time is like, such as younger readers with families who are new arrivals and second-homeowners and retirees in the Berkshires. Mark and Judy are exemplars of stepping up to create the Jewish community one wants to live in – yasher koach to them for all they do.

And I also want to acknowledge the colleagues who help make the BJV a source of pride for this community. Thank you to graphic designer Mary Herrmann, who puts up with me, and to her colleague, Reginia Burgio, as well. Thank you, too, to Jenny Greenfeld, who has done a good job of increasing our profile among our cherished advertisers, whose support helps us bring you a quality publication month in and month out. And finally, big thanks to Heidi Katz, Federation’s new coordinator of volunteers, who generously allowed us to use her arresting Old Testament-inspired artwork on the cover of our early summer issue. I hope to share more of her excellent creations.

This BJV also features the first story we have ever published that was written by the Artificial Intelligence program ChatGPT. I won’t divulge which one – see if you can figure it out. It did a dishearteningly capable job rapidly and cost-effectively, and while I’m not saying that this voluntary subscriber column will be the last one written by me rather than AI, a nice show of financial support from our readers this go-around will meaningfully make the case for keeping an actual salaried human being on the Federation payroll to produce your local Jewish community newspaper.

Please see the insert in this newspaper for the different funding levels available. An honorary publisher gift of $360 allows us to provide four pages of color. Due to popular demand, we are printing more copies of each issue and printing costs have escalated in recent years. Your support will allow us to reach more people wishing to connect with all our Jewish community offers to full-time residents, part-time residents, and the tens of thousands Jewish vacationers who visit the Berkshires each year.

As a writer, sometimes you find your way into a topic – as I did when I hit upon this notion of coincidence – without a clear idea of how (or even if) you’re going to be able use it to get out. An idea I wished to convey is how, in the Jewish realm at least, what seems like mere coincidence often unveils a deep connection that, once exposed, should have been obvious all along. In asking for your continued financial support for the Berkshire Jewish Voice, I wanted to show how this Federation and its newspaper exist to demonstrate and strengthen connection within our community and to the wider Jewish world.

But how was I going to land it? As I wrapped up for the evening yesterday, before I really started writing this column, I thought about an anecdote that my pal, the aforementioned Howie Stier, related soon after he returned from a recent one-month program of yeshiva study in Israel (which he’ll be writing about in an upcoming issue of the BJV).

Howie told me how he was wandering around Jerusalem when he found himself negotiating some obscure, narrow, twisting streets in a rundown neighborhood in the middle of God-know-where when he happened to look up. Standing a few stories up was a man with a familiar face. Howie called up to him and asked if he was Rabbi So-and-So. The man said he was and asked how Howie knew that, to which Howie responded: “I watch your YouTube videos every day.” Long story short, Howie was invited upstairs and ended up getting to know this rabbi who he had been following on the internet.

When Howie recounted the story, he marveled at the chance meeting. Could I believe something like that just happened?

I said that of course I did. That’s why you go to Israel, because that’s where things like that are supposed to happen to Jews. The coincidences are part of the magic.

As I shut down my computer for the night, I considered that maybe there was something in Howie’s anecdote I could mine for the story I wanted to write about unseen connections suddenly and uncannily revealed by coincidence, perhaps for a higher purpose reflecting yirtzeh Hashem. I started turning over the possibilities in my mind, didn’t get very far, and resolved mull it all over the next day.

I exited the Federation building and was heading toward my car when I recognized a familiar figure walking down Pittsfield’s South Street.

“Howie!” I called out. “HOWIE! Turn around!”

When Howie saw it was me, he smiled and greeted me with his usual greeting: “Well hello, Mr. Editor.”

And just like that, baruch Hashem, I had my ending. This notion of coincidences needs to be examined more closely.

 

Image: The fallen tree at Stevens Glen, with Monty the Poodle - a dog or perhaps a sign.