Mira Z Amiras
PhD in Anthropology, University of California Berkeley 1982. Anthropology Professor in Comparative Religious Studies, Humanities Department, San Jose State University and founder and Coordinator of SJSU’s Middle East Studies Program, 1980s -2000s. President of the Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness, and member of the American Anthropological Association Executive Board, 1990s. Author of Development and Disenchantment in Rural Tunisia, the Bourguiba Years, and other works. Professor Emerita, SJSU since 2012.
Mira's website: mirazamiras.com
See also the Kaddish Project, Kaddish in Two-Part Harmony at BeitMalkhut.org. Founded Something Will Emerge Productions in 2012. For the film website, see thedaybeforecreation.com. And there's AnthroSource for additional publications.
Film:
The Day before Creation. An animated short/featurette (38 mins)
— written, directed, produced and narrated by Mira Z Amiras (© 2021)
See PRAISE FOR THE DAY BEFORE CREATION at FilmFreeway.com
Film Awards:
— First Hermetic International Film Festival, Venice, Italy
——Winner Best Animation (2021)
— Istanbul Film Awards Official Selection ( May 2021)
——Winner Best Short Animation
——Winner Best Jewish Short
——Winner Best First Time Director for a Short Film
——Winner Best Music in a Short (awarded to Yair Dalal for TDBC)
—Best Shorts Competition Official Selection (June 2021)
——Winner Best Jewish Short
—Toronto International Women Festival Official Selection (June 2021)
—KIDS FIRST! Film Festival Official Selection (June 2021)
——University of Hawaii at Manoa Outreach College
——Screenings from 2/15—2/23/2022
—The IndieFest Film Awards Official Selection (2021)
——Award of Excellence
—San Francisco Indie Short Festival (August 2021)
——Finalist
—The American Jewish Film Festival (October 2021)
——Winner Best Short Film
—Dubai Independent Film Festival (October 2021)
——Finalist
—LA Independent Women Film Awards (2021)
——Winner Best Animation
—Sydney Indie Short Festival, Australia (Winter 2022)
——Winner Best International Short
—Gold Standard Arts and Film Festival Official Selection (Spring 2022)
——Talmudic Tenders Screening at
—— The West End Theater, NYC April 28, 2022
—Shohan Film Festival, Israel (2022)
——Winner Best Featurette
——Winner Best Animation
--Roma Spiritual Film Fest, Italy (2024)
——Best Animation
——Best Soundtrack (Yair Dalal)
——Best Spiritual Poster
Night of Drama Shorts Second Gen (2024)
——Best Animation
Be Epic! Film Fest, London UK (2024)
——Opening screening of festival
(additional screenings and streaming not listed here)
Books:
—Tali and the Timeless Time (forthcoming © 2025) A children's book on the preservation of Sephardi culture when our elders can no longer remember even themselves.
—Tali and the Toucan (© 2024) A children's book on fear, healing through dreams, and Aikido, the martial art of peace and harmony.
—Malkah's Notebook: A Journey into the Mystical Aleph-Bet (© 2022)
——2022 Visual Arts Award Finalist, 72nd National Jewish Book Awards
——2022 Foreword INDIES Finalist, Religion (Adult Non-Fiction)
—Development and Disenchantment in Rural Tunisia: The Bourguiba Years (© 1992)
Selected courses:
University courses: Magic, Science and Religion. Body, Mind, and Spirit. Anthropology of Religion. Western Religions. Middle Eastern Traditions. Islam, Politics and the West. Jewish Mysticism, Magic and Folklore. Gender and Anthropology. Culture and Conflict. Wealth and Power (Economic Anthropology and Politics). Religion, Film and Media. New Lehrhaus course: How the Middle East Works: Four Models (2024)
Current work:
Founder and Director of Something Will Emerge Productions, producing the illustrated volume Malkah's Notebook: A Journey into the Mystical AlephBet. As well as its companion volume, Malkah's Notebook: Book Two, The Commentary, as well as the animated film, The Day before Creation, a 38 minute animation on kabbalistic notions of Creation and the thorny pursuit of personal origins.
Selected honors:
—Fulbright-Hays Fellowship for Dissertation Research in Tunisia, 1978-79
—International Doctoral Research Fellowship , Awarded by the Social Science Research Council and the American Council for Learned Societies. Research in North Africa 1978-1980
—Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Center for Middle East Studies, UC Berkeley, 1983-1990
—Joseph J. Malone Faculty Fellowship, National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations, Washington DC. Fellowship in Iraq and the United Arab Emirates, 1990
—Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Judaic Studies, Yarnton Manor, Oxford.
NEH Fellowship, 'Representations of the 'Other;' Medieval Christendom's View of Jews and Muslims, 2003
—And additional travel, research and program development grants
Mira's website: mirazamiras.com
See also the Kaddish Project, Kaddish in Two-Part Harmony at BeitMalkhut.org. Founded Something Will Emerge Productions in 2012. For the film website, see thedaybeforecreation.com. And there's AnthroSource for additional publications.
Film:
The Day before Creation. An animated short/featurette (38 mins)
— written, directed, produced and narrated by Mira Z Amiras (© 2021)
See PRAISE FOR THE DAY BEFORE CREATION at FilmFreeway.com
Film Awards:
— First Hermetic International Film Festival, Venice, Italy
——Winner Best Animation (2021)
— Istanbul Film Awards Official Selection ( May 2021)
——Winner Best Short Animation
——Winner Best Jewish Short
——Winner Best First Time Director for a Short Film
——Winner Best Music in a Short (awarded to Yair Dalal for TDBC)
—Best Shorts Competition Official Selection (June 2021)
——Winner Best Jewish Short
—Toronto International Women Festival Official Selection (June 2021)
—KIDS FIRST! Film Festival Official Selection (June 2021)
——University of Hawaii at Manoa Outreach College
——Screenings from 2/15—2/23/2022
—The IndieFest Film Awards Official Selection (2021)
——Award of Excellence
—San Francisco Indie Short Festival (August 2021)
——Finalist
—The American Jewish Film Festival (October 2021)
——Winner Best Short Film
—Dubai Independent Film Festival (October 2021)
——Finalist
—LA Independent Women Film Awards (2021)
——Winner Best Animation
—Sydney Indie Short Festival, Australia (Winter 2022)
——Winner Best International Short
—Gold Standard Arts and Film Festival Official Selection (Spring 2022)
——Talmudic Tenders Screening at
—— The West End Theater, NYC April 28, 2022
—Shohan Film Festival, Israel (2022)
——Winner Best Featurette
——Winner Best Animation
--Roma Spiritual Film Fest, Italy (2024)
——Best Animation
——Best Soundtrack (Yair Dalal)
——Best Spiritual Poster
Night of Drama Shorts Second Gen (2024)
——Best Animation
Be Epic! Film Fest, London UK (2024)
——Opening screening of festival
(additional screenings and streaming not listed here)
Books:
—Tali and the Timeless Time (forthcoming © 2025) A children's book on the preservation of Sephardi culture when our elders can no longer remember even themselves.
—Tali and the Toucan (© 2024) A children's book on fear, healing through dreams, and Aikido, the martial art of peace and harmony.
—Malkah's Notebook: A Journey into the Mystical Aleph-Bet (© 2022)
——2022 Visual Arts Award Finalist, 72nd National Jewish Book Awards
——2022 Foreword INDIES Finalist, Religion (Adult Non-Fiction)
—Development and Disenchantment in Rural Tunisia: The Bourguiba Years (© 1992)
Selected courses:
University courses: Magic, Science and Religion. Body, Mind, and Spirit. Anthropology of Religion. Western Religions. Middle Eastern Traditions. Islam, Politics and the West. Jewish Mysticism, Magic and Folklore. Gender and Anthropology. Culture and Conflict. Wealth and Power (Economic Anthropology and Politics). Religion, Film and Media. New Lehrhaus course: How the Middle East Works: Four Models (2024)
Current work:
Founder and Director of Something Will Emerge Productions, producing the illustrated volume Malkah's Notebook: A Journey into the Mystical AlephBet. As well as its companion volume, Malkah's Notebook: Book Two, The Commentary, as well as the animated film, The Day before Creation, a 38 minute animation on kabbalistic notions of Creation and the thorny pursuit of personal origins.
Selected honors:
—Fulbright-Hays Fellowship for Dissertation Research in Tunisia, 1978-79
—International Doctoral Research Fellowship , Awarded by the Social Science Research Council and the American Council for Learned Societies. Research in North Africa 1978-1980
—Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Center for Middle East Studies, UC Berkeley, 1983-1990
—Joseph J. Malone Faculty Fellowship, National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations, Washington DC. Fellowship in Iraq and the United Arab Emirates, 1990
—Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Judaic Studies, Yarnton Manor, Oxford.
NEH Fellowship, 'Representations of the 'Other;' Medieval Christendom's View of Jews and Muslims, 2003
—And additional travel, research and program development grants
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Papers by Mira Z Amiras
The fellahin of Medjerda express their colonial reminiscences and contemporary experiences through what Sahlins has called "historical metaphors and mythical realities" (1981). Thus, local Medjerdi interpretations of present experience are couched in seemingly anachronistic categories from the colonial past: contemporary national interventions are associated with the French and identified as souri, while local initiative and customary practices are considered 'arbi or Arab. National policy directives and foreign development programs vividly, bitterly, and nostalgically bring to mind their years as laborers under French colonial landowners.
The fellahin of Medjerda express their colonial reminiscences and contemporary experiences through what Sahlins has called "historical metaphors and mythical realities" (1981). Thus, local Medjerdi interpretations of present experience are couched in seemingly anachronistic categories from the colonial past: contemporary national interventions are associated with the French and identified as souri, while local initiative and customary practices are considered 'arbi or Arab. National policy directives and foreign development programs vividly, bitterly, and nostalgically bring to mind their years as laborers under French colonial landowners.
A version of this conference paper was published under the title "On Meeting Amaterasu (and Oya Too): The Warrior Path for the Non-Practitioner" in Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies (1999)
IBN KHALDUN's Bled al-Makhzan and the Theory of Oscillating Elites.
KARL WITTFOGEL'S use of Mesopotamia as the prototype of Oriental Despotism
SADDAM HUSSEIN's attempt to rebuild the Neo-Babylonian Empire using Marduk as his model. Switching models when that one failed. Why Saddam thought he could not fail.
Militant dissidence does not always take a violent turn. Sometimes it is played out in poetry, song, and in the attempted rescue of yet another dying indigenous language. Dying languages are not a new phenomenon, but the contemporary struggle by indigenous peoples to revive or perpetuate their language is a last desperate attempt to maintain or retrieve their own distinct identity in an increasingly globalized environment. Globalization, however, has been both bane and boon. Bane, in that global political economy takes place in an increasingly monolingual environment, and boon, in that indigenous peoples, whether in their homelands or in diaspora, can mobilize internationally. The Tamazight language has been on the decline since the Arabs first entered and began to dominate North Africa. They brought with them not only Islam but also the Arabic language, sacred to the newly introduced religion. Tamazight was made illegal in many parts of North Africa and its written script proscribed. In the twentieth century, it has fallen upon the Amazigh diaspora to attempt to rescue the last remnants of Tamazight before it disappears.
NOTES THAT GO WITH VIDEO RECORDINGS OF SESSION
INTRODUCTION—What we know and don't know about the Middle East
IBN KHALDUN —AL MUQADDIMAH An Introduction to History
—Ecological factors leading to industriousness, race, colonialism...
—The Theory of Oscillating Elites
—Bled es-Siba
—Bled al Fellahin
—Transitions...
Part II contains Hebrew words found in Malkah's Notebook: A Journey into the Mystical Aleph-Bet, written in Hebrew, transliteration, English translation, and page found.
Note: there is also a Read-Along version of Malkah's Notebook available April 2022.
Illustrations by Josh Baum, Alefs in Wonderland
SET PDF INTO TWO-PAGE VIEW MODE, SO THAT THE ILLUSTRATION APPEARS ON THE RIGHT, AND TEXT ON THE LEFT OF EACH DOUBLE PAGE.
Note: Part I is an unfinished draft. No quotation, citation, or any other reference to this work is acceptable without written permission from the author.
(Natalie Reid, author of The Spiritual Alchemist: Working with the Voice of your Soul, www.thespiritualalchemist.com)