By Albert Stern / BJV Editor

I returned from decades in the wilderness about 16 years ago after having long been unengaged, although not uninterested, in Jewish religious and communal life. I had my reasons. They were dumb. When I finally reconnected, I felt I had to make some kind of teshuva and return to what I understood as the proper path for a Jew to travel.

My father was the davening Jew and my mother the philanthropic volunteer, and so I decided that the way I would honor their memory and the rich gift of Yiddishkeit they instilled within me was to simply start saying “yes” instead of “no.” I resolved that if someone asked me to do something in a Jewish vein that I thought I could accomplish, I would say yes without hesitation.

This period of return coincided with my move from Brooklyn to the Berkshires a year later. Here, I met Ellen Masters. If you know Ellen Masters…let me rephrase that – Since you know Ellen Masters, you know that she is not a person who is shy about asking a person to contribute to a good cause. My son was then in kindergarten and, though I was pushing fifty, I guess I seemed like a fresh young face in the Berkshires. (Fifteen years on, I still often feel like a whippersnapper.) And so, Ellen asked me to serve as Super Sunday chair to generate awareness and enthusiasm for what Federation does. I said yes. This started a relationship with Federation that included volunteer roles on the executive board and as campaign chair, and then as an employee working as editor of the Berkshire Jewish Voice. It also initiated a cherished friendship with Ellen and her husband, Stuart, both of them amazing role models for us all.

For the past several years, most of the time I have to volunteer has been taken up by my role as gabbai at Chabad of the Berkshires. To use a musical analogy, the difference between working at Federation and operating at Chabad is the difference between marching music and jazz. As BJV editor, my job is deadlines, lineups, research, writing, images, and layouts. As Chabad’s gabbai, my job is aykh vays nisht vus (Yiddish for ‘I don’t know what’). The newspaper job involves keeping to a schedule, the synagogue job is about being able to go with the flow – both have allowed me to refine different personal qualities, and I continue to enjoy and learn from both.

I had an epiphany not long ago that applied to both of my roles and to Jewish involvement more generally. It was late winter and many of Chabad’s congregants were away in warmer climes. The rabbi and his family were going out of town, as well, and I was charged with running the Shabbat minyan. That much I could handle, along with the haftorah. We also found a Torah reader. But who was going to be the shaliach tzibur? None of our daveners were around. I had clumsily led perhaps two or three weekday mincha and ma’ariv prayers and one musaf in my entire life, but nothing close to an entire Shabbat service. What was I going to do if no one capable showed up? “Don’t worry,” the rabbi assured me. “Hashem will provide.”

Shabbat morning arrived and I got ready for shul, fretting about whether someone who knew how to daven was going to be there. Then I started thinking: I’ve been going to shul since childhood and just about every week for the last 16 years, plus holidays. I know the order of things and all of the prayers and melodies. I mean, I might have spent the past week practicing the service in case I was called upon to daven on Shabbos, but preparing in advance would not have been the Chabad way. But I figured I could do it if I had to.

And that’s when the epiphany hit me: “What if I am what Hashem has provided?”

I think that is a useful question for every Jew and all those who support our community to ask themselves in these unsettled times. Sometimes the fact that a door is open is not going to be enough – a person must also walk through it when called. And these days, we are all being called.

So here I want to thank all of you who responded to our voluntary subscribers drive so far – we rely on you to help Federation share its story with full-timers, second homeowners, and visitors in this beautiful part of the country. By returning to support Federation year after year and by generously contributing a little bit extra to the Berkshire Jewish Voice, consider that maybe you all are what Hashem has provided to build and sustain Jewish community in this region.

Some of us here do. And all of us are very grateful for all you give back.

Image: Newly minted BJV editor Albert Stern at the 2014 General Assembly with Federation's executive director Dara Kaufman, Ellen Masters, Natan Sharansky, and former Federation president Amy Lindner-Lesser.