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A Sweet Diaspora Song. Paths of Jewish Music in America. Performance by Michael Alpert in conversation with Francesco Spagnolo

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

Presented in association with the 28th Jewish Music Festival, this performance by Michael Alpert, instrumentalist, singer, dancer, composer, songwriter and ethnographer, will thrill music lovers of all stripes. Alpert is one of the leading figures in the world scene of Jewish music, and in this performance-conversation with musicologist and The Magnes curator Francesco Spagnolo, he will retrace the […]

Writing Identity: Sayed Kashua

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

Sayed Kashua was born in the Arab town of Tira in central Israel. He has become one of the most important contemporary voices on the complexities of identity through his three novels, his column in the Ha’aretz newspaper, and the groundbreaking Israeli sitcom Arab Labor, which he wrote and created. His latest novel, Second Person Singular, was published in […]

Music @ The Magnes | Psoy Korolenko in Concert

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

Psoy Korolenko (pseudonym of Pavel Lion) is a Russian/Jewish multilingual poet-singer, known as a 'wandering scholar' and 'singing professor'. His unique one-man shows intersect folk, klezmer, rap, sound poetry and intellectual cabaret/comedy. As a writer and scholar he is known for his interest to otherness, diaspora, territory, minorities, and borderlines. He sings in English, Russian, […]

11th annual City of Berkeley Holocaust Remembrance Day Event

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

Join us for the 11th annual City of Berkeley Holocaust Remembrance Day Event Honoring survivors Sam Genirberg and Kathryn Winter Music by composer Aaron BlumenfeldAdmission is free. Refreshments will be served.

Pell Lecture: Film Screening and Discussion with Filmmaker Lisa Gossels and Peter Gossels

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

"THE CHILDREN OF CHABANNES" A film by Lisa Gossels and Dean Wetherell April 7th, 2013 at 3pm Event is free and open to the public. Sponsored by The Joseph and Eda Pell Endowed Fund for Jewish Studies. Co-sponsored by the UC Berkeley Graduate Program in Jewish Studies, Berkeley Hillel, the UC Berkeley Graduate School of […]

Movie Night | My So-Called Enemy

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

Spanning a seven-year period, “My So-Called Enemy” follows six Palestinian and Israeli teenage girls committed to justice and mutual understanding as the conflict continues to rage in their homeland, after participating in a women’s leadership program in the U.S. called Building Bridges for Peace.  This heart and mind-opening film documents how the young women’s transformative experience, of knowing […]

Robert Alter on his new book

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

Robert Alter’s award-winning translation of the Hebrew Bible continues with the stirring narrative of Israel’s ancient history. To read the books of the Former Prophets in this riveting translation (published by W.W. Norton & Co., 2013) is to discover an entertaining amalgam of hair-raising action and high literary achievement. Alter's immense achievements in scholarship ranging […]

Ethnography and The “Cochin Jews” of Kerala: Insights from Fieldwork in India and Israel, 1972-2012

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

After introducing the Kerala Jews, their history and culture in South India for more thana millennia, and their community life since migrating to Israel, Johnson will offer a fewhighlights from her research and her own ethnographic practice over the past 40 years.Topics include collaborative research, changing views of gender and caste, and the joys ofresearch […]

Saved by the Bay

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

Free and open to the public. Followed by reception. UC Berkeley faculty, curators, graduate and undergraduate students and members of the community discuss the history of the intellectual migration from Europe to Berkeley in the 20th century. The program will follow the innovative unconference format: a participant-driven meeting in which the agenda is created by […]

Movie Night | The Swing Girls (Italy, 2010)

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

Swing Girls (Le ragazze dello swing) Dir. Maurizio Zaccaro | Italy, 2010 | 210 min. During the Fascist Regime in Italy, three Dutch sisters, Alexandra, Judith and Kitty Leschan, try to make a career as popular singers. After various attempts, thanks to their foreign accent, Cetra, the record company, takes them on. The EIAR (the broadcasting […]

The Reconstruction of Jewish Synagogues in Kerala, South India

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

The Paradesi synagogue, constructed 1568, is the most famous synagogue in Asia. Its Chinese willow tiles have inspired Salman Rushdie to fantasize about the relations and inter-relations of different peoples in Cochin (Kochi). Today, there is not even a quorum (minyan) at the famous Paradesi synagogue. Until recently, the synagogues of the Malabar Jews (once […]

The Magnes Recommends: The Tenth Annual Judith Lee Stronach Memorial Lecture on the Teaching of Poetry

UC Berkeley, Doe Library, Morrison Reading Room

ntroduction by Lyn Hejinian Nikky Finney, Poet Nikky Finney was born in South Carolina, within listening distance of the sea. A child of activitists, she came of age during the civil rights and Black Arts Movements. At Talladega College, nurtured by Hale Woodruff's Amistad murals, Finney began to understand the powerful synergy between art and […]