PITTSFIELD — Lawyer Joel S. Greenberg, who served as a Pittsfield city councilman and was a state representative for six years, died last week. He was 93.

Greenberg was a champion of women’s rights, co-sponsoring bills in the Massachusetts Legislature pertaining to both abortion and birth control as well as funding for public education. He also advocated for consumer protection both as a legislator and in his work as an assistant attorney general, and he demanded transparency in government.

Greenberg voted to reduce the number of state legislative districts even though it meant that his own district would be eliminated.

He was president of his synagogue, Pittsfield’s Temple Anshe Amunim, and chaired the United Jewish Appeal. He was named man of the year by B’nai Brith’s Adullam Lodge in 1976.

As a lawyer in private practice, Greenberg was known for taking on inexperienced lawyers, including those for whom the law was a second career.

Glynis MacVeety was one of them. Now retired, MacVeety remembers Greenberg as taking an interest in her professional development when he hired her after her graduation from Vermont Law School in 1993.

“He would invest in you to help you do the things you needed to do,” she said, recalling that Greenberg sent her to a seminar on the nuts of bolts of taking depositions, then had her observe him, and finally had her take one of her own. “In that way he was a very good teacher.”

He was also a loving, affectionate and devoted father.

His daughter...

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