Arts and Culture

Paula Fass Comes Out of Retirement to Become The Magnes’ New Faculty Director

Published

6 years ago

June 13, 2019

When the powers that be came to Paula Fass to ask her to take over as the faculty director at UC Berkeley’s The Magnes Collection of Jewish Life and Art, it was a bit of a tough sell.

She’d retired in 2010 after 36 years teaching history at UC Berkeley, and while helping to steer the course at the campus’s Jewish archive, library and museum was tempting for the daughter of Holocaust survivors, she was looking forward to writing more books and spending much more time seeing her daughter and son and their families, all on the East Coast.

“Being retired, it was much easier to find the time to see my kids more, so that was a consideration,” Fass says. “And if I took the job, it was likely I wouldn’t be able to write any books for a while. I thought about it very hard.”

And Fass, who has published three books since retiring, thought maybe the job at The Magnes would be better off in someone else’s hands.

“That (outgoing faculty director) George Breslauer even approached me was a bit of a surprise. I thought there were others more qualified,” she says, “But after I was approached, the job seemed more and more appetizing. I wouldn’t have come out of retirement to do this if I didn’t think it was so important.”

Since taking over on May 3, she’s wound her way through a major conference — In Global Transit: Forced Migration of Jews and Other Refugees (1940s-1960s) — while learning the inner workings of the place from the curatorial staff. She’s met with donors and viewed the collection’s photos, paintings, writings, music and more.

“I won’t say I’m overwhelmed, but this is a very different experience from the retirement I had been experiencing,” Fass says. “This is a lush and spectacular collection, and trying to take it in all at once has been breathtaking.”

In taking over for Breslauer, Fass is facing some new challenges. Much of the job is about fundraising. She’s never done that, “But I’m ready to learn on the job,” she says.

“Paula has a great personal story to tell and a passion for our story,” Breslauer says. “I think she has a devotion to the mission. I have great confidence in her. I’m passing the reins, but I’m still here as an advisor if she needs that.”

Fass is the daughter of Holocaust survivors Bluma and Harry Fass. Both entered concentration camps with families; both emerged as sole survivors. Born in West Germany in a displaced person’s camp, Fass grew up in New York and taught at Rutgers before making her way to Berkeley four decades ago. Her 2009 book, Inheriting the Holocaust: a Second-Generation Memoir, is an exploration of how the daughter of concentration camp survivors came to understand her world.

She hasn’t spent her entire career in Judaica, however. She’s written about education, immigration and globalization and spent much of her career working on children’s history and children’s policy.

“Being the daughter of Holocaust survivors is a part of me, but not in any overt way,” Fass says. “Coming to The Magnes now gives me the opportunity to join in at a very important moment, when the resurgence of overt anti-Semitic voices is out there.

“The Magnes can become a very important instrument of counteraction to give a better, fuller picture of Jewish life. Judaism is a multiethnic community. There are Jews in India, South America and North Africa. There is a multiculturalism about the Jewish population that the U.S. should know more about. I’d like to give the public a better sense of Jewish life, the vitality and the continuity. Jews have been highly successful in the United States, but wrongfully have been seen as a symbol of colonialism.”

Francesco Spagnolo, curator at The Magnes, says “the time is right” for Fass to be making this move.

“Paula has a fantastic profile as a scholar and as a member of the UC Berkeley community,” Spagnolo, who collaborated with Fass on a lecture at The Magnes in 2017, says. “Because of her passions and her interest, she has a formidable record as a scholar, and her expectations are very good.”

“I’m genuinely looking forward to working with Francesco and with George,” Fass says. “I’m expecting to put a lot of effort and time into learning the ropes, and I know I’ll be able to depend on both of them a lot.”

And she expects to work closely with Chancellor Carol Christ, who was one of the first people Fass met at Berkeley in the mid-1970s.

Fass, with her history in children’s education, says she’d like to see The Magnes become “a spearhead for education.”

“I’d like to take The Magnes out into the schools,” Fass says. “When my son (Charles) was in second grade, he brought me and my family menorah in to (class for me to) explain what it meant in my life. Kids are fascinated with objects. When I passed it around, they were rapt.

“Holding it and hearing the personal stories and seeing the artifacts opened these kids’ eyes. I believe we can reach out and work with others at local museums. I’d like to see a joint effort with the Oakland Museum, say for Black History Month, because there are black Jews.”

John Hickey

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Arts and Culture

Book Review: Building the Worlds That Kill Us: Disease, Death, and Inequality in American History

Nearly five years ago, while interviewing residents along the Mississippi River in Louisiana for a book they were writing, authors Rosner and Markowitz learned that they’d caused a little brouhaha. Large corporations in the area, ones that the residents of “a small, largely African American community” had battled over air and soil contamination and illness, didn’t want any more “’agitators’” poking around. They’d asked a state trooper to see if the authors were going to cause trouble.

Published

1 week ago

January 6, 2025

Oakland Post

Courtesy of Columbia University Press.

By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Author: David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz, c.2024, Columbia University Press, $28.00

Get lots of rest.

That’s always good advice when you’re ailing. Don’t overdo. Don’t try to be Superman or Supermom, just rest and follow your doctor’s orders.

And if, as in the new book, “Building the Worlds That Kill Us” by David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz, the color of your skin and your social strata are a certain way, you’ll feel better soon.

For Rosner and Markowitz, this underscored “what every thoughtful person at least suspects”: that age, geography, immigrant status, “income, wealth, race, gender, sexuality, and social position” largely impacts the quality and availability of medical care.

It’s been this way since Europeans first arrived on North American shores.

Native Americans “had their share of illness and disease” even before the Europeans arrived and brought diseases that decimated established populations. There was little-to-no medicine offered to slaves on the Middle Passage because a ship owner’s “financial calculus… included the price of disease and death.” According to the authors, many enslavers weren’t even “convinced” that the cost of feeding their slaves was worth the work received.

Factory workers in the late 1800s and early 1900s worked long weeks and long days under sometimes dangerous conditions, and health care was meager; Depression-era workers didn’t fare much better. Black Americans were used for medical experimentation. And just three years ago, the American Lung Association reported that “’people of color’ disproportionately” lived in areas where the air quality was particularly dangerous.

So, what does all this mean? Authors David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz don’t seem to be too optimistic, for one thing, but in “Building the Worlds That Kill Us,” they do leave readers with a thought-provoker: “we as a nation … created this dark moment and we have the ability to change it.” Finding the “how” in this book, however, will take serious between-the-lines reading.

If that sounds ominous, it is. Most of this book is, in fact, quite dismaying, despite that there are glimpses of pushback here and there, in the form of protests and strikes throughout many decades. You may notice, if this is a subject you’re passionate about, that the histories may be familiar but deeper than you might’ve learned in high school. You’ll also notice the relevance to today’s healthcare issues and questions, and that’s likewise disturbing.

This is by no means a happy-happy vacation book, but it is essential reading if you care about national health issues, worker safety, public attitudes, and government involvement in medical care inequality. You may know some of what’s inside “Building the Worlds That Kill Us,” but now you can learn the rest.

Oakland Post

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Arts and Culture

‘Giants Rising’ Film Screening in Marin City Library

A journey into the heart of America’s most iconic forests, “Giants Rising” tells the epic tale of the coast redwoods — the tallest and among the oldest living beings on Earth. Living links to the past, redwoods hold powers that may play a role in our future, including their ability to withstand fire and capture carbon, to offer clues about longevity, and to enhance our own well-being.

Published

1 week ago

January 5, 2025

Oakland Post

A woman stands amid towering redwood trees in a forest. Photo courtesy of Marin County Free Library.

By Godfrey Lee

The film “Giants Rising” will be screened on Saturday, Jan. 11, from 3-6 p.m. at the St. Andrew Presbyterian Church, located 100 Donahue St. in Marin City.

Through the voices of scientists, artists, Native communities, and others, we discover the many connections that sustain these forests and the promise of solutions that will help us all rise up to face the challenges that lay ahead.

The film’s website is www.giantsrising.com. The “Giants Rising” trailer is at https://player.vimeo.com/video/904153467. The registration link to the event is https://marinlibrary.bibliocommons.com/events/673de7abb41279410057889e

This event is sponsored by the Friends of the Marin City Library and hosted in conjunction with the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and St. Andrew Presbyterian Church.

All library events are free. For more information, contact Etienne Douglas at (415) 332-6158 or email etienne.douglas@marincounty.gov. For event-specific information, contact Zaira Sierra at zsierra@parksconservancy.org.

Oakland Post

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Activism

‘Resist’ a Look at Black Activism in U.S. Through the Eyes of a Native Nigerian

In 1995, after she and her brothers traveled from their native Nigeria to join their mother at her new home in the South Bronx, young Omokha’s eyes were opened. She quickly understood that the color of her skin – which was “synonymous with endless striving and a pursuit of excellence” in Nigeria – was “so problematic in America.”

Published

2 weeks ago

December 29, 2024

Oakland Post

Cover of “Resist! How a Century of Young Black Activists Shaped America.” Courtesy image.

By Terri Schlichenmeyer, The Bookworm Sez

Throughout history, when decisions were needed, the answer has often been “no.”

‘No,’ certain people don’t get the same education as others. ‘No,’ there is no such thing as equality. ‘No,’ voting can be denied and ‘no,’ the laws are different, depending on the color of one’s skin. And in the new book, “Resist!” by Rita Omokha, ‘no,’ there is not an obedient acceptance of those things.

That became a bigger matter to Omokha later, 15 years after her brother was deported: she “saw” him in George Floyd, and it shook her. Troubled, she traveled to America on a “pilgrimage for understanding [her] Blackness…” She began to think about the “Black young people across America” who hadn’t been or wouldn’t be quiet about racism any longer.

She starts this collection of stories with Ella Josephine Baker, whose parents and grandparents modeled activism and who, because of her own student activism, would be “crowned the mother of the Civil Rights Movement.” Baker, in fact, was the woman who formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC, in 1960.

Nine teenagers, known as the Scottsboro Nine were wrongly arrested for raping two white women in 1931 and were all released, thanks to the determination of white lawyer-allies who were affiliated with the International Labor Defense and the outrage of students on campuses around America.

Students refused to let a “Gentleman’s Agreement” pass when it came to sports and equality in 1940. Barbara Johns demanded equal education under the law in Virginia in 1951. Huey Newton and Bobby Seale formed the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in 1966. And after Trayvon Martin (2012) and George Floyd (2020) were killed, students used the internet as a new form of fighting for justice.

No doubt, by now, you’ve read a lot of books about activism. There are many of them out there, and they’re pretty hard to miss. With that in mind, there are reasons not to miss “Resist!”

You’ll find the main one by looking between the lines and in each chapter’s opening.

There, Omokha weaves her personal story in with that of activists at different times through the decades, matching her experiences with history and making the whole timeline even more relevant.

In doing so, the point of view she offers – that of a woman who wasn’t totally raised in an atmosphere filled with racism, who wasn’t immersed in it her whole life – lets these historical accounts land with more impact.

This book is for people who love history or a good, short biography, but it’s also excellent reading for anyone who sees a need for protest or action and questions the status quo. If that’s the case, then “Resist!” may be the answer.

“Resist! How a Century of Young Black Activists Shaped America” by Rita Omokha, c.2024, St. Martin’s Press. $29.00