Mira Amiras with Sandy Handsher – Malkah’s Notebook – Author Talk

“Musing through a space that’s somewhere between an illuminated, psalmic narrative poem and a graphic novel attuned to the soul, Malkah’s Notebook is an intimate trip through Jewish mysticism and feminist theology.” —Foreword Reviews

Malkah is a child when her father tries teaching 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. Malkah’s discovery takes her on a lifelong journey in search of her beginnings—into Jewish mystical texts, far-off places, archaeological digs, ancient gods, and ultimately into the nature of existence itself.

Part bedtime story, part poem, part journal, and coupled with highly evocative illustrations, Malkah’s Notebook is a love letter to the Hebrew alphabet that unlocks life’s greatest mysteries.

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. She is Professor Emerita of Comparative Religion and Middle East Studies at San Jose State University. Mira received her PhD in anthropology from UC, Berkeley. She is author of Development and Disenchantment in Rural Tunisia, and writer and producer of the animated movie, The Day Before Creation. She lives in San Francisco with her family.