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| Haifa, courtesy, Encyclopedia Britannica |
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 Dylan, Nick Cave, Blur and PJ Harvey. The last festival
was held in 1995 with Sheryl Crow, Suede 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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