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Depth of Field: Sephardic Identities on Screen | Saved by Language, USA, 2014, 53 min.

Magnes Collection of Jewish Life and Art 2121 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA, United States

Saved by Language Dir. Susanna Zaraysky and Bryan Kirschen. Documentary. USA, 2014. 53 min.   Saved by Language tells the story of Moris Albahari, a Sephardic Jew from Sarajevo (born 1930), who spoke Ladino (Judeo-Spanish), his mother tongue, to survive the Holocaust. Moris used Ladino to communicate with an Italian colonel who helped him escape to […]

PopUp Exhibition | Mary Elings on Preserving Digital History

Magnes Collection of Jewish Life and Art 2121 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA, United States

Mary Elings is the Head of Digital Collections at The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. Her work focuses on the nexus between preserving the past and also making it accessible to scholars and researchers in a plethora of digital platforms. Join us as she details exciting work being done by the Bancroft […]

PopUp Exhibition | Rabbi Yoel Kahn on External and Internal Censorship in Jewish Prayer

Magnes Collection of Jewish Life and Art 2121 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA, United States

Rabbi Yoel Kahn is the spiritual leader of Congregation Beth El in Berkeley. Kahn was ordained at Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion in 1985. He received his doctorate through the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, California, in 1999. Join Rabbi Kahn as he presents about the rare prayer books in The Magnes Collection.. […]

Depth of Field: Sephardic Identities on Screen | El Gusto, UK, 2011

Magnes Collection of Jewish Life and Art 2121 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA, United States

El Gusto Dir. Safinez Bousbia. Documentary, UK, 2011. 88 min. Director Safinez Bousbia discovered the story of an orchestra of Jewish and Muslim musicians torn apart by war 50 years ago, and recently reunited for an exceptional concert. The musicians share a passion they never lost: the soul of Algiers, Chaabi music. After the Algerian […]

PopUp Exhibition | Focus on Undergraduate Research

Magnes Collection of Jewish Life and Art 2121 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA, United States

Erin Faigin is an undergraduate student at UC Berkeley, and has been an Undergraduate Research Apprentice at the Magnes for two years since 2014. Through her knowledge of Yiddish she helped to create a flagship Digital Humanities project focusing on Yiddish books printed in California, held at The Magnes . Erin catalogued almost 100 volumes, […]

PopUp Exhibition | Greg Niemeyer on The Materials of Memory

Magnes Collection of Jewish Life and Art 2121 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA, United States

Greg Niemeyer is Associate Professor of Art Practice and the Director of the Berkeley Center for New Media (bcnm.berkeley.edu). Born in Switzerland in 1967, he studied photography and classics, and received his MFA from Stanford, where he founded the Digital Art Center. At the Berkeley Center for New Media, Professor Niemeyer focuses on “the mediation […]

Spring Opening Event: Exhibition Opening & Musical Performances | Tuesday, January 26, 5-7 pm

Magnes Collection of Jewish Life and Art 2121 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA, United States

The Office of the Dean of Arts and Humanities The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life the Departments of Music and History University of California, Berkeley Cordially invite you to the opening of the new exhibition From Mendelssohn To Mendelssohn and the launch of The Mendelssohn Project Reception Remarks George Breslauer, Faculty Director, The […]

Depth of Field: Sephardic Identities on Screen | The Governess

Magnes Collection of Jewish Life and Art 2121 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA, United States

The Governess  UK, 1998. 115 min. The life of Rosina da Silva, the eldest daughter of a wealthy Jewish Italian family living in a small enclave of Sephardic Jews in London in the 1830s.         About the Depth of Field Series The term "Sephardic" indicates the descendants of the Iberian Jews who were […]

Lecture & Performance | Michael Steinberg: Inner Voices of the Mendelssohn Family

Magnes Collection of Jewish Life and Art 2121 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA, United States

Michael Steinberg, Brown University: Inner Voices of the Mendelssohn Family An exploration of the connections and continuities from Moses to Felix Mendelssohn, and from philosophy to music, in the realms of inner and private life, community, and the wider public sphere. Followed by a performance of Felix Mendelssohn’s Song Without Words, and a presentation on […]

PopUp Exhibition | Martin Jay on Max Liebermann, the Wannsee Garden, and Berlin

Magnes Collection of Jewish Life and Art 2121 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA, United States

Martin Jay, the Sidney Hellman Ehrman Professor of History at UC Berkeley, is a historian whose interests include European intellectual history in the 19th-20th centuries, Marxist theory, lying in politics, and visual discourse and culture. His presentation will center on a painting by the German Impressionist artist, Max Liebermann (1847–1935): The Flower Terrace in the Wannsee […]

PopUp Exhibition | Rachel Biale on Sex, Furniture, and Jewish Tradition

Magnes Collection of Jewish Life and Art 2121 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA, United States

Rachel Biale, born and raised in Kibbutz Kfar Ruppin in Israel, is an author, clinical social worker, community organizer and educator, and parenting consultant based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her books include Women and Jewish Law (Schocken, 1984), and three illustrated children’s books. Her current project, Lost and Found, is a historical novel based on the […]

Lecture | Adrian Daub: The Mendelssohns, The Piano, and the Making of the Domestic Sphere

Magnes Collection of Jewish Life and Art 2121 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA, United States

Thanks to its prominence, its wealth and its place at the center of intellectual and cultural life, the Mendelssohn family provides a privileged window into the formation of domestic culture in nineteenth-century Germany. But the story of the Mendelssohns not only reflects changes in domestic culture and the understanding of privacy, the family helped inaugurate […]