"Reality and Photofictions: A Photographer's Reflection on the Power and Dilemmas of Photojournalism" featuring Micha Bar Am

Bar Am is a renowned Magnum photojournalist who served as a photographic correspondent in Israel and throughout the Middle East for the New York Times. His photographs have captured major Israeli historical events and the essence of Israeli society. He was a founding member of the International Center of Photography in New York and served as a curator at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. Free.

Wednesday, September 17, 2003, 7:30 pm: Congregation Emanu El, 2 Lake Street, San Francisco. Sponsored by: The Israel Center, Consulate General of Israel, Congregation Emanu-El. Contact the Israel Center, 415.512.6203, israelcenter@sfjcf.org

Corresponding exhibition: Our Daily Bread

Sami Michael - "Literature Under Fire"

Born in Bagdad, Sami Michael made his way to Israel in 1949. The winner of numerous literary and humanitarian prizes, he is president of the Israeli Association for Human Rights and the author of eight novels. The film adaptation of A Trumpet in the Wadi won the 2001 Israel Academy Film Award. The book has been recently published in English by Simon & Schuster. Congregation Sherith Israel, 2266 California St., San Francisco.

Thursday, October 30, 2003, 7:00 pm

Additional engagements (check calendar of events):

Monday, October 27, 2003, 7:00 pm

Friday, October 31, 2003, 8:00 pm

Contact the Israel Center, 415.512.6203, israelcenter@sfjcf.org

Rabin Community Memorial Lecture & Observance

A pre-recorded message from Dr. Yossi Beilin who had to leave to sign the Geneva Document

Professor Moshe Maoz, Advisor to prime ministers Rabin and Peres

Professor  Moshe Maoz received his Ph.D. in  History of the Middle East  from Oxford University. A native Israeli, Professor Maoz has served as an advisor on Arab-Israeli relations to prime ministers Yitzchak Rabin and Shimon Peres Preceding these terms he was the Advisor on Arab Affairs to Defense Minister Ezer Weizman and the Assistant-Advisor on Arab Affairs in Israel to Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. Professor Maoz has been a lecturer and professor at the Hebrew University in Yerushalayim for the past 35 years, and he has taught at several other universities such as Harvard, Columbia, and Brandeis . He has also published several books and has dedicated much of his life to educating people about Arab-Israeli relations.

Saturday, November 8, 2003, 7:30 pm: Congregation Emanu El, 2 Lake St., San Francisco. Sponsored by: The Israel Center, Consulate General of Israel. Contact the Israel Center, 415.512.6203, israelcenter@sfjcf.org

"Israel as a Jewish and Democratic State": Political Identity, Ideology and Law" with Professor Ruth Gavison

Professor Gavison is one of Israel's most respected professors of law and the founder and first chair of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI). Since 1997 she has served as a member of the International Commission of Jurists and as a Senior Fellow of the Israel Democracy Institute. She is also a frequent and regular contributor to the national press and the web on issues of law, human rights, democracy and Israeli society.

Wednesday, February 4, 2004, 7:30 pm: Congregation Emanu El, 2 Lake St., San Francisco. Sponsored by: The Israel Center, Consulate General of Israel, Congregation Emanu-El. Contact the Israel Center, 415.512.6203, israelcenter@sfjcf.org

Professor Gavison will also be lecturing at several Bay Area  universities during her visit. Click here for more info.

"Imaging Zionism: Complicity and Criticality in Israeli Visual Culture" with Larry Abramson

An artist and scholar, Mr. Abramson immigrated to Israel from South Africa in 1961 and since 1984 has been teaching at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem. He has received the Kolliner Prize for a Young Israeli Artist (Israel Museum, 1979), America-Israel Cultural Foundation Award (1988), Jacques O'Hana Prize for a Young Israeli Artist (Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 1991) and Minister of Education and Culture Award (1998).

Since the establishment of the Bezalel Academy of Art in Jerusalem, in 1906, Israeli visual culture has maintained a complex relationship to the Zionist ideology of national Jewish revival in the land of Israel. On the one hand, artists identified with this collective national goal and strove to give it a clear and communicative visual expression; On the other hand, these same artists identified with the new modernist avant-garde ideas emerging from Europe, and wished to use innovative revolutionary forms to express themselves as individuals. Today, artists in many disciplines are returning to the original canonic icons in order to question the ideology that produced them, and to present an alternative and critical ("Post-Zionist ") point of view.

Over the past 100 years the tension between collective and personal identity has produced a fascinating art of hybridization, an art which is the subject of Larry Abramson's lecture. Larry Abramson, an Israeli artist who has exhibited extensively in Israel and abroad and was the Chairman of the Bezalel Academy's Fine Art department during the 1990's, will survey the development of Israeli visual culture from the early days to these, in pursuit of the "scopic regimes" which shaped the values and practices of each period.

Click for Larry's Biography

Wednesday, April 21, 2004, 7:30 pm: Congregation Emanu El, 2 Lake St., San Francisco. Sponsored by: The Israel Center, Congregation Emanu-El, Consulate General of Israel. Contact the Israel Center, 415.512.6203, israelcenter@sfjcf.org

Mr. Abramson will be at the following Bay Area locations:
Monday, April 19, 12:30 pm: UC Davis - Art Department.
Monday, April 19, 6:30 pm: UC Berkeley - Wheeler Hall, rooom 210.
Tuesday, April 20, 9:30 am: SFSU - Jewish Studies class.
Tuesday, April 20, 12:00 pm: SFSU - Jewish Studies faculty.
Thursday, April 22 2:30 pm: at the Bureau of Jewish Education - workshop for educators.