Super Tzedakah Week – Building a Stronger Berkshire Jewish Community

Super Tzedakah Week - May 23 to 28 - kicks off the Jewish Federation of the Berkshires' 2021 Community Campaign. Our event co-chairs, the Dresner family, will be spreading the word about the ways all of us can build and sustain Jewish community by donating and participating!

Focus On What You See – Federation Working for Our Community

Federation's Super Tzedakah Week campaign kickoff co-chair Avi Dresner shares some thoughts on why his family gives back through Federation - and why your contribution is more important than ever

"American Baby" - A Comprehensive Look at Adoption in the USA

Gabrielle Glaser's "American Baby: A Mother, A Child, and the Shadow History of Adoption," tells an important and often overlooked story through the lens of one Jewish adoption in the early 1960s. An author interview and book review by BJV editor Albert Stern, himself an adoptee.

"Ghetto Songs": Unlikely Juxtapositions and Unexpected Contradictions

Trumpeter and bandleader Frank London (co-founder of The Klezmatics) talks to the BJV about his new album, "Ghetto Songs," an exploration of music created in, and inspired by, life within ghetto walls

The Art and Culture of Singing Yiddish: A talk with Polina Shepherd

Singer, multi-instrumentalist, and choirmaster Polina Shepherd talks about "singing in Yiddish" with our correspondent Tela Zasloff, sharing how she absorbed the music growing up in the Former Soviet Union and how she now shares it on her weekly Zoom program, “Sing with Me: Russian &…