For the record, I'm neither an academic nor a scholar, and admittedly, I've never been to many of the places posted here. So if someone should find a mistake, or believe I omitted something, please feel free to email me and I'll correct it.

I can be contacted at dms2_@hotmail.com.

Wednesday, May 6, 2020

HAIFA

Haifa, courtesy, Encyclopedia Britannica
Haifa and its metropolitan area are built on the slopes of Mount Carmel on one side, along the Bay of Haifa on the other, and straddling the mouth of the Kishon River, approximately 56 miles north of Tel Aviv. It is a major regional center of northern Israel, and the third-largest city and metropolitan area in Israel after Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Since the Middle Ages and until the early Zionist era, the Jews of Haifa would make annual pilgrimages to the Grotto of Elijah located on Mount Carmel where the prophet Elijah destroyed the pagan idols of Baal. The tomb of the Talmudic Rabbi Avdimi located in the local Jewish cemetery was also a major pilgrimage site. Since the 19th century, Haifa has also been the center of the Baha’i faith, which grew out of Islam and originated in Persia. It became the home of the Baháʼí World Centre and a place of destination for Baháʼí pilgrims.

During the time of Joshua, the area of Haifa belonged to the tribe of Asher (Judges v. 17). Since the Return from the Babylonian Captivity and for many centuries afterwards, its Jewish inhabitants were on hostile terms with the Samaritans, especially those of the neighboring fortress built by the Romans. In the Talmudic era (c. 4th century), fishermen would often catch murex (shellfish yielding purple dye used for the tallit) along the coast from Haifa to the “Ladder of Tyre”. The following rabbis are mentioned as having lived in Haifa in this period: Abba of Haifa, Ami, Isaac Nappaḥah, and Avdimi. From the fifth to the thirteenth centuries the community was frequently broken up by the numerous conquerors of Palestine – Byzantines, Persians, Arabs, Seljuk Turks, Crusaders. A kinah speaks of the destruction of the Jewish community, along with other communities, when the Byzantines reconquered Israel from the Persians in 628. But it was re-built soon after. In the 9th century under the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates, the Jews of Haifa engaged in trade and maritime commerce.
In 1084, the gaon Elijah ben Solomon ha-Kohen went from Tyre to Haifa to proclaim the New Year and to renew the ordination of rabbis and the gaonate there. During the first Crusade, the Christian knights, pushing southward, initially spared the city. Haifa at that time, had a majority Jewish population and was defended by an army of Jewish fighters backed by an Arab garrison from Egypt. But the Crusaders, with the assistance of the Venetian navy, finally laid siege to the city in 1100 and conquered it. All Haifa's Jewish defenders and its Egyptian garrison were slaughtered, bringing to an end another brief but flourishing chapter in Haifa's history. During the Crusader era Jews apparently did not resettle there but Jewish burials continued to take place such as that of Rabbi Yehiel ben Yosef of Paris who established a major yeshiva in nearby Acre. At various times since the Mameluke Egyptian conquest in 1291 and until the 16th century when the Ottoman Turks rebuilt the city, a few Jews managed to live there. By 1742, the community was composed mainly of immigrants from Morocco and Algeria. Jewish pilgrims often visited Haifa and prayed in its synagogue during this time, such as R. Nahman of Bratslav who went in 1798 and spent Rosh Ha-Shanah there, and Jacob Baruch, a Jewish traveler from Leghorn, who visited Haifa in 1799.
The first major wave of Jewish immigration to Haifa took place in the mid-19th century from Morocco, with a smaller wave of immigration from Turkey a few years later. In 1857 Eleazar Cohen Ḥimsi, a rabbi of Smyrna, who was on his way to Tiberias by way of Haifa, consented to remain at Haifa as spiritual head of the community. He died after officiating twelve years (1857-69). Meanwhile the community was enlarged by the arrival of Jews from Constantinople, Smyrna, Syria, and Morocco. They were followed by a large arrival of Arabs from the surrounding countries. In 1870 Abraham Ḥalfon, a rabbi of Tiberias, but originally from Tetuan, accepted the title of grand rabbi of Haifa, but resigned after one year. By 1878 however, two Moroccan rabbis, Mas'ud Haḥuel and Abraham Cohen, both from Tetuan, served long-term as the town’s co-chief rabbis. In the last quarter of the century, the Jews comprised about one-eighth of the total population. They lived in the Ḥarat al-Yahūd ("Jewish quarter") inside the poor Muslim district in the eastern part of the lower city. Some from among the small number of Ashkenazim opened hotels for Jewish immigrants coming into the city. Continued Jewish immigration, mainly from North Africa, gradually raised the local Jewish population in status and industriousness. Although poor, The Jewish community was occupied chiefly with commerce, carpentry, and copper and blacksmithing. Others were engaged as wheel-wrights. Sometimes, they would work for foreign governments. Abraham Raphael de Léon, originally from Smyrna, acted as agent of the Dutch consulate, headquartered locally (1882).  
From the 1880s onward, and especially in the early 20th century, extensive Jewish commercial and industrial enterprises sprang up. In 1881 the French-Jewish organization Alliance Israélite Universelle established two schools, one of which was attended by 180 boys, and the other by 105 girls. The First Aliyah of the late 19th century and the Second Aliyah of the early 20th saw Jewish immigrants, mainly from Eastern Europe, arrive in Haifa in significant numbers. The Jewish population rose from 1,500 in 1900 to 3,000 on the eve of World War I.
At the end of 1882, the British Christian adventurer Laurence Oliphant took up his abode at Haifa, which he had planned to make the center of the Jewish re-settlement of Palestine. The Central Jewish Colonization Society in Romania had already purchased over 1,000 acres of land on the city’s outskirts for such a purpose. During his visit to Israel in 1898–99, Theodor Herzl recognized Haifa's numerous potentialities as the future chief port and an important inland road junction. Jewish activity had increased since then and in 1912, the cornerstone of the Technion, college of technology, was laid, signaling plans for further development projects such as the establishments of the Herzliya neighborhood, and the Hebrew Reali School in 1913. 
During the British Mandate period (1917-1948), Haifa rapidly grew into a large modern city in which the Jewish population played an increasingly predominant role. As more and more Jews from the 1920s onward, settled in Israel, the new neighborhoods of Neve Shaanan and Hadar ha-Carmel (a continuation of the Herzliyyah neighborhood) were established. The Arab population, mainly concentrated in the lower city, would often obstruct the Jews on their way to the adjoining industrial areas and to the port and services adjacent to it.
In 1924, the Technion was inaugurated and it soon became part of Hadar ha-Carmel neighborhood. Beginning that year, many Jewish immigrants of the Fourth and Fifth Aliyot settled in Haifa as did an influx of Arab immigrants, mainly from the Hauran in Syria. Haifa was also among the first towns to be fully electrified. The Palestine Electric Company inaugurated the Haifa Electrical Power Station already in 1925, opening the door to considerable industrialization. As the local Jewish population increased, settlement gradually climbed up the Carmel slope around Merkaz ha-Carmel, in the Aḥuzzat Herbert Samuel quarter, and in Neveh Sha'anan. In 1933, Bosmat Technical High School was established. Tension between the city's Arab and Jewish residents however, impeded Haifa's development. The Arab riots of 1936–39 in particular adversely affected the city's economy, business, and regional commercial activity. At the start of the War of Independence in 1947, British government and military personnel decided to evacuate the city and in a lightning military action, the Haganah, forerunner of the Israeli army, immediately took over. Only about 3,000 of Haifa's 50,000 Arab residents chose to remain in the city; the rest, in response to the Arab High Command's orders, refused to accept Jewish rule and abandoned their homes.
During and after the war, the built-up area of Haifa continued to expand along the shore area and on the slopes and ridges of the Carmel. The lower city (whose former nucleus had been largely left in ruins in 1948) was rebuilt as the "City" – Haifa's main business section. The population density on Hadar ha-Carmel, which also a center for retail trade, services, and entertainment, increased until residents started moving to the upper Carmel. Housing projects on a large scale were erected, including extensive suburbs such as Kiryat Eliezer, Romemah, Aḥuza, Carmelia, Vardia, and Denia. Employment in the port area and in the various industries that sprang up, drew a very large labor force to the city, which is today, the best organized in the country. But not all of Haifa’s population benefitted from these developments. In 1959, the Sephardi and Mizrahi (mostly Moroccan) Jews of Wadi Salib neighborhood, rioted against what they saw as official state discrimination. Their demand for "bread and work" was directed at the state institutions and an Ashkenazi elite in the Labor Party and the Histadrut.
During the 1970s, the population of Haifa increased due to the Aliyah of Jews from the Soviet Union. At this time, Matam, one of the oldest and largest high-tech parks in Israel, was built. Among its first tenants was Intel which established a branch here in 1974. But development really took off in the 1980s with the establishment of other international high-tech corporation: Apple, Amazon, Abbot, Cadence, Intel, IBM, Magic Leap, Microsoft, Motorola, Google, Yahoo!, Elbit, CSR, Philips, PwC, and Amdocs. Between 1994 and 2009, the city had a declining and aging population compared to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, as many young people moved to the center of the country for education and jobs, while young families migrated to bedroom communities in the suburbs. However, as a result of new projects and improving infrastructure, the city managed to reverse its population decline, reducing emigration while attracting more internal migration into the city.
During the 1990s, Haifa hosted the Haifa Rock & Blues Festival featuring Bob DylanNick CaveBlur and PJ Harvey. The last festival was held in 1995 with Sheryl CrowSuede and Faith No More as headliners. From 2001 to 2003, four suicide bombings claimed dozens of lives and injured nearly 200 people. In 2006, Haifa was hit by 93 Hezbollah rockets during the Second Lebanon War, killing 11 civilians and leading to half of the city's population fleeing at the end of the first week of the war. Among the places hit by rockets were a train depot and the oil refinery complex.
Since independence, additional institutions and enterprises were to be found in Haifa:
CULTURE: the New Haifa Symphony Orchestra established in 1950; the Haifa Cinematheque, founded in 1975, which hosts the annual Haifa International Film Festival; 
SOCIETY: Bet Gefen, a Jewish-Arab youth center opened in 1963;
INDUSTRY: the Dagon storage silos and its Archeological Museum; the auxiliary port built in 1954; a shipyard, a floating dock, and a jetty for Israel's fishing fleet, all built in 1959; two factories for the production and assembly of cars; a plant for producing organic fertilizers from waste; a plant for purifying sewage water;
EDUCATION: Haifa University College founded in 1963, with its Eshkol Tower; Gordon College of Education; Sha'anan Religious Teachers' College; the WIZO Haifa Academy of Design and Education; the P.E.T Practical Engineering School; the Pinhas House Biology Institute;
MUSEUMS: Israel National Museum of Science, Technology, and Space; the Haifa Museum of Art; the Tikotin Museum of Japanese Art; the Museum of Prehistory; the National Maritime Museum; Haifa City Museum; the Clandestine Immigration and Naval Museum; the Israeli Oil Industry Museum; Chagall Artists' House; the Mane Katz Museum; the Hermann Struck Museum;
NATURE: the Haifa Educational Zoo at Gan HaEm Park; Northern "Hai-Bar" Park;
HOSPITALS: Rambam Hospital; Bnai Zion Medical Center; Carmel Hospital; Elisha Hospital; Horev Medical Center and Ramat Marpe;
BUSINESS: Horev Center Mall; Panorama Center; Castra Center; Colony Center (Lev HaMoshava); Hanevi'im Tower Mall; Kanyon Haifa; Lev Hamifratz Mall; Grand Kanyon; 
SPORTS: Sammy Ofer Stadium; Thomas D'Alesandro Stadium; Neve Sha'anan Athletic Stadium.

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