Alyson and Richard Slutzky joined our Legacy Circle to perpetuate Jewish life and resiliency in the Berkshires

“Call it payback. Call it whatever you want. Call it recognizing that one may have the resources that other people don't, or just giving back to the community. However you frame it, I think it's really important that people do something so that the Jewish community will be left better off.”

That’s the principle that Richard Slutzky says guided him and his wife, Alyson, to join our Legacy Circle, which ensures that Jewish Federation of the Berkshires and its good work will thrive long into the future.

Richard and Alyson’s Jewish journeys have taken them from upbringings in small Jewish communities to family lives and careers in a large metropolitan area with an extensive Jewish institutional presence to their current home in the rural Berkshires.

Alyson describes her childhood experiences in Fort Worth, Texas, where there was “one temple and one shul. You thought you knew everybody who was Jewish.” Many of those fellow community members, she remembers, would frequently gather in her family’s living room, where her father hosted meetings for the local Federation and other Jewish causes. “I grew up with that and that’s my legacy. Watching my parents being active taught me to be active.”

She adds that “It was a very tight, close Jewish community. I think small communities are more active, in a way, because there’s no place to hide.”

Richard grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, in the 1960s, where the “pretty tight” Jewish community was larger than in Fort Worth, supporting three synagogues, a Federation, and chapters of Hadassah and the National Council of Jewish Women. Still, he recalls, “we didn’t take things for granted because we were a small population amidst a larger community. When I was growing up, sending your kid to Jewish camp was important.” Richard attended Jewish camps in the Midwest, including Wisconsin’s Camp Herzl, which young Robert Zimmerman of Minnesota had attended and that expanded its Zionist focus to include lessons in blues guitar and harmonica in tribute to its most famous camper.

“That was the milieu I grew up in,” says Richard, “and that also, I think, colored our future when Alyson and I met at Washington University in St. Louis.” The couple moved to Atlanta while Richard attended law school at Emory University, and both became involved in Federation after they moved to Kansas City began their careers. Alyson, at the time working as a graphic designer (she became a licensed social worker, as well), took on a project for the Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Kansas City. She found out that the organization was looking for a young attorney to be its first director – and that proved to be an opportunity that provided Richard entrée into the world of Jewish philanthropy.

At the time that Richard gained experience during his 3.5-year tenure in Kansas City, the Federation system was recruiting new directors who could develop endowment funds in large and mid-sized cities. The idea is that if donors leave a legacy gift comprising an X-amount multiple of their annual gift, new gifts wouldn’t be necessary to replace those older gifts once their donors pass; rather, the new gifts would be added to a pool of reliable annual gifts that continue to be drawn from legacy endowments.

Richard was offered a position working for the Jewish Foundation of Greater MetroWest NJ, a community with “about 125,000 Jews, maybe 43 synagogues, an institution for Jewish family services, two JCCs, and multiple Hebrew day schools” – very different from the small communities that the Slutzkys grew up in and also Kansas City.

“One of the things that I enjoyed about my job as an endowment director that is very germane to this conversation about our local Legacy Circle,” says Richard, “is that it wasn’t necessarily about soliciting gifts. It was about acting as a resource for people who already were involved in the Jewish community and who wanted to leave a legacy to perpetuate all the good work that they had done during their lifetime well beyond their lifetime. Like an insurance policy for their family after they're gone. And I would have conversations with individuals who would ask why they should set up an endowment. And I would say something like, ‘Well, this way the community can prepare for unanticipated emergencies.’ Then they would say, Well, what's an unanticipated emergency?’ I would say, ‘I don't know. They're unanticipated. It could be anything.’

“And in fact, who would have thought 20 years ago, there would be rising antisemitism in the United States, on college campuses, and around the world. We never thought about that. I mean, the Holocaust was over. We were in America. We were gaining prominence in society, and we thought we were immortal and immune to any additional antisemitism. Yet, here we are in 2025 still confronting it. The issue of unanticipated emergencies – I think that’s still true.”

In New Jersey, Alyson’s involvement in Jewish community centered around the family’s synagogue and the development of a Jewish parenting center for the community. She was inspired by her father’s philanthropy – she recounts that he left gifts to his three children’s congregations specifying that those funds “not be used for bread and butter things. They had to be used for creative programming. I'm a social worker and was raising our kids, and I was interested in supporting families in doing Jewish activities in their homes – having Shabbat at home when things are hectic and crazy and how to, creatively and on the fly, make fun family experiences. I wasn't as active in communal life, but I've always believed that it's really important to support other Jews in one’s area. Who else is going to do it but Jews?”

Richard worked for the Federation for nearly a decade and then moved on to a long career as a fundraising consultant at Merrill Lynch. Nearing retirement, the Slutzkys became Berkshires second-homeowners and, in 2019, moved here full-time. They really had no concept of what the local Jewish community was like – but their eyes were opened when they found out that novelist Rachel Kadish would be speaking at Hevreh of Southern Berkshire.

Richard recalls: “I said to Alyson, ‘We better go because no one’s going to be there. It’s going to be us and the rabbi and Rachel Kadish. And lo and behold, we get there. It was a Sunday brunch, standing room only, 250 people, people asking the most erudite questions I've ever heard. And I turned to Alyson, and said ‘Okay, these are my people. We're here.’”

They became members of Hevreh (Alyson now serves on its board) and Richard joined the board of Jewish Federation of the Berkshires, stepping down in 2024 to become board president of Barrington Stage Company (although he remains on our investment committee). Both say how impressed they are with the Federation’s outreach in local schools, the social services we provide in the absence of other Jewish groups, and the security initiatives we are implementing to ensure the safety of Jewish spaces and that Jewish communal life continues without interruption.

Alyson and Richard say their outlook on the importance of giving in a smaller Jewish community was inspired by their friends Ken and Mimi Heyman, who shared their belief that “tzedakah is not charity. Tzedakah is an obligation. Tzedakah doesn’t mean just give to one community, but to wherever you spend a significant amount of time,” says Richard, who adds that he would like to see more contributions to build up a reserve of funds that will help ensure that this Federation’s local services and contributions to national and international causes can be sustained in the future.

Summing up, Richard says: “I hope that people think about their legacy and what impact they've had on the world. We have that opportunity to reflect every High Holiday season, but I hope when they think reflectively, they will also recognize the importance of a living legacy – not only to their children, but also to their community.”