Annette Miller as Golda Meir, top; Yoel Sharabi, right. Both are part of the rich Jewish cultural calendar in the Berkshires.
by Gabe Levenson Travel Writer
At the end of June this space featured some of the many general cultural offerings in the Berkshires, from the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival to Tanglewood to the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown. This week, as the arts scene in the idyllic western Massachusetts getaway is too diverse to cover in one article, we turn our attention to the area’s more homegrown Jewish-oriented cultural happenings.
Rabbi Deborah Zecher of the Hevreh congregation in Great Barrington, Mass., continues her annual Bible on Broadway concerts; this year’s theme is “Jewish Women of Song” — Dorothy Fields, Marilyn Bergman and Betty Comden. At the piano for the rabbi’s performance (Aug. 11 at 7:30 p.m.) is Joe Rose. Up Route 7, 15 miles north of Great Barrington, Pittsfield’s
Congregation Knesset Israel (Conservative) is the sponsor of the popular Berkshire Jewish Film Festival (July 6-Aug. 10), which is held Mondays in the Duffin Theater at Memorial High School (197 East St.), in Lenox. July 20, 4 p.m., it’s “Boynton Beach Club,” a romantic comedy showing the human capacity (at any age) to rebound and fall in love. That same evening, at 8 p.m., the screening is “Eichmann,” based on the final confession of Adolph Eichmann, made just before his execution. The presentations on July 27 are: at 4 p.m., “Refusenik,” a documentary that chronicles the 30-year struggle to free Soviet Jews; at 8 p.m., “Beau Jest,” about the need for adult children (Jewish) to be true to their own feelings and goals versus their desire to please their parents.
The festival also includes, on Aug. 3 at 4 p.m, “Max Minsky and Me,” the story of a 13-year-old future astronomer living in Berlin with her Jewish mother who is in the process of divorcing the child’s German Christian father. That evening at 8 p.m., “Good” tells of a German professor who writes a best seller about euthanasia. But when the Nazis champion the book, twisting its otherwise benign idea, the professor faces a wrenching moral dilemma. On Aug. 10, at 4 p.m., the film is “Blessed is the Match,” the life and death of Hungarian-born Hannah Senesh, who parachuted into Nazi-occupied Hungary to save that country’s Jews, only to be imprisoned (and shot) alongside the person she most wanted to rescue, Catherine, Hannah’s own mother. That evening, at 8 p.m., it’s “Noodle,” about the remarkable adventures of Mir, an El Al flight attendant, and the 6-year-old, Chinese-speaking son of Mir’s own housekeeper.
Turning to music, Chabad of Berkshire County’s annual Callopalooza this summer features Israeli and Mizrahi singer Yoel Sharabi and his orchestra (Aug. 9, 7:15 p.m., at the Duffin Theater, [413] 499-9899). On stage, Annette Miller, a veteran of the 31-year-old Shakespeare & Co., in Lenox, reprises her three-week run earlier this summer of “Golda’s Balcony” on Sept 13. The play dramatizes a tense day in the life of the late Israeli prime minister. It is the one-character role that William Gibson wrote for her and which she first performed here in the Shakespeare theater three years ago. Israel is threatened with Syrian air strikes, and Golda appeals to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, during the Yom Kippur War for U.S. planes to ward off any attack. Will they reach the beleaguered little state in time? Miller captures the anxiety of Golda in a rousing and poignant performance. If you missed her last time around, see Miller in September. (413) 737-1199).
Adding academic weight to the summer’s events is “Brandeis in the Berkshires,” a lecture series sponsored by Brandeis University (on the far eastern part of the state) and held at Shakespeare & Co. in Lenox. Brandeis’ Marc Brettler speaks July 26 on “The Bible and American Public Life,” and Catholic priest-turned-author James Carrol speaks on Aug. 16. (413) 637-3353.
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