PopUp Exhibition

Elizabeth Rynecki is the great-granddaughter of the late Polish-Jewish artist, Moshe Rynecki (1881-1943), who perished in the Holocaust. Her memoir, Chasing Portraits: A Great-Granddaughter’s Quest for Her Lost Art Legacy, was published in 2016 and immediately reviewed in the New York Times. For many years after his death, Moshe Rynecki’s family believed that most of […]

Jeremiah Lockwood’s music career began with over a decade of apprenticeship to the legendary Piedmont Blues musician Carolina Slim, playing in the subways of New York City. He also trained under his grandfather Cantor Jacob Konigsberg and performed in his choir. Jeremiah’s band, The Sway Machinery, seeks inspiration from diverse realms of experience related to […]

Alan Elbaum is a second-year medical student at the UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program. While at Berkeley, he is working toward a master's degree in the history of medicine, using manuscripts from the Cairo Genizah. More broadly, Elbaum is interested in the literature and culture of the Jews of Arab lands; historical perspectives on medicine […]

This week’s PopUp Exhibition falls on March 8th, International Women’s Day. In solidarity with a national protest making March 8th “A Day Without a Woman,” Dr. Rachel Deblinger will turn her presentation into a teach-in about the role of museums and archives as places of resistance, focusing on Holocaust testimony, memory and oral history. Rachel […]

Rabbi Adam Naftalin-Kelman is the Executive Director of Berkeley Hillel. Upon completing his undergraduate degree at the University of Rhode Island, he initially worked in the financial sector as a business consultant. He later pursued a Rabbinic degree from the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies in Los Angeles, and was ordained in 2005. Before serving […]

Ron Feldman is a Visiting Scholar at the Graduate Theological Union, where he earned his PhD in History of Culture and Religion with an emphasis on Judaism. In addition, he earned his MBA from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, and has been serving as the Chief Financial Officer of the JCC of the East […]

Eric Drooker's drawings and posters are a familiar sight in the global street art movement, while his paintings appear frequently on covers of The New Yorker. A Berkeley resident for many years, Drooker was born and raised in New York City, where he began to slap his images on the streets as a teenager. Over […]

Alongside a distinguished career in college and university planning, Ira Fink has assembled a significant research collection of books on synagogue architecture and Jewish ceremonial art. A graduate of UC Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design and a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, Dr. Fink’s family collection includes one of the few surviving sets […]

Barbara Goldstein is a historian of European fascism. She received her PhD from the University of Vienna, Austria with a dissertation devoted to newsreel films created by the Austrian Police between 1929-1938 as part of governmental fascist propaganda campaigns.One of Goldstein’s focuses and special interests is in historic administrative structures and “infamous people” in the […]

Shana Penn is executive director of the Taube Foundation for Jewish Life and Culture and a visiting scholar at the Graduate Theological Union's Center for Jewish Studies. Her award-winning book, Solidarity’s Secret: The Women Who Defeated Communism in Poland (University of Michigan Press, 2005) examined women’s leadership role in defeating Poland’s communist regime. Presently, Penn is completing […]

Polish-born Yiddishist and oral historian Agnieszka Ilwicka will talk about her research project "Love in the Ruins: Jewish Life in Lower Silesia 1945-1968." After World War II, Lower Silesia was the largest Jewish settlement in Europe. Ilwicka will share her journey through Yiddish, Polish, Hebrew, and German stories recorded in the U.S., Israel, Germany, and […]