Introduction
1. Gilbert Herbert and Silvina Sosnovsky, Bauhaus on the Carmel and the Crossroads of the Empire: Architecture and Planning in Haifa during the British Mandate (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 1993), 9.
2. Isaiah 35:2 (International Standard Version): “It will burst into bloom, and rejoice with gladness and shouts of joy. The glory of Lebanon will be given to it, the splendor of the Carmel and Sharon.”
3. Arnon Sofer, “Haifa and Its Hinterland in the British Mandate Period,” in Idan, ed. Mordechai Naor and Yossi Ben-Artzi (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 1989), 164–70.
4. Alex Carmel, “Haifa at the End of the Ottoman Period,” in Idan, ed. Mordechai Na’or and Yossi Ben Artzi, vol. 12 (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 1989), 13; Sofer, “Haifa and Its Hinterland,” 164–65.
5. Mahmoud Yazbak, Haifa in the Late Ottoman Period, 1864–1914: A Muslim Town in Transition (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 1–13.
6. Alex Carmel, Ottoman Haifa: A History of Four Centuries under Turkish Rule (London: Tauris, 2011), 49–56.
7. Yazbak, Late Ottoman Period, 15–24.
8. Ze’ev Vilnay, Heifa: be’avar ubahove [Haifa: In the past and present] (Tel Aviv: Eretz, 1936), 64–65. There was also a minority of Sephardi Jews of Turkish origin. There are testimonies about this Jewish settlement and its synagogue from 1817, 1833, and 1839. Vilnay cites travelogues by Rabbi Chaim Horvitz (1817), Menachem Mendel from Kamenitz (1833), and Lord Montefiore’s diary entry from 1839.
9. Carmel, Ottoman Haifa, 77, 80.
10. Ibid., 99, 100.
11. Herbert and Sosnovsky, Bauhaus on the Carmel, 17.
12. See, for example, Myra Warhaftig, They Laid the Foundation: Lives and Works of German-Speaking Jewish Architects in Palestine, 1918–1948, trans. Andrea Lerner (New York: Wasmuth, 2007), 20, 21, 41, 48, 65.
13. Theodor Herzl, Old New Land, trans. Lotta Levensohn (United States: Bloch, 1960), 41, 48, 65.
14. Hayim Aharonovitch, Hadar HaCarmel: masekhet amal vitzira shel dor meyasdim u’vonim [Hadar HaCarmel: A treatise of labor and creation of a generation of founders and builders] (Haifa: Publication for the Committee for Hadar HaCarmel, 1958), 22–23, 146–47.
15. Article signed by Abdallah Mukhli in Al-Muqtabas, March 15, 1910, qtd. in Yazbak, Late Ottoman Period, 221.
16. Yazbak, Late Ottoman Period, 89–112.
17. “Balfour Declaration: Text of the Declaration,” Jewish Virtual Library, November 2, 1917, www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org.
18. Ziva Kolodney, “Contested Urban Memoryscape Strategies and Tactics in Post-1928 Haifa,” Israel Studies 21 (Spring 2016): 84–85.
19. Herbert and Sosnovsky, Bauhaus on the Carmel, 72, 77–80.
20. Aharonovitch, Hadar HaCarmel, 29, 44.
21. Aharonovitch, Hadar HaCarmel, 70; Herbert and Sosnovsky, Bauhaus on the Carmel, 226–28.
22. Herbert and Sosnovsky, Bauhaus on the Carmel, 230.
23. Gilbert Herbert and Silvina Sosnovksy, “The Development of Haifa, 1918–1948: Planning and Architecture,” in Naor and Ben-Artzi, Idan, 47–58.
24. Silvina Sosnovsky, “Haifa,” in Sur les traces du modernisme: ville et architecture guide [Guide to the traces of modernism: City and architecture], by Catherine Weill-Rochant (Brussels: Centre International pour la Ville, l’Architechture et le Paysage, 2005), 30.
25. Herbert and Sosnovsky, Bauhaus on the Carmel, 251, 238.
26. May Seikaly, Haifa: Transformation of a Palestinian Arab Society, 1918–1939 (London: Tauris, 1995), 155–58; Mahmoud Yazbak, “The Arabs in Haifa: From Majority to Minority, Processes of Change (1870–1948),” Israel Affairs 9 (Autumn–Winter 2003): 123–48, 142–44. David de Vries, “Proletarianization and National Segregation: Haifa in the 1920s,” Middle Eastern Studies, October 1994, 860–82.
27. Aharonovitch, Hadar HaCarmel, 177.
28. Walid Khalidi, “The Fall of Haifa Revisited,” Journal of Palestine Studies 37, no. 3 (2008): 30–58.
29. Tzadok Eshel, Hativat “Carmeli” [The Carmeli Brigade] (Israel: Ministry of Defense, 1973), 132; Ya’akov Markovitzki, “The Battle of Haifa and Its Environs in the War of Independence,” and Mordechai Naor, “Haifa and the Struggle,” both in Naor and Ben-Artzi, Idan, 195–207, 195; 184–94, 189–90.
30. M. Zur, “Zim: The National Shipping Company in Its Development,” qtd. in Shlomo Sh’hori, Ariela Re’uveni, and Amos Carmeli, eds., Heifa: eru’ey 20 shana 1948–1968 [Haifa, 1948–1968: Twenty years of events] (Tel Aviv: Davar, 1968), 31.
31. In February 1962 Sha’ar Ha’Aliya (the gate to immigration) was a camp in Haifa through which more than 360,000 immigrants went; it was opened in 1949 and closed in 1962. “‘Gate to Immigration’ Camp Closed,” Davar, February 1962, cited in Sh’hori, Re’uveni, and Carmeli, Heifa, 136.
32. “Skyscrapers Will Be Built in the City,” Davar, January 1950; “Solel Boneh to Its New Building,” Davar, September 1953, both cited in Sh’hori, Re’uveni, and Carmeli, Heifa, 50, 75.
33. “Employment Improvement,” Davar, September 1952; “Haifa Labor Party to Stop Unemployment,” Davar, May 1953; “Unemployment in Haifa Worsening,” Davar, October 1953; “Unemployed Protesting in the City,” Davar, December 1956; “Unemployed Rioting Near Unemployment Office,” Davar, January, 1957, all cited in Sh’hori, Re’uveni, and Carmeli, Heifa, 68, 74, 76, 100, 101.
34. For the university, see “Humanities Academic Institution Opened,” Davar, March 1953, in Sh’hori, Re’uveni, and Carmeli, Heifa, 81; and Tzadok Eshel, Abba Hushi: Man of Haifa (Israel: Defense Ministry, 2002), 195. For the theater, see Eshel, Abba Hushi, 229. Planning the theater began in the early 1950s. It was a burden on the budget. “City Theater Opened,” Davar, July 1961; “City Theater Inaugurated,” Davar, September 1961, cited in Sh’hori, Re’uveni, and Carmeli, Heifa, 132, 133.
35. “Arab-Jewish Youth Center,” Davar, March 1963; “Pre-University Studies Opened,” Davar, October 1963; “First Anniversary of the Arab-Jewish Youth Center,” Davar, June 1964, all cited in Sh’hori, Re’uveni, and Carmeli, Heifa, 144, 148, 153.
36. “Underground Digging Completed,” Davar, May 1953; “The Carmelite Activated,” Davar, October 1959, both cited in Sh’hori, Re’uveni, and Carmeli, Heifa, 103, 117; Eshel, Abba Hushi, 219. The tunnel was less than two kilometers long, and it opened on October 6, 1959.
37. The first new building for the Technion was inaugurated in 1953. By October 1965 eleven out of fifteen faculties had already been moved. “The Technion Completes Transfer to New Campus,” Davar, October 1965, cited in Sh’hori, Re’uveni, and Carmeli, Heifa, 163.
1. The Seamline: Where Memory Is Stored
1. See Lionella Scazzosi, “Reading and Assessing the Landscape as Cultural and Historical Heritage,” in Landscape Research 29, no. 4 (London: Routledge, 2004), 335–55.
2. Waleed Karkabi, head of Building Conservation Team at the Haifa Municipality, architectural walking tour 7, transcribed by Regev Nathanson, Hadar HaCarmel, January 2011.
3. He was forced to give up his post between 1920 and 1927 due to Arab pressure against him because he welcomed Herbert Samuel, the first British governor, who was Jewish.
4. Tamir Goren, 65 shana le’hakamat habinyan: 1942–2007 [65 years for the erection of the building: 1942–2007] (Ramat Gan: Haifa History Society/Haifa Municipality, 2008), 4.
5. Tamir Goren, “Arabs and Jews in the City Council in the Period of the British Mandate,” in Goren, 65 shana le’hakamat habinyan, 21.
6. David Hacohen, “Jews and Arabs in Haifa Municipality,” and Avraham Khalfon, “Memories from ‘Little Haifa,’” both in Naor and Ben-Artzi, Idan, 229, 244. The Hebrew minutes can be found in the Collection of the City Archives.
7. Hacohen, “Jews and Arabs,” 233; Khalfon, “Memories from ‘Little Haifa,’” 243.
8. Tamir Goren, “The History of the Erection of the Municipal Building,” in Goren, 65 shana le’hakamat habinyan, 4.
9. Ibid.
10. Eli Roman, lawyer and historian of Haifa, interview with the author, Haifa, November 9, 2014. According to Roman, Zechariah Froehlich had a superb memory.
11. Mekteb-i Mülkiye-yi Sahane (Imperial School of Civil Service) is referenced in Carter Vaughn Findley’s book Turkey, Islam, Nationalism, and Modernity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010). The motto “Önce Mülkiye, Sonra Türkiye” (First civil service, then Turkey), which expressed solidarity in civil service among the alumni of the school, was popular in the early twentieth century.
12. Goren, “Arab and Jews,” 24. Levi continued this tradition with the support of his two Arab deputy mayors, Tahir Karaman and Shahada Shalah.
13. See Pinchus Margolin’s (lawyer and Haifa city council member) 1942 Haboker interview and Hacohen, qtd. in Goren’s “Arabs and Jews”; Hacohen, “Jews and Arabs,” 236–37; and Khalfon, “Memories from ‘Little Haifa,’” 241.
14. For the role of Sephardi Jews as intermediaries between Arabs and Ashkenazi Jews, see: Abigail Jacobson and Moshe Naor, Oriental Neighbors: Middle Eastern Jews and Arabs in Mandatory Palestine (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2016), 57–58, 69, 79–80.
15. Vilnay, Heifa, 134; Carmel, “Haifa at the End,” 11–12; Khalfon, “Memories from ‘Little Haifa,’” 241.
16. Aharonovitch, Hadar HaCarmel, 6; Carmel, “Haifa at the End,” 5–12; Khalfon, “Memories from ‘Little Haifa,’” 241.
17. Carmel, “Haifa at the End,” 12.
18. Anat Kidron, “Separatism, Coexistence and the Landscape: Jews and Palestinian-Arabs in Mandatory Haifa,” Middle Eastern Studies 52, no. 1 (2016): 95–96.
19. Khalfon, “Memories from ‘Little Haifa,’” 234.
20. Ha’aretz, January 1924, in Goren, “History of the Erection,” 2.
21. Gilbert Herbert and Lilian Richter, “The Architect B. Chaikin and the City Hall in Haifa,” in Goren, 65 shana le’hakamat habinyan, 13.
22. For more on this, see chapter 2.
23. The city council allotted 2,500 Palestinian pounds in 1932 for buying the land; see Herbert and Richter, “Architect B. Chaikin,” 13.
24. “Preliminary Local Documentation of City Hall,” April 24, 2008, City Hall Conservation File [for Landmark Buildings], Department of Conservation, City of Haifa Archive, Haifa, Israel.
25. The members of the committee were Shabtai Levi and David Hacohen and the two Arab deputy mayors, Tahir Karaman and Shahada Shalah; see Goren, “History of the Erection,” 5.
26. Ibid. “All the laborers . . . will be Haifa residents. . . . The term ‘Haifa resident’ means, a person who, to the mind of the employer is a true resident (purity of heart) of Haifa” (5).
27. Tamir Goren, “The Municipality during the War of Independence and After,” in Goren, 65 shana le’hakamat habinyan, 29–34; Yfaat Weiss, Vadi Salib: hanokhah vehanifkad [Wadi Salib: A confiscated memory] (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad/Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, 2007), 30; Benny Morris, 1948 (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2010), 166–68; Tamir Goren, Heifa ha’ivrit be-tashah [Arab Haifa in 1948] (Sde Boker: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press 2006), 8–47.
28. At that time it was called the Cooperative of Haifa Workers of the General Histadrut of the Hebrew Workers in the Land of Israel.
29. The most important cut was that the side wings were built shorter than in the plan. They were elongated in the 1950s, according to Chaikin’s original plan (see blueprints in Herbert and Richter, “Architect B. Chaikin,” 12). See also Goren, “History of the Erection,” 7–9.
30. Goren, “History of the Erection,” 8.
31. Shabtai Levi, “Memories from the War of Independence,” and Isaac Klein, “Arab Community in Haifa in the Mandate Period,” both in Naor and Ben-Artzi, Idan, 249–50; 126.
32. Morris, 1948, 166–68.
33. Khalidi, “Fall of Haifa Revisited”; Mahmoud Yazbak and Yfaat Weiss, eds., Haifa Before and After 1948: Narratives of a Mixed City (Dordrecht: Republic of Letters, 2011); Yazbak, “Arabs in Haifa,” 132–45; Seikaly, Haifa, 65.
34. Goren, “Municipality during the War,” 29–34; Weiss, Vadi Salib, 30; Morris, 1948, 166–68.
35. Blueprints, property of Mr. Salim Azam, Building File 351845, Archive of Engineering Administration, Haifa, Israel. The building was probably constructed in 1936.
36. Horanim came from horan, a poor area in southern Syria.
37. Nili Gold, Yehuda Amichai: The Making of Israel’s National Poet (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2008).
38. Yehuda Amichai’s letters to Ruth Zielenziger from August 31, 1947, to April 11, 1948, are housed at HaYisr’elim HaRishonim (First Israelis Archive), Heksherim: The Research Center for Jewish and Israeli Literature and Culture, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheba, Israel. Further references cite the letter number (as given by Amichai) and the date.
39. Amichai to Ruth Z., letter 53, December 21, 1947; letter 50, December 14, 1947; letter 55, December 25, 1947.
40. Ibid., letter 64, January 16, 1947.
41. Ibid., letter 97, April 7, 1948 (emphasis mine).
42. Sami Michael, Hatsotsra ba’vadi [A Trumpet in the Wadi] (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1987); Michael, A Trumpet in the Wadi, trans. Yael Lotan (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003); Michael, Hasut [Refuge] (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2001); Michael, Refuge, trans. Edward Grossman (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1998); Michael, Yonim be’trafalgar [Pigeons at Trafalgar Square] (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2005); Michael, Me’of habarburim [Flight of the swans] (Tel Aviv: Kineret, 2011); Michael, Mayim noshkim le’mayim [Waters kissing waters] (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2001). Henceforth all page numbers refer to the Hebrew edition followed by the English translation. If no secondary page number is given for the translation, this means it is my own.
43. This is especially true of Hatsotsra ba’vadi, Hasut, and Yonim be’trafalgar.
44. Michael, Hasut, 266; 274.
45. See also Batya Shimony, “The Woman and Homeland in Sami Michael’s Works,” Mikan 12 (December 2012): 192–209. Since 2001 Michael has been the president of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.
46. Michael, Hasut, 267–68; 276.
47. Ami Atias, who assisted the artist in creating the monument, provided this timeline in a phone interview with the author, January 25, 2016; see also Kolodney, “Contested Urban Memoryscape Strategies,” 118.
48. Gideon Ofrat’s article “Mural Art in Israel in the 1950s” defines Knispel as a member of the small leftist-communist, social realist artists’ circle in mid-1950s Haifa, with Yosef Maoz as their ideologue. Warehouse of Gideon Ofrat, December 21, 2010, https://gideonofrat.wordpress.com.
49. This view is reinforced by Knispel’s participation in the first national monument commemorating Arabs in the State of Israel in the Galilee who fell on Land Day in 1976. See page 119 of Kolodney’s “Contested Urban Memoryscape Strategies” for an alternative interpretation of the monument.
50. Sami Michael, private conversation with the author, Evanston, IL, October 8, 2015.
51. Waleed Karkabi, head of Building Conservation Team at the Haifa Municipality, e-mail message to author, August 2, 2015.
52. Elie Rekhess (lecture at the conference “Between Baghdad and Haifa: A Tribute to Israeli Author Sami Michael,” Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, November 2015).
53. A house with an open inner space or courtyard into which all the doors of the various rooms face is a common characteristic of the liwan style; Karkabi, architectural walking tour 10, November, 19, 2010; see also Waleed Karkabi, “City Hall: Colorful Crossroad of Architectural Styles,” in Goren, 65 shana le’hakamat habinyan, 15–19.
54. Silvina Sosnovsky, 2006, Police Station (aka “small court”) Conservation File [for Landmark Buildings], Department of Conservation, City of Haifa Archive.
55. Michael, Hasut, 228; 234–35.
56. Michael, Hatsotsra ba’vadi, 128, 132; 132, 136.
57. Michael, Mayim noshkim le’mayim, 21.
58. The exact parameters of Memorial Park are described in an invitation from the mayor extended to the chief of the armed forces, Mordechai Maklef, to attend the inauguration of Memorial Park, written on April 29, 1953. Abba Hushi to Maklef, April 29, 1953, Haifa City Archives, Haifa Israel.
59. Michael, Mayim noshkim le’mayim, 23.
60. Ziva Kolodney, “The Politics of Landscape Production in Haifa between the Mandatory Period and the Sovereign Period” (DSc diss., Technion Israel Institute of Technology, 2010), 70–75. In an interview with Kolodney in preparation for her doctorate in 2006, Sami Michael said that he uses the features of Haifa to describe the emotional facets of the self.
61. Yoel Hoffmann, Ephraim (Jerusalem: Keter, 2003), seg. 112. This edition of Ephraim is unpaginated, so all numbers refer to numbered segments rather than pages.
62. Ibid., seg. 113.
63. Ibid., seg. 115.
64. Sosnovsky, Police Station Conservation File.
65. Avishai Ehrlich, “English Architect in the Mandatory Palestine,” Tavi 22, no. 2 (1984): 48–51. These arches likely influenced the design of city hall but are also inspired by the Technion.
66. Ron Fuchs, “Austen St. Barbe Harrison: A British Architect in the Holy Land,” (DSc diss., Technion Israel Institute of Technology, 1992), 167–68.
67. Ehrlich, “English Architect.”
68. Silvina Sosnovsky, 2006, Courthouse Conservation File, Department of Conservation, City of Haifa Archives.
69. Fuchs, “Austen St. Barbe Harrison,” 171–73; Ehrlich, “English Architect.”
70. Fuchs, “Austen St. Barbe Harrison,” 167–68.
71. Sosnovsky, Courthouse Conservation File.
72. Fuchs, “Austen St. Barbe Harrison,” 167–68.
73. Sosnovsky, Courthouse Conservation File.
74. David Kroyanker, Adrikhalut yerushalayim: habniya bitkufat hamandat habriti, 1918–1948 [Jerusalem architecture: Construction in the time of the British Mandate, 1918–1948] (Jerusalem: Keter, 1989), 436–37; Fuchs, “Austen St. Barbe Harrison,” 174–79; Ehrlich, “English Architect.”
75. Yohanan Ratner, qtd. in Fuchs, “Austen St. Barbe Harrison,” 174–79.
76. Fuchs, “Austen St. Barbe Harrison,” 174–79.
77. Ehrlich, “English Architect.”
78. Fuchs, “Austen St. Barbe Harrison,” 174–79.
79. Ehrlich, “English Architect.” The courthouse is one of Harrison’s two most modern buildings.
80. Fuchs, “Austen St. Barbe Harrison,” 173.
81. Ehrlich, “English Architect.”
82. For more on this, see chapter 2.
83. Kroyanker, Adrikhalut yerushalayim, 446–47.
84. Herbert and Sosnovsky, Bauhaus on the Carmel, 248–50.
85. Ibid.
86. In Hebrew city hall is called hekhal ha’iriya, literally, “temple of the municipality.”
87. Maoz Azaryahu, “Between Two Cities: The Commemoration of the War of Independence in Haifa and Tel Aviv; A Study in the Shaping of Israeli Collective Memory,” Cathedra 68 (June 1993): 98–126.
88. For an alternative account from Azaryahu’s “Between Two Cities,” see page 126 of Kolodney’s “Contested Urban Memoryscape Strategies.” Kolodney quotes Zvi Miller, the original landscape designer, who attributes the opposite sentiment to Abba Hushi, saying that he wanted the garden to prevent the office buildings from being built.
89. Herbert and Richter, “Architect B. Chaikin,” 10–14.
90. See Benjamin Chaikin, “Municipal Building, Mount Carmel, Haifa,” in Builder, July 21, 1939, qtd. in Herbert and Richter, “Architect B. Chaikin,” 12.
91. Herbert and Richter, “Architect B. Chaikin,” 10–14.
92. “Preliminary Local Documentation,” City of Haifa Archive.
93. Ibid.
94. This incident is described in Kroyanker, Adrikhalut yerushalayim, 288. According to Kroyanker, Chaikin turned to his friend, Chaim Weizmann, during the inauguration of the building Ratner designed and said that it ought not seem like a midget next to the nearby public buildings such as the YMCA or Terra Sancta.
95. Nurith Gertz, “Israeli Cinema in the 1960s,” in He’asor hasheni, ed. Zvi Zameret and Hannah Yablonka (Jerusalem: Yad Yitzhak Ben Zvi, 2000), 280–97.
96. Foster Hirsch, Otto Preminger: The Man Who Would Be King (New York: Knopf, 2007), 324, 328.
97. Ibid., 330.
98. Michael Jacobson, “Life Is a Movie: Heinz Fenchel, the Best Forgotten Architect in Israel,” last modified December 13, 2012, http://xnet.ynet.co.il.
99. Zvi Efrat, Haproyekt Hayisr’eli: 1948–1973 [The Israel project: Building and architecture, 1948–1973], vol. 2 (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 2004), 712. The chapter on luxury opens with a photograph of a lobby that Fenchel designed.
100. Alice Toubi was Mrs. Magdelani’s sister.
101. Karkabi, “City Hall,” 16.
102. Yossi Vilian, former congregant and lay historian of Hadrat Kodesh, phone interview with the author, November 2014. Vilian, now active in the restoration of Hadrat Kodesh, worshipped at the synagogue as a child and remembers its details vividly.
103. Vilnay, Heifa, 135. “In the latter years [early 1930s], synagogues were erected in all the Jewish neighborhoods. One synagogue ‘Hadrat Kodesh’ is found on the Street of Stairs that ascends from the [lower] city to Hadar HaCarmel” (135).
104. Mordechai Friedman, Hakipa ba’ir ha’aduma [The skullcap in the red city] (Jerusalem: Beth El, 2015), 211. Besht is an acronym for Ba’al Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism, an Ultra Orthodox Jewish sect.
105. The board of trustees of the school at that time demanded German instruction and closed the building to those who wanted Hebrew instruction exclusively. See Sarah Halperin, Doctor A. Biram ve’bet hasefer hareali ha’ivri [Dr. A. Biram and the Reali School] (Jerusalem: Reuven Mass, 1970), 77–79. See also chapter 2.
106. Friedman, Hakipa ba’ir ha’aduma, 211.
107. According to Vilian, the designated leader of the Vizhnitz Hasidic sect fought there in 1948 (phone interview with the author, January 2015).
108. According to Vilian, Jerusalem’s chief rabbi, Rav Abraham Isaac Kook, sent Rabbi Kaniel on a mission to Haifa after the latter survived a sniper’s shot in Jerusalem (phone interview).
109. Vilian, phone interview; Yosef Zvi Sabo, congregant of Hadrat Kodesh, interview with the author, Haifa, November 2014. Sabo lived across the street from the synagogue, and both he and Vilian celebrated their bar mitzvahs there.
110. Observant Jews refrain from using their everyday dishes during the holiday due to the biblical prohibition against eating or owning leavened bread. When the special Passover kitchenware was unpacked, homemakers often found themselves missing an item and would run to a store like my father’s.
111. From the German saying, Die Glocke läuten hören, aber nicht wissen, wo sie hängt, which translates literally to “She heard bells tolling but didn’t know where they hung.”
112. “Registration of Jewish Property according to the Situation, April 27, 1938,” Austrian State Archive, Archive of the Republic, Vienna. I now know the name of the Austrian head manager. Letter from Olga Scharf to Property Authority, December 14, 1938, Vermogenverkehrsstelle (Property Authority Archive), Austrian State Archive, Archive of the Republic, Vienna.
113. The building with the offices was designed by Alexander Baerwald.
114. Vilian remembered that Rabbi Kaniel prayed in my father’s synagogue (phone interview).
115. The date of the celebration is confirmed by the invitation sent by the mayor to the chief of the armed forces for the Memorial Park inauguration. See Hushi to Maklef, April 29, 1953, Haifa City Archives.
116. Iton Rishmi (Official newspaper) 31, November 5, 1948, 47.
117. Kolodney, “Contested Urban Memoryscape Strategies,” 118.
118. The message conveyed by the placement of each language on a sign is discussed in Kidron, “Separatism,” 97.
119. Yehuda Amichai, “Sonnet 15,” of the “We Loved Here” sonnet cycle in Shirim: 1948–1962 [Poems: 1948–1962] (Jerusalem: Schocken, 2002), 67 (translation and emphasis are mine).
120. Tower in Hebrew is migdal, and lighthouse is migdalor.
121. The equation of the port with pain appears in numerous letters and subsequent poems. For example, in letter 3, September 5, 1947, Amichai writes, “A thick fog covered the sea . . . and I only saw the ships as if in a dream, and from time to time, one of them made an opaque sound that always makes me sad.” In letter 20, October 12, 1947: “Separation . . . the port, the horn, the sailing, the sea.”
122. Tamir Goren, “The Symbol of the City Haifa, Its Origin and Design,” Journal of the Haifa History Society, no. 1 (January 2004): 14–17; Elan Alon, “A Second Look at the Haifa City Symbol,” Journal of the Haifa History Society, no. 4 (November 2006): 14–15. According to the latter, the structures in Haifa’s emblem are a representation of the towers that used to stand at the entrance to Haifa’s ancient port to scare off pirates.
2. The Technion: The Genesis of Hadar HaCarmel
1. Aharonovitch, Hadar HaCarmel, 8.
2. The building is now home to the Israeli National Museum of Science, Technology and Space.
3. Shim’on Stern, “Hadar HaCarmel, the Center of Jewish Life in Haifa,” in Naor and Ben-Artzi, Idan, 39.
4. Aharonovitch, Hadar HaCarmel, 151–53.
5. Mendel Zinger, Shlomo Kaplanski: hayav ufoa’lo [Shlomo Kaplanski: His life and work], vol. 2 (Jerusalem: Zionist Library, 1971), ch. 23; see also Yuval Dror, “The Beginning of the Hebrew Technion in Haifa: 1902–1950; From a Plan for a Jewish Institution for Higher Education until the End of the Period of the Directorship of Shlomo Kaplanski,” in Iyunim bitKumat Yisrael, vol. 6 (Sdeh Boker: Ben Gurion University of the Negev/Ben Gurion Institute of Research in Israel and Zionism, 1996), 346.
6. Edina Meyer-Maril, “From a ‘New Hebrew’ to Moderate Modernism: Alexander Baerwald (1877–1930),” in The Beauty of Japheth in the Tents of Shem: Studies in Honour of Mordechai Omer, ed. Hana Taragan and Nissim Gal, vols. 13–14 of Assaph: Studies in Art History (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University: 2010), 537–46.
7. Eli Liran, Baerwald scholar (lecture at the Haifa History Society, November 2014).
8. Qtd. in Warhaftig, They Laid the Foundation, 30.
9. Yossi Ben-Artzi, “The Educational Journey of Alexander Baerwald,” Zmanim, no. 96 (Fall 2006): 14–21.
10. Meyer-Maril, “New Hebrew.”
11. Ada Karmi-Melamede and Dani Price, Adrikhalut bepalestina-eretz Yisrael bime hamandat habriti: 1917–1948 [Architecture in Palestine during the British Mandate: 1917–1948] (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 2011), 51–52.
12. Abba El-Hanani, Hama’vak le’atzma’ut shel ha’adrikhalut hayisr’elit bame’a ha’esrim [The struggle for independence of Israeli architecture in the twentieth century] (Israel: Ministry of Defense, 1998), 16–18.
13. See Carl Alpert, Technion: The Story of the Israel Institute of Technology (New York: American Technion Society, 1982), 27, qtd. in Meyer-Maril, “New Hebrew.”
14. Karmi-Melamede and Price, Adrikhalut bepalestina-eretz Israel, 51.
15. From the memoirs of Saul Sal’i about Abraham Ginzburg. See Amira Kehat, comp., May 20, 2010, 31 Shmaryahu Levin Street (Technion), Building History File 0256, Haifa History Society, Haifa, Israel.
16. Letter 53, December 21, 1947, qtd. in Gold, Yehuda Amichai, 278n63.
17. Levin Kipnis, Shloshet ha’parparim [The three butterflies] (Petach Tikva: Oranit, 2010).
18. Aharonovitch, Hadar HaCarmel, 9–10. The area spreads on the northern slope of the Carmel, seventy-two to a hundred meters above sea level. The funders were Jacob Schiff, the American; and Kalonimu Wissotzky, the Russian. Nathan believed in Herzl’s prophecy and was convinced of its industrial and transportational potential. He also thought that Haifa was neutral in terms of religion and nationality, unlike Jerusalem or Tel Aviv.
19. The Russian engineer Gedalya Wilboshevitz was instrumental in finding viable solutions that helped Baerwald with these difficulties.
20. “Zionist Outbreaks Due to Language,” New York Times, January 19, 1914, qtd. in Meyer-Maril, “New Hebrew.” See the discussion of the synagogue in chapter 1.
21. Yitzhak Dimiel (Schweiger), “Hanna’le and Her Shabbat Dress,” Davar Liladim 20, February 1937.
22. Eli Roman, interview with the author, Haifa, October 15, 2014.
23. Nili Friedlander, friend of Yehoshua Kenaz, phone interview with the author, March 2016.
24. Yehoshua Kenaz, A Musical Moment (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1980), 69, 81; Kenaz, “Musical Moment,” in Musical Moment and Other Stories, trans. Betsy Rosenberg (Vermont: Steerforth, 1995), 55, 64.
25. Kenaz, Musical Moment, 81; Kenaz, “Musical Moment,” 64.
26. Yehuda Amichai, Shalva gedola: she’elot uteshuvot [The great tranquility: Questions and answers] (Tel Aviv: Shocken, 1980), 18; Amichai, The Great Tranquility: Questions and Answers, trans. Glenda Abramson and Tudor Parfitt (New York: Sheep Meadow, 1997), 7. Henceforth all page numbers from Shalva gedola refer to the 1980 Hebrew edition and then the 1983 English translation.
27. Nili Gold, Lo kabrosh: gilgule imagim vetavniyot beshirat Yehuda Amichai [Not like a cypress: Transformations of images and structures in the poetry of Yehuda Amichai] (Tel Aviv: Schocken, 1994), 82–84.
28. Amichai, Shalva gedola, 8; 7. I have slightly altered the English translation for clarity.
29. Gold, Lo kabrosh, 82–84.
30. Amichai, Shalva gedola, 18; 76.
31. Amichai to Ruth Z., letter 21, October 15, 1947; presumably “yesterday” refers to the fourteenth.
32. Ibid., letters 2, 4, and 10, September 3, 6, and 21, 1947.
33. Ibid., letter 4, September 6, 1947.
34. Ibid., letter 53, December 21, 1947.
35. Shim’on Stern, “Haifa and the Struggle,” in Naor and Ben-Artzi, Idan, 186; Aharonovitch, Hadar HaCarmel, 233–35.
36. Aharonovitch, Hadar HaCarmel, 9, 11, 13, 15. Both sat on the Technion’s board of directors even before its inception. They supported building it in Haifa and fought for the dominance of Hebrew in its curriculum. Shmaryahu Levin was a Zionist leader who was the first to support Paul Nathan’s idea of establishing the Technion, and he became its first executive director in 1912. Ahad Haam, the Zionist thinker, was instrumental in securing the first funds for the Technion’s construction.
37. Waleed Karkabi, head of Building Conservation Team at the Haifa Municipality, interview with the author, Haifa, October 2014.
38. Esty G. Hayim, Anshe pinot [Corner people] (Israel: Kinneret, Zmora-Bitan, Dvir, 2013).
39. Yehudit Katzir, Zillah (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2013), 322.
40. Stern, “Hadar HaCarmel,” 43; Herbert and Sosnovsky, Bauhaus on the Carmel, 232; Aharonovitch, Hadar HaCarmel, 105–8.
41. Herbert and Sosnovsky, Bauhaus on the Carmel, 237.
42. Weill-Rochant, Sur les traces, 154; Meyer-Maril, “New Hebrew.”
43. Tsafrir Feinholtz, “Vienna in Hadar HaCarmel,” accessed March 3, 2016, www.blogsrelease.com.
44. Aharonovitch, Hadar HaCarmel, 180, 212, 248.
45. Weill-Rochant, Sur les traces, 153.
46. Karkabi, interview.
47. Herbert and Sosnovsky, Bauhaus on the Carmel, 229, 241; Aharonovitch, Hadar HaCarmel, 157.
48. Karkabi, interview.
49. Herbert and Sosnovsky, Bauhaus on the Carmel, 242.
50. Gideon Ofrat, “Mural Art in Israel in the 1950s,” Warehouse of Gideon Ofrat, December 21, 2010, https://gideonofrat.wordpress.com.
51. Ibid.
52. Hayim, Anshe pinot, 217.
53. Michael, Hatsotsra ba’vadi, 128; 132.
54. Hayim, Anshe pinot, 26.
55. Ibid., 217, 282; Esty G. Hayim, Corner People, trans. Sarah Friedman (unpublished manuscript), with author alterations.
56. Hayim, Anshe pinot, 110.
57. Ibid., 112–113, 239.
58. Yehudit Katzir, “Disneyel,” in Sogrim et hayam [Closing the Sea] (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1990), 94; Yehudit Katzir, Closing the Sea, trans. Barbara Harshav (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992), 87–88.
59. On the organic imprint of remembered habits and spaces, see Oded Manda Levy, “Observing and Observing Again: Spaces in Georges Perec,” Resling: Multi Disciplinary Journal 7 (Summer 2000): 51–53.
60. Yehudit Katzir, private conversation with the author, Tel Aviv, November 2014.
61. Katzir, Zillah, 27–28.
62. See the map for chapter 2.
3. Down the Steps: Fragments of Sea and Sky
1. The word talpiot, interpreted as “built magnificently,” is a biblical hapax legomenon that appears only in 4:4 of Song of Songs.
2. Shabtai Levi, “New Hadar HaCarmel Market Opened,” Palestine Post, April 10, 1940, 2.
3. See chapter 2.
4. Herbert and Sosnovsky, Bauhaus on the Carmel, 245, 246.
5. Aharonovitch, Hadar HaCarmel, 171.
6. Ibid.
7. Herbert and Sosnovsky, Bauhaus on the Carmel, 246.
8. Nissim Levi, Nassuma merehov hapijamot [Nassuma from pajamas street] (Haifa: printed by author, 2009), 47–48 (emphasis mine).
9. Ibid., 49–50. These pages feature an advertisement for Levi’s tours.
10. Ya’akov Weiss, Yaldut nish’kahat: havay venostalgia bsimta’ot Heifa [Forgotten childhood: Life and nostalgia in Haifa’s alleys] (Haifa: printed by author, 2001), 181.
11. Hayim, Anshe pinot, 11.
12. Solel Boneh, literally “Paving/Building,” was established as a cooperative organization in 1921 and has built many national public projects.
13. Ada Karmi-Melamede and Dan Price, Architecture in Palestine during the British Mandate: 1917–1948 (Jerusalem: Israel Museum, 2014) 421–22. See also Karmi-Melamede and Price, Adrikhalut bepalestina-eretz Yisrael, 417.
14. “The New Central Market in Hadar HaCarmel,” Davar, April 10, 1940, 4; Feinholtz, “Vienna in Hadar HaCarmel,” n26; “New Haifa Market under Way,” Palestine Post, November 27, 1938, 6; “Palestine-Eretz Israel Exhibition in New York,” Davar, July 18, 1947, 6.
15. Herbert and Sosnovsky, Bauhaus on the Carmel, 247.
16. Karmi-Melamede and Price, Adrikhalut bepalestina-eretz Yisrael, 426.
17. Herbert and Sosnovsky, Bauhaus on the Carmel, 247.
18. Amir Kolik, “The Growth of Urban Elite: 1918–1948,” accessed March 3, 2016, http://humanities1.tau.ac.il.
19. One deputy mayor represented the Christian community; the other, in this case, Karaman, represented the Muslims.
20. Waleed Karkabi and Adi Rosenberg, “Arab-Jewish Architectural Partnership in Haifa during the Mandate Period: Karaman and Gerstel Meet on the ‘Seam Line,’” in Yazbak and Weiss, Haifa Before and After, 43–68, 59–60.
21. Moshe (Chiko) Gerstel, interview with the author, Tel Aviv, November 2014.
22. Haifa Encounters: Arab-Jewish Architectural Partnership in the Period of the British Mandate in Haifa, shown at the Munio Gitai Weinraub Architecture Museum, Haifa, May 10, 2013–September 10, 2013.
23. Weill-Rochant, Sur les traces, 156.
24. Weiss, Yaldut nish’kahat, 17.
25. Michael Levin, professor of art history and contemporary architecture at Shenkar College, interview with the author, Tel Aviv, November 20, 2014.
26. See Waleed Karkabi, qtd. in Keshet Rosenblum’s exhibition review, “When Jews and Palestinians Built Haifa Together,” Ha’aretz, June 11, 2013.
27. Warhaftig, They Laid the Foundation, 204; Rosenblum, “Jews and Palestinians Built.”
28. Adi Silberstein, architect (author’s assistant and a fourth-year architecture student at the Technion at the time), private architectural tour with the author, Haifa, October 23, 2014.
29. Gerstel, interview.
30. Karkabi gave me a copy of Building Permit 2115/46, dated May 4, 1947, from the Municipal Building and Town Planning Commission. It was the permit for Bet Talpiot, 61 Herzl/62 HeHalutz.
31. Natan Zach, “Casino in Bat Galim, April 1983,” in Anti mehikon [Anti erasure] (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1984), 289–90.
32. Ziva Kolodney, Conservation File [for Landmark Buildings], Zone 4, housed in the Department of Conservation of the City of Haifa, January 1994; L. Guterman and A. Silberstein, “The Promenade at Bat Galim,” (term paper) (Haifa: Israel Institue of Technology, Faculty of Architecture), 2014.
33. Yitzhak Kronzon, “Givat Brenner,” in Ki mineged tir’e [See the land at a distance] (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2010), 51. Givat Brenner is the name of a kibbutz.
34. Weiss, Yaldut nish’kahat, 110.
35. Chava Lo-yon, former head of the Long Range Planning Department in the Municipality of Haifa, architectural tour and interview with the author, Haifa, November 18, 2014.
36. See the 1959 memorandum submitted by Zvi Barzilai, deputy mayor of Haifa, in Weiss, Vadi Salib, 66. Document 7252/3, discussing the riots on July, 29 1959, can be found in the State Archives.
37. Eli Nachmias and Ron Spiegel, Vadi Salib: hamitos veshivro; me’ora’ot Vadi Salib be’mabat mehkari hadash [Wadi Salib: The broken myth; Wadi Salib events, research from a new point of view] (Haifa, printed by author, 2009), 8; Weiss, Vadi Salib, 13. See also footnote 19 on page 66 in Weiss, Vadi Salib, for more on the committee report.
38. Yehudit Hendel, interview with the author, Tel Aviv, 2010.
39. See Avraham Blat discussing “The Rationale of the Judges in Giving the Barasch Prize, June 1954,” in HaTzofe, October, 23, 1955.
40. Barzilai, qtd. in Weiss, Vadi Salib, 67.
41. Nachmias and Spiegel, Vadi Salib, 118.
42. Yehudit Hendel, Rehov hamadregot [Street of Steps] (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1955), 35; Yehudit Hendel, Street of Steps, trans. Rachel Katz and David Segal (New York: Herzel Press and Yoseloff, 1963), 38. Henceforth all page numbers from Rehov hamadregot are cited in the text and refer to the Hebrew edition and then the English translation.
43. Report from July 6, 1959, qtd. in Weiss, Vadi Salib, 58, 67.
44. In a 1954 interview Hendel said, “You surely know Haifa, it is all built on streets of stairs.” Street of Steps was adapted into a play, and “Hendel went during the rehearsals for a tour with the director to the very alleys in Haifa.” See M. Ahi Yosef and Moshe Ben Alul, “A Story about a Poor Neighborhood,” Davar, July 2, 1954; and Rivka Katzenelson, “Meetings with Writers,” Ma’ariv, October 31, 1958, 13.
45. Hendel, interview.
46. Karkabi, architectural tour, Haifa, November 14, 2014.
47. Ziva Kolodney, PhD, landscape architect and head of Long Range Planning Department in the Municipality of Haifa, interview with the author, Haifa, November, 2014.
4. The School and the Synagogue: At the End of Herzl Street
1. Aluf Orell and Dror Orell, Binyamin Orell: adrikhal lelo diploma [Benjamin Orell: An architect without a diploma] (Israel, 2008), 8–9. The authors are the son and grandson of Benjamin Orell. Although Orell’s practice built many structures, both in and out of Haifa, it never succeeded financially.
2. Vilnay, Heifa, 132–33. “As early as 1881, the Alliance School was established in Haifa by the association Alliance Israelite Française, and in 1936 a large building was erected for that school in Hadar HaCarmel” (ibid.; my translation). See also Moshe Barak, “French, How Pretty You Are: Memories of the French Alliance School,” July 30, 2009, www.gshavit.net.
3. Orell and Orell, Binyamin Orell, 57.
4. Ibid., 57, 56.
5. Karkabi, architectural walking tour, November, 19, 2010.
6. Silberstein, private architectural tour.
7. Ibid.
8. Barak, “How Pretty You Are.”
9. Itamar Shoshan, son of the then vice principal and science teacher, private excursion with the author, Haifa, October 20, 2014.
10. Barak, “How Pretty You Are.”
11. Amira Kehat, comp., April 10, 2010, 31 Balfour (Bet Yungerman), Building History File, City Engineering File 372954, Haifa History Society.
12. Barak, “How Pretty You Are.”
13. Itamar Shoshan, e-mail message to the author, January–February 2015.
14. David Sasson to the Committee for the Community of Hadar HaCarmel, January 21, 1948, Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem, Israel.
15. Gold, Yehuda Amichai, letter 52, 278n63.
16. Supervisor Mordechai Cohen to the Alliance School, October 23, 1968, file 34019, Israel State Archives, Jerusalem.
17. Asher Yungerman to the Ministry of Education Supervisor, February 22, 1965, file 254/5, Israel State Archives, Jerusalem.
18. Charlotte Wardi, Le Juif dans le roman français: 1933–1948 [The image of the Jew in the French novel] (Paris: Nizet, 1973).
19. Mordechai Cohen, Ministry of Education Supervisor, “Report of the Supervisor about the School Visit,” February 1966, file 34019, Israel State Archives, Jerusalem.
20. Karkabi, architectural walking tour, October 2010.
21. Weiss, Yaldut nish’kahat, 70–73; Gabriel Laufer, phone interview with the author, January 2016.
22. Natan Zach, “In the Fields of Then Perhaps,” in Kevan she’ani basviva [Because I’m around] (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1966), 20–23.
23. Hoffmann, Ephraim; Katzir, “Disneyel,” in Sogrim et hayam, 81–110, 67–93.
24. Silberstein suggested that the division by the openings “confronts” the feeling of its massiveness (discussion with the author, Haifa, October 9, 2014).
25. Weiss, Yaldut nish’kahat, 70–72.
26. Building sign, Central Synagogue, Haifa.
27. Aharonovitch, Hadar HaCarmel, 79–80.
28. The contractor Wilboshevitz, whose buildings were always built according to Baerwald’s plans, was the one who did the work. Therefore, it seems that the first floor of the synagogue was likely Baerwald’s design. This is according to both Eli Liran, who used the Lavon Archive for Wilboshevitz’s record, and Edina Meyer-Maril. Eli Liran, Haifa History Society member, phone interview with the author, April 2015; Meyer-Maril, “New Hebrew.”
29. Amira Kehat, comp., March 2, 2009, 60 Herzl Street (Central Synagogue), Building History File, Haifa History Society. In Kehat’s file of the Central Synagogue, the competition is recorded as being referenced in the journal Building in the Near East from March 1936, “Competition to Rework the Plans for the Construction of the Central Synagogue in Hadar HaCarmel, Haifa,” and in an architecture survey by the Technion student Avital Kenan, 1980.
30. According to Mordechai Friedman, the Haifa Association for Architects and Engineers protested not using Loeb. See Hakipa ba’ir ha’aduma, 208.
31. Aharonovitch, Hadar HaCarmel, 255.
32. Edina Meyer-Maril, private research notes from HaTzofe, generously shared with the author, September 13, 1938.
33. The work stopped due to lack of funds and quarrels between the Association of Architects and Engineers and the synagogue leadership. See HaTzofe, qtd. in Friedman, Hakipa ba’ir ha’aduma, 208.
34. Friedman, Hakipa ba’ir ha’aduma, 209.
35. Ze’ev Shoham to Va’ad Hadar HaCarmel, November 15, 1942, file 6084; “Report of the Committee for the Clarification of the Matter of the Central Synagogue,” committee report, signed by Dr. Gideon Kaminka, chair of the committee, January, 15, 1943, file 4370, both in Haifa City Archives, Haifa. They also decided to (1) pay Loeb compensation of 400 Palestinian pounds (120 in cash and the rest in promissory notes), (2) cover the front in stone, (3) put in windows according to Baerwald’s plan and to improve the appearance of the inside, (4) fix the main entrance on Gilad and close the one on Herzl, and (5) wait to complete the top part and leave the temporary roof.
36. Ibid. Ratner also emphasized that they should adjust the plan to meet modern demands, which would require a skilled architect.
37. Edina Meyer-Maril, “The ‘Great Synagogue’ in Tel Aviv,” Cathedra 57 (September 1990): 105–19; Liran, phone interview.
38. The Mansfeld/Weinraub plan from 1945 can be found in file 4730 in the Haifa City Archives, but most of their plans and other materials are not accessible because of the ongoing legal dispute and trial.
39. Friedman, Hakipa ba’ir ha’aduma, 210.
40. The correspondences between the leaders of the synagogue and the municipality and neighborhood authorities can be found in the Haifa City Archives. They are cited as follows in chronological order: February 26, 1948, file 8740; April 26, 1955, file 3076; July 17, 1955, file 3076; March 6, 1956, file 4730; November 22, 1958, file 4730; letter from 1964, file 4730.
41. January 10, 1964, file 4730, Haifa City Archives.
42. Katzir, “Disneyel,” in Sogrim et hayam, 95, 89.
43. Ibid.
44. According to Orthodox Jewish law, even a child of five is required to repeat the adult’s recitation of the Kaddish.
45. Hoffmann, Ephraim, seg. 111.
46. Ibid., seg. 112.
47. Yitgadal veyitkadash shme raba are the beginning words of the Kaddish prayer (in Aramaic).
48. Zvi Roger, Public Art in Haifa, ed. Inbar Dror Lax (Haifa: Haifa Municipality, 2012), 44–45.
49. See the discussion of the mosaics at the entrances of the underpass in chapter 2.
50. Ofrat, “Mural Art in Israel.”
51. “Municipal Announcement Number 6/55,” signed by Mayor Abba Hushi, file 3076, Haifa City Archives.
52. “The Result of the Competition of the Engraving on the Front of the Central Synagogue in Haifa,” municipal announcement signed by Mayor Abba Hushi, June 13, 1955, file 3076, Haifa City Archives.
53. “Minutes of Meeting Discussion Re: Changes in Engraving of Central Synagogue of Haifa,” December 14, 1955, file 3076, Haifa City Archives.
54. Zach, “Fields of Then,” in Kevan she’ani basviva, 20.
55. Zach uses yekke, the derogatory term for German Jews. The source of the expression is the German word Jake, which means “jacket,” referring to the coats the German Jews used to wear in the 1930s while no one else in Israel did.
56. Zach, “Fields of Then,” in Kevan she’ani basviva, 20.
57. Ibid., 20, 21
58. Hayim Nahman Bialik, “If the Angel Asks,” in Songs from Bialik: Selected Poems of Hayim Nahman Bialik, trans. Atar Hadari (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2000), 24.
59. Zach, “Fields of Then,” in Kevan she’ani basviva, 20, 21.
60. Natan Zach, “The Literature Teacher: For Professor Baruch Kurzweil for His Jubilee,” Ha’aretz, August 18, 1967, 10.
61. Ibid.
62. Zach, “Fields of Then,” in Kevan she’ani basviva, 23.
5. Conquering the Slope: Building and Writing the Mountain
1. Amichai lived on Gilad Street 12, care of Schmidt, the owners of a pharmacy on Herzl Street. Amichai to Ruth Z., letter 38, November 21, 1947.
2. Magen David Adom means Red Star of David. It is Israel’s emergency medical service.
3. The sense of open space so close to the residence is expressed in the introduction to The Individual in History: Essays in Honor of Jehuda Reinharz, ed. ChaeRan Y. Freeze, Sylvia Fuks Fried, and Eugene R. Sheppard (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2015), 3: “the children romped freely in the beauty of nature. At the end of the street lay an expansive field.”
4. The source of this word is most likely the Sanskrit word barud, which means “explosion.”
5. Dahlia Ravikovitch, “Tmuna,” in Ahavat tapuah hazahav [Love of an orange] (1959; repr., Tel Aviv: Sifriyat Poalim, 1974), 36; Ravikovitch, “Portrait,” in The Window, trans. Chana Bloch and Ariel Bloch (New York: Sheep Meadow, 1989), 8.
6. Yitzhak Kronzon, “The First Day at the Ge’ula School,” in Ki mineged, 127; my translation. Unless otherwise noted, other translations of Kronzon’s work are by Martin Friedlander.
7. Ibid.; Kronzon, “Once in a Hundred Years,” in Ki mineged, 146.
8. Aharonovitch, Hadar HaCarmel, 137, 149, 201–2, 224.
9. Ya’akov Sobuvitch, “The Beginning of Phys Ed and Sports in Haifa,” accessed April 25, 2016, www.haifa.org.il. As a teacher in Ge’ula, Amichai also “worked in the Scout movement near the school.” Amichai to Ruth Z., letter 26, October 1947.
10. The plaque reads “Alexander Sasha Wilboshevitz.” For Gedalya Wilboshevitz’s role in building the Technion, see chapter 2.
11. These details are according to the building form, listing number 0287, City File 356840, Haifa History Society.
12. Julius Posner, “About the Schools of Max Loeb,” Habinyan baMizrah haKarov [Building in the Near East], March 1938, 14–17.
13. Warhaftig, They Laid the Foundation, 110.
14. Herbert and Sosnovsky, Bauhaus on the Carmel, 127, 131–33.
15. Warhaftig, They Laid the Foundation, 110.
16. Friedman, Hakipa ba’ir ha’aduma, 208; Amira Kehat, comp., 60 Herzl Street (Central Synagogue), March 2, 2009, Building History File, Haifa History Society.
17. Warhaftig, They Laid the Foundation, 111.
18. Posner, “About the Schools,” 14–17.
19. Ibid., 17.
20. Aharonovitch, Hadar HaCarmel, 253. He reports that an additional wing was built for Ge’ula in 1953.
21. David Sela, ed., “The Ge’ula Neighborhood,” Nostalgia Online, accessed July 23, 2015, www.nostal.co.il.
22. Thanks to Kiki Hadar for references to the specific marches that were played.
23. Gold, Yehuda Amichai, 272–73; Amichai to Ruth Z., letter 35, November 16, 1947.
24. Amichai to Ruth Z., letter 25, October 22, 1947: “routes . . . punishments . . . all those are the main thing”; letter 27, October 27, 1947: “Syntheses between personal care and a strict regimen”; letter 29, November 1, 1947: “The social/educational role of school”; letter 30, November 4, 1947: “Things and rules in the world of the school.”
25. Ibid., letter 2, September 3, 1947.
26. Ibid., letter 10, [n.d.; a few days before letter 11, written on September 24], 1947; letter 23, October 18, 1947; letter 40, November 24, 1947.
27. Ibid., letter 42, November 28, 1947.
28. Because Amichai taught English in the higher grades in addition to being a fourth-grade homeroom teacher, he had to be present for both shifts. Ibid., letter 5, September 7, 1947.
29. Ibid., letter 30, November 4, 1947.
30. Ibid., letter 26, 1947; letter 27, October 27, 1947.
31. Ibid., letter 25, October 22, 1947.
32. Yehuda Amichai, Shirim: 1948–1962 (Tel Aviv: Schocken, 1977), 78; Yehuda Amichai, The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai, trans. Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell (Oakland: University of California Press, 1986), 12; Amichai to Ruth Z., letter 38, November 21, 1947.
33. Ibid., letter 19, October 10, 1947.
34. Lehi is an acronym for “Fighters for the Freedom of Israel,” the most militant Jewish underground active during the British Mandate.
35. Genesis, 22:3 (King James Version).
36. This may have been the moment that the association between the national struggle and the binding of Isaac formed in Amichai’s mind. It resurfaced in 1980 in Amichai’s only explicit Haifa poem. See discussion of “A Meeting with My Father” in chapter 2. Gold, Yehuda Amichai, 274. See also Yael Feldman, Glory and Agony: Isaac’s Sacrifice and the National Narrative (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2016).
37. Amichai to Ruth Z., letter 55, December 25, 1947.
38. Kronzon, “Loot,” in Ki mineged, 155–59, 156.
39. Amichai to Ruth Z., letter 53, December 21, 1947.
40. Ibid., letter 55, December 25, 1947.
41. Ibid.
42. “Our wounded little school is dying”—ibid., letter 93, late March, 1948; Gold, Yehuda Amichai, 285–86.
43. Aharonovitch, Hadar HaCarmel, 234–35.
44. Yitzhak Kronzon, “Like a Wall of Steel,” Ha’aretz, May 11, 2016, 1 of the Literary Supplement; my translation.
45. Ibid.
46. Kronzon, “Mother, Sunshine, Homeland,” in Ki mineged, 133.
47. Ibid., 136–37.
48. Kronzon, “A Musical Education,” in Ki mineged, 61, 64 (all emphases in Kronzon’s quotes are mine).
49. Kronzon, “Loot,” in Ki mineged, 155–56.
50. Kronzon, “One Says,” in Ki mineged, 150, 153–54.
51. For the full saga of how the Ge’ula neighborhood became a part of the district of Hadar HaCarmel, see Aharonovitch, Hadar HaCarmel, 72–73, 95–96, 112, 136–37, 131–32.
52. Meir Ben Uri, qtd. in Nili Bar Onn, Idit Shlomi, and Rafi Carmi, “Struck House Haifa: Documentation File,” April 2011, Struck House Conservation File [for Landmark Buildings], Department of Conservation, City of Haifa Archives.
53. Ibid.
54. Michael Levin, “Five Approaches to the East in Israeli Architecture,” Zmanim, no. 22 (Fall 2006): 38–47.
55. Meir Ben Uri, “Hermann Struck on His 70th Birthday,” Mekomon Heifa’i, Adar 11, 1946; newspaper clipping from the Struck archive owned by Mickey Bernstein, Tel Aviv, qtd. in Gidon Ofrat, “Hermann Struck in the Land of Israel: 1922–1944,” in Hermann Struck: 1876–1944 oman hahedpes [Hermann Struck: 1876–1944; The artist of etching], ed. Ruthi Ofek and Chana Schuetz (Berlin: Stiftung Neue Synagoge Berlin, Centrum Judaicum, 2007), 237.
56. Ofrat, “Hermann Struck,” 237.
57. Theodor Herzl, Altneuland [Old new land] (Leipzig, Germany: Seemann Nachfolger, 1902).
58. Mickey Bernstein, “Struck and His Work in 1903,” in Ofek and Schuetz, Hermann Struck, 65–120, 83.
59. Vernis mou is a printmaking technique in which the printing plate is coated with a soft, sticky lacquer as the etching ground. Rough, grainy drawing paper is laid on this soft ground (hence the name). The artist draws on the paper, using powerful strokes of chalk or pencil; in the acid bath that follows, the exposed parts of the printing plate are etched, with the texture of the paper and the stroke of the writing instrument very subtly preserved.
60. Carl Schwartz, qtd. in Bernstein, “Struck and His Work,” in Ofek and Schuetz, Hermann Struck, 83.
61. Alexander Granach, Da geht ein Mensch [Here goes a man] (Augsburg: Olbaum, 2003), 196–97, in Chana Schuetz, “Hermann Struck in Berlin,” in Ofek and Schuetz, Hermann Struck, 25–63, 60.
62. Victor Klemperer, Curriculum Vitae: Memories of a Philologist, 1881–1918, vol. 2 (Berlin, Noack, 1989), 479, 482, qtd. in Schuetz, “Hermann Struck in Berlin,” in Ofek and Schuetz, Hermann Struck, 25–63n65.
63. Ben Uri, qtd. in Ofrat, “Hermann Struck,” 268.
64. Ben Uri, qtd. in “Struck House Haifa.”
65. Aharonovitch, Hadar HaCarmel, 183.
66. Ofrat, “Hermann Struck,” 268.
67. Arnold Fortlage, Das graphische werk von Hermann Struck [The graphic work of Hermann Struck] (Berlin: Cassirer, 1911), 5, qtd. in Bernstein, “Struck and His Work,” in Ofek and Schuetz, Hermann Struck, 68; comparison to Rembrandt’s portraits on 91.
68. “A Private House in Hadar HaCarmel,” Habinyan [The Building] 2 (November 1937).
69. Ben Uri, qtd. in Ofrat, “Hermann Struck,” 268.
70. Kronzon, “After the War,” in Ki mineged, 25.
71. Kronzon, “Two Weeks in Nahariya at Czechen Cohen’s,” in Ki mineged, 54; my translation.
72. Kronzon, “Mother, Sunshine, Homeland,” in Ki mineged, 133; my translation.
73. Kronzon, “Kiddush,” in Ki mineged, 138; my translation.
74. Kronzon, “The Cake,” in Ki mineged, 126.
75. Kronzon, “Instead of a Memorial,” in Ki mineged, 88.
76. Kronzon, “Who Will Get Belgium,” in Ki mineged, 78.
77. Kronzon, “Instead of a Memorial,” in Ki mineged, 92.
78. “Special Operations: 1950–1960,” Israeli Navy, accessed May 2, 2016, www.navy.idf.il.
79. “Eisenhower Reveals His 1957 Aims to Penalize Israel on Sinai Issue,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, September 22, 1965, www.jta.org.
80. In socialist “Red Haifa” even small-business owners were perceived as wealthy capitalists. The municipal authorities overestimated their profits and imposed unrealistic income taxes.
81. Hayim Nahman Bialik, “Shiva,” in Kol kitvei H. N. Bialik [All the writings of H. N. Bialik] (1938; repr., Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1964), 65, line 1; my translation.
82. Sami Schoenfeld, “The Ge’ula School,” Nostalgia Online, April 21, 2016, www.nostal.co.il/search.asp.
83. Kronzon, “The Derby,” in Ki mineged, 108; my translation.
84. Ravikovitch, “Hovering at a Low Altitude,” in Bloch and Bloch, Window, 103.
85. Giddon Ticotsky, “Dahlia Ravikovitch: in ‘Life’ and in ‘Literature’” (PhD diss., Tel Aviv University, 2013), 40. In his dissertation on the poet and her life and work, Ticotsky describes her stay in Haifa with the following sentences: “When Ravikovitch moved to Haifa, she was about thirteen years old, and she lived at the expense of the kibbutz with foster families. She changed families on the average of once a year until she went into the army when she was eighteen, [and, Ravikovitch said,] ‘each family was worse than the last. Except for the last one.’”
86. Ravikovitch, “Painting,” in Ahavat tapuah hazahav, 36; Bloch and Bloch, Window, 8.
87. Nitza Sabo, interview with the author, Haifa, October 2014, and correspondence with the author, January 2016; Ravikovitch, “Painting,” in Ahavat tapuah hazahav, 36; Bloch and Bloch, Window, 8. During her last two years in high school, 1952–54, Dahlia Ravikovitch lived with the Harekhavi family on Shamay Street. Sabo remembers her babysitting her while she lived with the Harekhavis. Ticotsky, Dahlia Ravikovitch, 42. According to Ticotsky, her last two years of high school were a “period of awakening”: “the period of the poem ‘Painting,’ the impressive landscape of the sea facing the woody mountain, the Carmel and the groves, the beginning of the poems of Love of an Orange. She then understood that she would be a poet and not a painter, even though the poem ‘Painting’ is indeed a painting.” Additionally, a portion of this poem was composed when she was in eighth grade, but only when this awakening period happened did she complete it.
88. Ravikovitch, “Hemda,” in Ahavat tapuah hazahav, 48. Ravikovitch, “Delight,” in Bloch and Bloch, Window, 10.
89. Dahlia Ravikovitch, “Yom le-yom mabi’a omer,” in Kol hashirim ad ko [The complete poems so far] (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1995), 167. Ravikovitch, “Day unto Day Uttereth Speech,” in Bloch and Bloch, Window, 71.
90. A. B. Yehoshua, Hame’a’hev [The Lover] (Tel Aviv: Schocken, 1977), 233–34 (emphasis mine). My translation here; the English translation omits this segment.
91. Ibid., 237; A. B. Yehoshua, The Lover, trans. Philip Simpson (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1977), 190. Henceforth all page numbers are cited in the text and refer to the Hebrew original, followed by the English translation.
92. A. B. Yehoshua, interview with the author, Givatayim, November 19, 2014. Yehoshua himself discussed how Dani serves as Naim’s guide down the Donkey Steps, and thus into Haifa: “When Dafi takes him down the Donkey Steps . . . I walked in those steps. They are fabulous steps!”
93. Gershon Shaked, Hasiporet ha’ivrit: 1880–1980 [Modern Hebrew fiction: 1880–1980], vol. 5 (Israel: Hakibbutz Hameuchad/Keter, 1998), 60, 93, 168.
94. Ibid., 171.
95. Yehoshua, interview.