All-star event marks 50th anniversaries of Hevreh of Southern Berkshire and musical duo Kol B’Seder
LENOX – Hevreh of Southern Berkshire and Kol B’Seder, the legendary musical duo of Jeff Klepper and Dan Freelander (shown in picture above), will mark their 50th anniversaries this summer at “Welcome Home: A Concert Celebration of Jewish Life in the Berkshires!” on stage Sunday, June 29 at 3 p.m. at the Duffin Theater at Lenox Memorial High School.
The Berkshires are Reform Judaism’s summer home away from home, and Welcome Home jumpstarts the season with a musical program that embraces the evolution of Jewish community and culture in this pocket of Western Massachusetts. In addition to Klepper and Freelander, the all-star lineup includes contemporary Jewish artists and activists Julie Silver, Peri Smilow (Hevreh’s artist-in-residence), Doug Mishkin, Merri Lovinger Arian, and Ramie Arian, interpreted for the hard-of-hearing by EJ Cohen and Jody Steiner, and backed by a house band of talented area musicians.
The concert is one of the major highlights on Hevreh’s summer calendar, which includes the third annual HUC-JIR Weekend in the Berkshires, August 1 and August 2. That weekend, the congregation will welcome Rabbi Mori Lidar, a Reform rabbi from Israel who was ordained at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Jerusalem. Rabbi Lidar is a Golden HaNassi Fellow, a program that matches Israeli Reform rabbis with American colleagues and congregations.
Later this summer, Hevreh will also host its annual Tanglewood Shabbat, and new this year, an all-congregation read of the new book Sons and Daughters by Chaim Grade.
“Welcome Home is an invitation to celebrate the very best of Reform Jewish identity as it has emerged in the Berkshires over the past half century,” said Hevreh Senior Rabbi Jodie Gordon. “It’s a joyful reminder of where we started, how far we’ve come, and the even brighter horizons ahead as we chart our course forward for the next 50 years.”
From the moment a small group first gathered in 1975 to practice their Jewish faith at 15 North Street in Great Barrington (now home to Reconstructionist Congregation Ahavath Sholom), Hevreh has grown to become the hub of Reform Judaism in South County, serving a congregation of nearly 400 members that reflects the diversity of our Jewish community.
“So much of who we are as a community is about music. One of the first things I learned about Hevreh when I arrived in 2012 is that we are a ‘singing congregation’ which is true because of the incredible leadership of our rabbi emerita, Rabbi Deborah Zecher,” said Gordon. “She was instrumental in creating a community that sees itself as a spiritual laboratory, which is a legacy we continue today. This concert celebrates not only the sounds, but the places and people that changed how we worship and how we gather.”
At the same time Hevreh was coming into being, the seeds of Kol B’Seder, rooted in Klepper and Freelander’s experiences in the 1970’s at UAHC (now URJ) Joseph Eisner Camp, were beginning to bear fruit.
“The Berkshires were a total immersion arts environment. Tanglewood and popular artists at the Music Inn, clubs, and the creative environment of camp all inspired us to want to be musicians,” Freelander recalled. “We'd stay up until three in the morning writing a new song and present it to 400 campers at lunch the next day!”
Klepper founded Kol B’Seder (which translates as “Everything’s OK”), in New York City in 1974, where he began his first year of cantorial school at the Hebrew Union College School of Sacred Music. Working with fellow Eisner song leader Loui Dobin, he organized a musical collective of HUC and college students. Freelander joined the band in 1975 after returning from his first year of rabbinic school in Israel.
By the time the group recorded its first album, Shalom Rav: Kol B’Seder in Concert at Kutz Camp in 1981, Klepper and Freelander were the sole members. “Shalom Rav,” set to a comforting folk melody, would go on to become one of the most widely sung pieces of contemporary Jewish liturgy in North America.
“From the time we first met in 1971 — we were in college and teaching religious school — we enjoyed singing together, but we never imagined that our music would come to define a new Jewish sound of spirit and joy,” said Klepper.
It was a natural, organic phenomenon, Freelander said. “The campers of the 1970s and '80s became the synagogue members and leaders of the '90s and 21st century. And they brought their favorite Jewish camp melodies to their congregations."
Indeed, Kol B’Seder’s origins in the Berkshires helped shape what is now known as the "American nusach" — a distinctly North American Jewish musical vocabulary born of camps, congregations, and community gatherings. In addition to performing, to commemorate their milestone anniversary Klepper and Freelander have released the Kol B'Seder Anthology (Transcontinental Music Publications) with print music and recordings of more than 100 of their compositions.
“It’s not just nostalgia,” said Klepper. “It’s continuity. People are looking for connection, and they’re finding it here — in song, in community, in shared memory.”
“We are definitely part of a larger story,” said Gordon. “The Berkshires have always been a place of spiritual retreat and creative expression. But importantly, it has become a place where Jewish life is rooted year-round.”
For tickets and information about “Welcome Home: A Concert Celebration of Jewish Life in the Berkshires!” visit www.hevreh.org/welcomehome. The Duffin Theater is located at Lenox Memorial High School, 197 East Street.