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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 […]

Holocaust Survivors Memoir Writing Group – Public Reading

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

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 […]

The Future of Rachel Marker: A Closing Program

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

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, […]

American Jerusalem: Jews and the Making of San Francisco

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

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/

Special Tour of Global India: Kerala, Israel, Berkeley

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

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), […]

Taubman Lecture Series | The Construction of Jewish Identity in the Second Temple Period

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

“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 […]