PopUp Exhibition

Daniel Schifrin’s fiction and essays have appeared, among other places, in McSweeney’s, the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Westwind/UCLA’s Journal of the Arts, Jet Fuel Review, and em. He has been a visiting scholar at Stanford University, writer-in-residence at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, and a co-curator for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art […]

Gary Handman, Archivist and Public Services Coordinator at The Magnes Collection, is the former Director of the Media Resources Center, Moffitt Library, University of California Berkeley, one of the largest and most respected video collections in a U.S. academic library. Gary has taught, spoken and published widely on topics related to media librarianship, visual literacy, […]

Lauren Cooper, a Comparative Literature major and Spanish and History minor (2016) at UC Berkeley, and the Managing Editor of the Berkeley Fiction Review, has been engaged as an Undergraduate Research Apprentice at The Magnes since 2014. She has collaborated in the making of multiple exhibitions, and helped creating an online companion to the Magnes […]

Yosef Rosen, a Doctoral Candidate in Jewish Studies and Magnes Graduate Fellow (Fall 2015), and Zoe Lewin, an Art History and Rhetoric major (2016) at UC Berkeley, will present on the visual power of text expressed in the shiviti holdings in The Magnes Collection. Shivitis are devotional Hebrew manuscripts aimed at encouraging meditation and the contemplation of God’s name […]

Rebecca Golbert, executive director of the Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies at UC Berkeley, scholarship reflects overlapping interests in Jewish and Holocaust studies, anthropology and ethnography, and conflict resolution and mediation.  Her doctoral and postdoctoral research focused on Ukrainian Jewish community and identity and Holocaust memory and memorialization within post-Soviet Ukraine. Her presentation […]

Pharaonic magic has broadly influenced magic in Antiquity; in particular, ancient Jewish magical texts and practices reveal interesting points of contact with earlier Egyptian sources. During this talk, a few issues concerning a comparative study of magic in Antiquity will be discussed by bringing as a case-study the comparison between ancient Egyptian and Jewish magic. […]

Drawing on Dr. Patricia Munro's research in Bay Area synagogues, Professor Claude Fischer and Dr. Munro will focus on how the Bar and Bat mitzvah developed into a major American Jewish ritual, how it has both responded to changes in the Jewish community (particularly rising egalitarianism and intermarriage), and how it has changed the Jewish […]

Dr. Mira Amiras, Professor Emerita of Comparative Religious Studies, San Jose State University, received her PhD in Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley. She is the daughter of the founders of the Judah L. Magnes Museum, Seymour Fromer and Rebecca Camhi Fromer. Her presentation will focus on her experience growing up with one of […]

The talk will describe and analyze Professor Karen Barkey’s two seasons of ethnographic study of the sharing in Greek Orthodox Churches in Istanbul, Turkey. The study explores identities, practices and patterns of participation in church rituals and life. The presentation will delineate between different choreographies of sharing, the borrowing of traditions, and the bricolage of […]

l This presentation will discuss the Hellenistic Jewish text of the Sibylline Oracles which combines Greek oracular form and myth with themes from the Hebrew prophets to create a unique oracular voice that weaves together foundational narratives from both cultures. Examining this blend of traditions helps us frame questions on the elusive nature of identity […]