The Library’s events are free of charge and open to all. Some are presented via Zoom, and some in person. Click on an event below for registration information. Events are also listed on the Library’s Facebook page and in our printed brochure.
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West of the Ghetto: Jewish Women, Old San Francisco, and American Literary Culture, with Lori Harrison-KahanVirtual
Please register to receive the Zoom link for this free online program. Blending history, collective biography, and literary criticism, Lori Harrison-Kahan repositions the American West as a generative space for turn-of-the-twentieth-century Jewish women’s literature. West of the Ghetto portrays how California-based writers Emma Wolf, Bettie Lowenberg, Harriet Lane Levy, Miriam Michelson, and Anna Strunsky played […]
Always Carry Salt: A Memoir of Preserving Language and Culture, with Samantha EllisVirtual
Please register to receive the Zoom link for this free online program, co-presented by JIMENA: Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa. Samantha Ellis’s mother tongue is dying out. The daughter of Iraqi Jewish refugees, Ellis grew up surrounded by the noisy, vivid, hot sounds of Judeo-Iraqi Arabic. A language that’s now on […]
Charlotte Salomon Paints Her Life, with Pamela ReitmanIn-Person
Please register to attend this free in-person program. The Library is located at 1835 Ellis Street in San Francisco, with free garage parking at 1227 Pierce Street between Ellis and Eddy. Inspired by the life and work of Charlotte Salomon, Pamela Reitman’s novel shows an artist intent on pursuing her art against all odds. As a […]
Playmakers: The Jewish Entrepreneurs Who Created the Toy Industry in America, with Michael KimmelVirtual
Please register to receive the Zoom link for this free online program. In 1902, Morris and Rose Michtom invented the Teddy Bear—bound by clothing scraps, stuffed with sawdust, and given button eyes with a sad, longing expression—in the back room of their Brooklyn candy store. Together they launched the Ideal Toy Corporation, joining a set […]
The Politics of Yiddish’s Origins, with Kalman WeiserVirtual
Click here to register for this free online program, presented in partnership with KlezCalifornia and the Workers Circle/Arbeter Ring of Northern California. When, where, why, and how did Yiddish come into being? Since at least the 19th century, linguists and historians have debated where Yiddish comes from and what that tells us about the origins […]
Jewish Heritage Words: Connecting to Our Ancestors and CommunitiesIn-Person
Please register to attend this free in-person program, co-presented by KlezCalifornia. The Library is located at 1835 Ellis Street in San Francisco, with free garage parking at 1227 Pierce Street between Ellis and Eddy. 6:00 Refreshments and opportunity to tour the Jewish Languages: A Cultural Dialogue exhibit 6:30 Presentation by Dr. Sarah Benor Most Jews […]
Drop-In Book Discussion: Always Carry Salt, by Samantha EllisIn-Person
Join us for an in-person discussion at the Jewish Community Library, facilitated by Jim Van Buskirk. The Library is located at 1835 Ellis Street in San Francisco, with free garage parking on Pierce between Ellis and Eddy. To register, click here. You may borrow a copy of Always Carry Salt at no charge. Contact us […]
Sefardi Herbalism, with Naomi SpectorVirtual
Please register to receive the Zoom link for this free online program. Sefardi Herbalism: An Introduction to Earth, Water and Plant-Based Folk Traditions of the Sefardim explores the earth-based folk culture and healing tradition of the Jews of Spain and Portugal. Weaving together diverse sources, such as Judeo-Spanish medical texts, memoirs, interviews, testimony from inquisition […]
American Jewish Activists, with Elaine LeederIn-Person
Please register to attend this free in-person program, in partnership with the Workers Circle/Arbeter Ring of Northern California. The Library is located at 1835 Ellis Street in San Francisco, with free garage parking at 1227 Pierce Street between Ellis and Eddy. American Jewish activists have long been at the forefront of major social change efforts. […]
On theatre dybbuk’s Dracula (Annotated), with Aaron HenneVirtual
Please register for this free online program, in conjunction with the Library’s One Bay One Book program. How do long-held prejudicial beliefs show up in a popular novel from England written at the turn of the twentieth century, and in what ways do those beliefs still operate today? To what extent can perceptions of antisemitism, […]
Queering Jewish Language, with Eden MoyalIn-Person
Please register to attend this free in-person program. The Library is located at 1835 Ellis Street in San Francisco, with free garage parking at 1227 Pierce Street between Ellis and Eddy. Jewish people and LGBTQ+ people are accustomed to having a language all their own that isn’t always understood outside the community. In this talk, […]
Fagin’s World: Jewish Charity, Community, and Religion in 19th Century British Cities, with Alysa LeveneVirtual
Please register for this free online program, in conjunction with the Library’s One Bay One Book program. Dickens’ Fagin lived in a precarious world. As an East End Jew he was subject to all of the suspicion and stereotyping suffered both by those of his religion, and also those who lived in the ‘underclass’ of crime […]
Opening a Confiscated Archive, with Elissa SampsonVirtual
Please register for this free online program, co-sponsored by the Workers Circle/Arbeter Ring of Northern California. Cornell University’s archive of the International Workers Order (IWO) and the Jewish People’s Fraternal Order includes a huge body of materials seized by the State of New York in 1954. As she discusses the organization’s history, Dr. Elissa Sampson […]
Drop-In Book Discussion: The Life Before Us, by Emile Ajar (Romain Gary)In-Person
Join us for an in-person discussion at the Jewish Community Library, facilitated by Jim Van Buskirk. The Library is located at 1835 Ellis Street in San Francisco, with free garage parking on Pierce between Ellis and Eddy. To register, click here. You may borrow a copy of The Life Before Us at no charge. Contact us […]
The Story of Ladino, with Nesi AltarasIn-Person
Please register to attend this free in-person program. The Library is located at 1835 Ellis Street in San Francisco, with free garage parking at 1227 Pierce Street between Ellis and Eddy. How did Ladino, the language of Sephardic Jews, develop from its Iberian origins its flowering literary life in the Eastern Mediterranean? Through an interactive workshop, […]
Fragments: Yoni Avi Battat in ConcertIn-Person
Please register to attend this free musical program, co-presented by KlezCalifornia. The Library is located at 1835 Ellis Street in San Francisco, with free garage parking at 1227 Pierce Street between Ellis and Eddy. Yoni Avi Battat brings Arab music into the soundscape of American Jewish life through composition, education, prayer, and performance on viola, […]
UNVEILED: New Works for Klezmer Clarinet, with Nat SeelenIn-Person
Please register to attend this free musical program, co-presented by KlezCalifornia. The Library is located at 1835 Ellis Street in San Francisco, with free garage parking at 1227 Pierce Street between Ellis and Eddy. Join Nat Seelen, artistic director of the Boston Festival of New Jewish Music and clarinetist with Ezekiel’s Wheels Klezmer Band, for […]
Yetzirah Jewish Poetry Open MicVirtual
Please register to attend this free in-person program. The Library is located at 1835 Ellis Street in San Francisco, with free garage parking at 1227 Pierce Street between Ellis and Eddy. Refreshments will be served. Yetzirah is a national nonprofit literary organization dedicated to supporting Jewish poets, nourishing writers and readers of Jewish poetry now and for […]
Fagin the Thief, with Allison EpsteinVirtual
Please register for this free online program, in conjunction with the Library’s One Bay One Book program. In her novel reexamining Charles Dickens’s hateful portrayal of Fagin in Oliver Twist, Allison Epstein fashions a compassionate Jewish origin story for the notorious pickpocket. The novel reveals the world of those struggling at the lowest rung of Victorian […]
Jewish Things: The Lives of Jewish Objects, with Rachel B. GrossVirtual
Please register to attend this free in-person program. The Library is located at 1835 Ellis Street in San Francisco, with free garage parking at 1227 Pierce Street between Ellis and Eddy. What kind of objects are meaningful in our lives? How do they connect us to our families and our sacred communities? How do the objects […]
The Wanderers: A Story of Exile, Survival, and Unexpected Love in the Shadow of World War II, with Daniela GersonVirtual
Please register for this free online program. Daniela Gerson and her wife, Talia Inlender, met at a picnic in Los Angeles, not knowing that 75 years earlier, their grandparents had left homes only blocks away from each other in a small Polish town, and fled east to Ukraine. The Gersons and the Inlenders would go […]
Drop-In Book Discussion: Fagin the Thief, by Allison EpsteinIn-Person
Join us for an in-person discussion at the Jewish Community Library of this year’s One Bay One Book selection, facilitated by Jim Van Buskirk. The Library is located at 1835 Ellis Street in San Francisco, with free garage parking on Pierce between Ellis and Eddy. To register, click here. You may borrow a copy of […]
The Plot Against Harry: A Screening and DiscussionIn-Person
Click here to register for this free in-person program. The Library is located at 1835 Ellis Street in San Francisco, with free garage parking at 1227 Pierce Street between Ellis and Eddy. Harry Plotnick, the unlikely protagonist of this unusual cult film that sat on the shelf for two decades after its completion, is a […]
Who Is American? Belonging and the Question of Jewish Citizenship, with Lila Corwin BermanVirtual
Please register for this free online program. The history of Jews in the United States is often told as if they immigrated, gained citizenship, and almost immediately achieved full legal rights. Yet this story fundamentally misses how citizenship rights worked for Jews and countless others who arrived on American shores. In Who Is American? Lila […]
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