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 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 […]
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 […]
We are honored to present a reading by members of the Holocaust Survivors Memoir Writing Group, sponsored in conjunction with JFCS East Bay. Over seven years of writing in a supportive workshop setting, the writers' voices have become more vibrant, distinct, and confident as each writer revisits his or her childhood and teen years lived […]
Please join us for the closing of the exhibition Through the Eyes of Rachel Marker | A Literary Installation by Moira Roth. For over ten years, writer and art historian Moira Roth has been creating a fragmented narrative about a fictional Czech Jew, Rachel Marker, a witness to 20th-century European history. Now for the first time, […]
Designed for students during UC Berkeley Welcome Week, this behind-the-scenes tour will reveal the many unique resources and events that are available for teaching, study, and personal enrichment. Visitors may even get to see a Lost Ark or two.
East Bay premiere of the epic story of the pioneering Jews of San Francisco. The film makes extensive use of images and documents from The Magnes and The Bancroft Library collections. Panel discussion with Jackie Krenzman, Executive Producer and Producer, to follow the screening. Space is limited, please reserve a seat: http://themagnes.eventbrite.com/
Global India: Kerala, Israel, Berkeley, curated by Francesco Spagnolo, unveils the extensive holdings of The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life documenting the history of the Jewish community in Kerala, South India. The exhibition includes over one hundred individual items, many of which were never catalogued before. Dr. Barbara C. Johnson (Professor Emerita, Ithaca College), […]
“The Ancestral Law” will focus on what it meant to be a Ioudaios in the Maccabean crisis, and ask how the Torah came to be the definitive touchstone of Judean identity. John Collins, Holmes Professor of Old Testament, Yale University Divinity School, will give the lecture as related to the construction of Jewish Identity in the Second […]
Non-Mosaic Judasim” examines whether there were forms of Judean identity for which the Law of Moses was not the definitive criterion, and consider three test cases: the colony of Judeans at Elephantine, the wisdom literature prior to Ben Sira, and the early Enoch literature. John Collins, Holmes Professor of Old Testament, Yale University Divinity School, will […]
Professor Collins will consider how the traditional understanding of the covenant was modified when it was supplemented by claims of a higher revelation in the apocalyptic literature. John Collins, Holmes Professor of Old Testament, Yale University Divinity School, will give the lecture as related to the construction of Jewish Identity in the Second Temple Period.
Sharon and Sharona Galsulkar are the last educators of their Indian Jewish community, the Bene Israel, which has been residing in the Bombay region for centuries and is now disappearing. Genuinely Zionists and concerned about their daughters' future, they are also committed to their community's needs. Whose education will they sacrifice? Introduced by Lawrence Cohen, […]
