With the news being what it is and the concern about what’s to come, many of us wish we could just escape if only for a few hours. Tanglewood can provide that temporary refuge, along with a very special experience that harkens back to simpler days. Its grounds hold nearly 20,000 people, and the town has been hosting sold-out performances of both popular and classical concerts since 1937, when the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) made Tanglewood its summer home. Although the Koussevitzky Shed holds only 5,100, attendees sit on the lawn to listen, even with umbrellas when it’s raining. Students aspiring to musical careers come from all over the world to study at the Tanglewood Institute, giving the general public many opportunities to attend rehearsals and/or performances on any given day or evening.
While Tanglewood remains the jewel in the Berkshires’ crown, there’s a lot more that the Berkshires offers in the way of music and all else to people of all interests.
At its 2024 opening concert, Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D, Opus 61, featured Gil Shaham.
Shaham’s performance is something of a miracle at a time of extreme antisemitism and cancel culture that extends to musicians and artists, academics and students. However, this terrible and terrifying phenomenon is not welcome in Tanglewood, nor anywhere in the Berkshires. This part of Massachusetts, bordered by New York, Connecticut and Vermont, is a peaceful place for both residents, second-home owners, renters and tourists. This season, a plethora of Jewish-related offerings has made it a special delight, which reminds us how much Jews have always contributed to the world, and still do.
Shaham is the son of two Israeli scientists. He was born in Illinois when his parents were there on university fellowships. They returned to Israel when he was 7 and his younger siblings were born in Jerusalem in 1975.
No one protested Shaham’s presence on the Tanglewood stage. He was greeted with cheers, not jeers, as was the eminent pianist Emanuel Ax at a later concert. The child of Holocaust survivors, Ax was born in Lviv (the capital of Ukraine) and began his piano lessons as a child.The family emigrated to Canada and eventually New York. Manny, as he is affectionately called, is a regular at Tanglewood.
This summer, the Berkshire hills and mountains are more alive than ever with Jewish music, including the music composed in Theresienstadt, the concentration camp near Prague that was a labor and transit camp for many of Europe’s greatest musicians and artists, most of whom wound up in Auschwitz.
Among the offerings of special interest to Jewish visitors to Tanglewood are lectures by renowned authors, scholars and artists. Barrington Stage delivered a beautifully performed play by Oren Safdie. His mother, a Holocaust survivor, was married to Moshe Safdie, the famed Israeli-Canadian architect. There is a marvelous annual Jewish Film Festival that is run by volunteers from Kehillat Israel to support the synagogue’s Hebrew school in Kehillat Israel. Among the selected gems this summer was a documentary about another phenomenal child of survivors, Rosalie Silberman Abella. Born in a displaced persons camp in Stuttgart, Germany, Abella became the first Jewish woman appointed to Canada’s Supreme Court.
For the first time, the film festival engaged a kosher food truck to provide dinner between its matinee (followed by a minyan) and evening films. The delicious and fairly priced food is brought by an Albany caterer who also fills orders for Shabbat dinners. One can take them home or bring them to Tanglewood, where quite a few people walk over from wherever they are spending Shabbat to have a picnic and stay for the performance. (Tickets can be purchased in advance and there are several inns within walking distance of the festival.) The local Chabad, located in neighboring Pittsfield, holds Shabbat services at the Lenox Community Center and is midway through its building campaign for a new facility.
The Jewish Federation of the Berkshires is busier than ever, serving the community and tourists. A special performer this season has been Noah Aronson, a native of South Orange and an alum of Golda Och Academy in West Orange. He is beloved and celebrated for his inspiring shabbatons. The son of Cantor Ted and Sonia Aronson, Noah and his band performed in early August.
If you’ve never been to the Berkshires, treat yourself. It’s a two to three hour drive from the New York City area, most of it bucolic, some breathtakingly beautiful. Better yet, plan to spend a weekend, a week or longer. There is something there for everyone, including the amazing Yiddish Book Center, located in Hadley. You can also just relax and do nothing but breathe in the country air, shop at farmer’s markets and farm stands, enjoy the scenery and listen to beautiful music, birdsong or simple silence.
Tanglewood’s Linde Center has musical programs in every season. Aside from the area’s cultural entertainment, there’s hiking, biking, swimming, skiing, golf, boating, fishing, a waterpark and more, and there are special events throughout the year, including those sponsored by the many colleges and universities in the area. Whether one is there for a day or a lifetime, the Berkshires offers a warm welcome to all people of good will.
Barbara Wind is a writer, speaker and Holocaust-related independent scholar, curator and consultant.
