Virtual | Our Own Stories: Authors on Jewish Life in the Muslim World

Join the Magnes for Our Own Stories: Authors on Jewish Life in the Muslim World, a virtual program with Jewish authors Almog Behar, Ruby Namdar, and Ayelet Tsabari, and scholar Angy Cohen.

The objects exhibited in In Plain Sight: Jewish Arts and Lives in the Muslim World tell a story of cultural interconnection for Jews in the Muslim world. This virtual panel brings together three prize-winning authors and a scholar from multiple continents to discuss their own families’ experiences of Jewish life in the Muslim world; and to reflect on how that background affects their own work as writers.

Thursday, February 3, 2025 | 11:00 am – 12:30 pm

via Zoom

Registration to come.
With registration, a Zoom link will be sent to the email address you provide.

If you have any questions about accessibility or require accommodations to participate in this event, please contact us at magnes@berkeley.edu or call us at (510) 643-2526 with as much advance notice as possible.

About the Panelists

Almog Behar is an Israeli poet, fiction writer and essayist, as well as a political-language activist, whoone of whose aims is to restore the Arabic tongue to its place in Jewish culture. He has published six books, most recently Kdey She-Hamelach Yitpazer al Ha-Ahava (Rub Salt into Love, 2021). His novel Chahla ve-Hezkel (Rachel and Ezekiel, 2010) was translated into Arabic and published in Cairo in 2016. Behar teaches in the Literature Department at Tel-Aviv University.

Ruby Namdar was born and raised in Jerusalem to a family of Iranian-Jewish heritage. His first book, Haviv (2000), won The Ministry of Culture’s Award for Best First Publication. His novel The Ruined House has won the Sapir Prize, Israel’s most prestigious literary award. His recent book, Big Fish (Hebrew American stories) deals with the lives, hopes and shattered dreams of Israelis living in the US. He currently lives in New York City and teaches Jewish literature, focusing on Biblical and Talmudic narrative.

Ayelet Tsabari has won multiple prizes for her memoir in essays The Art of Leaving and the story collection The Best Place on Earth. Her debut novel, Songs for the Brokenhearted was published by Random House in September 2024. She’s the co-editor of the award-winning anthology Tongues: On Longing and Belonging Through Language. Ayelet teaches creative writing at The University of King’s College MFA and at Guelph MFA in Creative Writing.

Angy Cohen is a researcher on contemporary Sephardic culture at the Spanish National Research Council and the University of Calgary. Through a combination of ethnographic research and text analysis, she has studied Sephardi Modernity with a focus on the Jewish communities of the Maghrebh. She has also studied the Mizrahi experience in Israel, Sephardi/Mizrahi feminism, and the religiosity and ethical world of Mizrahi women.

About the exhibition
Co-curated by Magnes Curator Dr. Francesco Spagnolo and scholar of Islamic art Dr. Qamar Adamjee, In Plain Sight: Jewish Arts and Lives in the Muslim World shares a selection of artworks and objects from the Magnes’s permanent collection that challenge common views about historical dualities and creative engagement among Muslim and Jewish artists and patrons. The exhibition highlights rootedness in diaspora, shared graphic forms and visual landscapes, attitudes towards sacred texts and human bodies, and networks of trade and knowledge exchange, all centering around the fundamental role of light in Jewish and Muslim prayer space.