Beit Midrash Study Session | The First Water is the Body: Tracing Streams
Feb 1, 2026 @ 1:30 pm - 3:00 pm
A FLOWING THROUGH TIME AND TRADITION PROGRAM
Poetry with Dan Alter
Join us for The First Water is the Body: Tracing Streams, the fifth in a series of Beit Midrash Study Sessions inspired by the art and objects on view in Flowing through Time and Tradition.
Sunday, February 1, 2026 / 14 Shvat 5786
1:30 – 3:00 pm
In person at the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, 2121 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA
RSVP
Whether we swim in, hike alongside, or sit contemplating: each of us has intimate relationships with bodies of water, including the rivers and creeks where we live. Poems can be a means of investigating and expressing these relationships; of tracing the course of the running waters in our lives, our lands, and their paths in our bodies. In this session we will read and discuss poems of this kind from classical Jewish and contemporary sources. Then using prompts we will reflect on our own experiences of “living water,” and draft stream-poems of our own.
Please join us for a special gallery tour focusing on objects connected to the monthly Beit Midrash theme before each study session from 1:00-1:30pm. Please RSVP for the gallery tour here.
The Magnes’s programs and exhibitions are supported by our community. Click here to make a suggested donation of $10 per session or $55 for the full series.
If you have any questions about accessibility or require accommodations to participate in this event, please contact us at dalter@berkeley.edu or call us at (510) 643-2526 with as much advance notice as possible.
Program is subject to change.
About the guest teacher
Dan Alter is the Learning and Engagement Coordinator at the Magnes. He is the author of two collections of poetry: My Little Book of Exiles (Eyewear, 2002) winner of the Cowan Poetry Prize, and Hills Full of Holes (Fernwood, 2025). He is also the translator of Take a Breath, You’re Getting Excited (Ben Yehuda, 2024), from the Hebrew of Yakir Ben-Moshe. He has taught classes and facilitated conversations on many topics related to Jewish poetry.
About the series
Beit Midrash, meaning a house of study in Hebrew, is a series of eight creative, collaborative study sessions inspired by the art and objects on view in Flowing through Time and Tradition. Guided by the curator and guest teachers, we will engage with texts and artistic expressions to delve deeper into the exhibition objects and themes, to draw knowledge, surface reflections, and pour forth new perspectives.
About the exhibition
Exploring the theme of water through the holdings of the Magnes Collection, Flowing through Time and Tradition traces how water flows through and shapes Jewish lives: enacting belief, sustaining life and communities, providing the means for spiritual cleansing, and mapping identities.
