A Journey into the Mystical Aleph-Bet

Malkah is a child when her father tries to teach her to read Torah. But they don’t get very far. As Malkah studies, her questions multiply. She discovers an earlier, hidden story of creation within the Hebrew Aleph-Bet letters in the first line of Genesis. And a door opens. Thus starts the award-winning film, The Day before Creation, and its companion volume, Malkah’s Notebook, documenting Malkah’s lifelong journey into Jewish mystical texts, far-off places, archaeological digs, ancient gods, and ultimately into the nature of existence itself. The book was illustrated by Josh Baum who lives in Israel. In Josh’s work as an artist and scribe, he explores the Hebrew letters as sacred signs as well as objects of profound beauty.  Join Mira Z Amiras, PhD, writer and director of both the book and film, and Josh’s brother, Sam Baum, the film’s animator.  We will screen the whole film (38m) at the start of the evening so the event will be longer than the normal hour.

Mira Z Amiras, Ph.D. is an anthropologist, author, and award-winning filmmaker. She began her journey into the mystical Aleph-Bet at her father’s knee and studied further with her mentor, Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. She has lived, studied, and travelled throughout the Middle East and North Africa, camped out 7,000 miles through Africa, across the Sahara and overland from Brussels to the Nepalese border. She received her PhD from the University of California and is Professor Emerita of Comparative Religious Studies at San Jose. Mira lives in San Francisco with her family.