Skip to content

Programs Search and Views Navigation

Program Views Navigation

Today

Piyyut: Hebrew Poetry and World Music: Robert Alter, Yair Harel, and the Tafillalt Ensemble

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

Hebrew poems (piyyutim), chanted for centuries across the Diaspora, have been adapted to different melodies, evolving into a form of  “Jewish world music” with roots in Europe, the Mediterranean, North Africa, and the Middle East. This singing tradition, a core component of synagogue practice, has also entered secular life in Israel through public performances, workshops, […]

The Helix Project: Sharing the Story of Jewish Life in Europe

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

Join Rob Adler Peckerar, Executive Director of Yiddishkayt, a Yiddish cultural and educational center in Los Angeles, and Helix Project Instructor, Mindl Cohen, and alumni of the Helix Project to learn about the only educational summer program that brings the 1000 year history of Jews in Eastern Europe to life. The presentation will include photographs and short films from the […]

PopUp Exhibition | Jonathan Sheehan

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

The Magnes Collection warmly welcomes Professor Jonathan Sheehan to its weekly series of PopUp Lunchtime Exhibitions. Professor Sheehan is a historian of Early Modern Europe, with particular interest in Judaeo-Christian relations. He is the author of The Enlightenment Bible: Translation, Scholarship, Culture (Princeton University Press, 2005), which whon the 2005 George L. Mosse Prize from the American Historical Association. Professor […]

PopUp Exhibition | David Henkin about an American Challah Cover

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

The Magnes welcomes David Henkin to its weekly series of PopUp Exhibitions! Professor Henkin is the author of City Reading: Written Words and Public Spaces in Antebellum New York (Columbia University Press, 1998) and The Postal Age: The Emergence of Modern Communications in Nineteenth-Century America (University of Chicago Press, 2006). His presentation will engage the […]

PopUp Exhibition | Anna Bella Korbatov and Zoe Lewin on Jewish Postcards Primary tabs

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

In how many ways can a postcard be Jewish? According to Anna Bella Korbatov and Zoe Lewin, a dynamic team of Undergraduate Research Apprentices working at the Magnes, postcards can be convey a Jewish message in a variety of ways. They can appeal to the sender's or receiver's nostalgia through depictions of famous European synagogues […]

Holocaust Author Reading Series | Sam Genirberg reads from Among the Enemy

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

Please join Jewish Family & Children’s Services of the East Bay for the continuation of our special series featuring Holocaust survivors reading from their published works. All events will take place at the Magnes Collection of Jewish Life & Art in Berkeley. You’re welcome to bring a brown bag lunch. Thursday, December 11, 2014 12:00 […]

PopUp Exhibition | Rabbi James Brandt on the Magic of Hanukkah

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

Celebrate the magic of Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights, at the Magnes Collection! Join Rabbi James Brandt for an exploration of the meaning of Hanukkah today. Rabbi Brandt is the CEO of the Jewish Federation and Jewish Community Foundation of the East Bay. He joined the Federation in 2003 and became its Executive Director […]

Jewish Nightlife: An Evening of Celebration with Poetry and Music directed by Yair Harel

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

Jewish Nightlife is a multi-disciplinary exploration of the nexus between the ritual performance of Jewish texts and social changes across Jewish history, including Hebrew poetry, music, and synagogue liturgy in Europe, in North Africa, the Middle East, and present-day Israel. During the Fall Semester 2014, the project involved research, teaching, performance, and community participation. Thirty UC […]

PopUp Exhibition | Mapping Diasporas: John Fox, Digital Maps and Findery

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

Digital Humanities research tools allow us to find spatial relationships between objects and ideas that are impossible in an analogue context. In this first PopUp Exhibition of the Spring Semester, The Magnes Collection has the pleasure of welcoming John Fox — a self-described "software developer, traveler, snark-monster, foodie" — who is one of the creators of the […]

Frontier Yiddish: Western Yiddish Americana from the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life

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

Special Guest: Danny Luzon, Graduate Student in Comparative Literature Come learn about Yiddish at the first meeting of the Working Group this semester, on Wednesday 28 January 2015, 4:30pm-6pm! This session will highlight the Magnes’s holdings of Western Yiddish Americana imprints, consisting of original Yiddish literature printed in California until the middle of the twentieth century. […]

PopUp Exhibition | Jewish Family Trees with Naomi Seidman

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

The Magnes welcomes Professor Naomi Seidman, Director of the Center for Jewish Studies at the Graduate Theological Union, to its weekly series of PopUp Exhibitions! Professor Seidman is an expert on Yiddish literature, the poetics and politics of translation and the literature of the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment). She earned her doctorate at Berkeley in 1993 […]

Bruce Phillips: “Who is a Jew in 21st Century America?” | The American Jewish Experience Speaker Series

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

THE AMERICAN JEWISH EXPERIENCE SPEAKER SERIES  Professor Bruce Phillips, HUC-JIR (Los Angeles) Who is a Jew in 21st Century America? 6:30PM Reception 7PM Lecture Using the most recent data on American Jewry, Bruce Phillips will explore the complexities and ambiguities of Jewish identification in an age of intermarriage along with their implications for the Jewish […]