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Dear Mendl, Dear Reyzl: Yiddish Letter Manuals from Russia and America

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

The authors will discuss their recently-released book Dear Mendl, Dear Reyzl: Yiddish Letter Manuals from Russia and America by (Indiana University Press, 2014) As a special session of The Townsend Center for Humanities Working Group on Modern Jewish Culture, the program will also address The Magnes’ extensive collection of Jewish-themed postcards, which animate themes of mobility and […]

Holocaust Survivor Reading Series

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

Rita Kuhn reads from her book Broken Glass, Broken Lives Rita Kuhn lived her childhood and adolescence in Hitler’s Berlin, surviving a cycle of evergrowing dangers for her, her family, and her friends. The people she loved disappeared from one day to the next and left no messages, no farewells, no forwarding addresses. In Broken Glass, Broken […]

Fall Exhibition Opening | Living by the Book: The Jewish Bible and the Everyday Power of Text

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

The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life cordially invites you to an opening reception for Living by The Book The Jewish Bible & the Everyday Power of Text Wednesday, September 9, 2015 at 5 pm 2121 Allston Way, Berkeley Jonah and the Whale at the Port of Haifa.jpg E. Abeshaus (1939–2008), Jonah and the […]

Book Talk | Michael Berkowitz on Jews and Photography in Britain

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

San Francisco State University, Jewish Studies & The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life present a book talk by Michael Berkowitz Jews and Photography in Britain Wednesday, October 21, 5:30 PM Reception to follow Michael Berkowitz is a Professor of Modern Jewish History at University College, London. His current work on the engagement of […]

Book Talk | Simon Goodman, The Orpheus Clock

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

The passionate, gripping, true story of one man’s single-minded quest to reclaim what the Nazis stole from his family, their beloved art collection, and to restore their legacy. Simon Goodman’s grandparents came from German-Jewish banking dynasties and perished in concentration camps. And that’s almost all he knew about them—his father rarely spoke of their family […]

Women of the Bible: After Abel and Other Stories

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

Author Michal Lemberger will read from and discuss her new book, After Abel and Other Stories. Vividly reimagined with startling contemporary clarity, this debut collection of short stories gives voice to silent, often-marginalized biblical women: their ambitions, their love for their children, their values, their tremendous struggles, and their challenges. Lemberger’s stories honor the integrity of the […]

Great Stories | Spring 2016

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

Author and journalist Frances Dinkelspiel explores the Jewish connections in the history uncovered by her recent NY Times bestseller book, Tangled Vines: Greed, Murder, Obsession and an Arsonist in the Vineyards of California (St. Martin’s Press 2015), including Benjamin Dreyfus’ pioneering of kosher wine production in the Golden State, Isaias Hellman and Daniel Mayer’s controlling […]

Lunch Book Talk with Ingrid Carlberg

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

Author and journalist Ingrid Carlberg will talk about her recently published book, Raoul Wallenberg: The Heroic Life and Mysterious Disappearance of the Man Who Saved Thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Holocaust (MacLehose Press 2016). Read the Kirkus review here. Ingrid Carlberg's biography of Raoul Wallenberg was awarded the August Prize for nonfiction and the Swedish Academy's Axel Hirsch Prize. Carlberg's […]

Reading Yehuda Amichai: Robert Alter and Chana Kronfeld in Conversation

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

Robert Alter is Professor of the Graduate School and Emeritus Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley.  He is the author of twenty-six books and has received numerous awards, including the Robert Kirsch Award of the Los Angeles Times for lifetime contribution to American literature, the Charles Homer Haskins Prize […]

Book Talk | Walter Zev Feldman. Klezmer: Music, History, and Memory

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

Join musicologist and klezmer music pioneer, Walter Zev Feldman, for a fascinating talk based on his new book, Klezmer: Music, History, and Memory. Klezmer: Music, History, and Memory (Oxford University Press 2016) is the first comprehensive study of the musical structure and social history of klezmer music, the music of the Jewish musicians' guild of Eastern Europe. Emerging […]

Book Lecture | David Biale on Hasidism: A New History

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

Free and open to the public Far from a throwback to the Middle Ages, Hasidism is a product of modernity that forged its identity as a radical alternative to the secular world. So argue the eight distinguished authors, led by David Biale, of Hasidism: A New History, the first comprehensive account of the movement’s place in […]

Irvin Ungar on Arthur Szyk: Soldier in Art

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

In 2017, The Magnes acquired from Irvin Ungar, a private collector, the most significant collection of works by Arthur Szyk (Łódź, Poland, 1894 – New Canaan, Connecticut, 1951)  thanks to an unprecedented gift from Taube Philanthropies. Szyk’s works are now available to the world in a public institution for the first time as the Taube […]