Jewish Book Spotlight: Malka’s Notebook

Mira Z. Amiras was raised on her mother’s accounts of the Inquisition and Holocaust, and her father’s tales of the Hebrew aleph bet letters and their role in the creation of the universe. Mira Amiras has taught Jewish mysticism, magic, and folklore along with many other topics in Jewish and Islamic Studies and the anthropology of religion. She founded the Middle East Studies Program at San Jose State University, where she was Professor of Comparative Religious Studies for over 25 years. She received her PhD in Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, and served as president of the Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness, and on the Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association. Mira Amiras is co-founder and facilitator of the Beit Malkhut Study Group, which has been meeting in San Francisco since 1996. Her experimental project, Kaddish in Two-Part Harmony, is a collaboration with musician, Erin Vang. She founded Something Will Emerge Productions in 2012 to take on a new approach in teaching—combining animated film, scholarship, folklore, art, and music to convey concepts that wouldn’t stay put on the chalkboard.