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3 books match the query 'Haifa'

cover of Haifa: City of Steps

Haifa

City of Steps

Nili Scharf Gold

Brandeis University Press, 2017

Nili Gold, who was born in Haifa to German-speaking parents in 1948, the first year of Israeli statehood, here offers a remarkable homage to her native city during its heyday as an international port and cultural center. Spanning the 1920s and ’30s, when Jews and Arabs lived together amicably and buildings were erected that reflected European, modernist, Jewish, and Arab architectural influences, through 1948, when most Arabs left, and into the ’50s and ’60s burgeoning of the young state of Israel, Gold anchors her personal and family history in five landmark clusters. All in the neighborhood of Hadar HaCarmel, these landmarks define Haifa as a whole. In exquisite detail, Gold describes Memorial Park and its environs, including the border between the largest Jewish and Arab neighborhoods in Haifa; the intersection of Herzl and Balfour Streets, whose highlight is the European/Middle Eastern Technion edifice; Talpiot Market, recalling Haifa as a lively commercial hub; Alliance High School and the Great Synagogue, the former dedicated to instilling a love of intellectual pursuits, while the synagogue was an arm of the dominant Israeli religious establishment; the Ge’ula Elementary School and neighboring buildings that played a historical role, among them, the Struck House, with its Arab-inspired architecture—all against the dramatic backdrop of the mountain, sea, and bay, and their reverberations in memory and literature. Illustrated with more than thirty-five photographs and six maps, Gold’s astute observations of the changing landscape of her childhood and youth highlight literary works that portray deeply held feelings for Haifa, by such canonical Israeli writers as A. B. Yehoshua, Sami Michael, and Dahlia Ravikovitch.
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cover of Stepping Up to the Plate: Building a Liberal Pluralistic Israel

Stepping Up to the Plate

Building a Liberal Pluralistic Israel

Rabbi Robert L. Samuels

Central Conference of American Rabbis, 2017

U'vamakom she'ein anashim, hishtadel l'hiyot ish…"In the place where no one stands up to do what is right, be the one who steps up to the plate."

Stepping Up to the Plate is the autobiography of Rabbi Robert L. Samuels, a visionary who fused Zionism and Progressive Judaism and who had a tremendous impact on Israel.

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cover of The Architectural Casino: Conversations about Modernism in Haifa

The Architectural Casino

Conversations about Modernism in Haifa

Ines Weizman

Diaphanes, 2026

The edition offers a new approach to what Weizman names “documentary architecture," meaning that to write about the history of a building is also to map the world in which it is located.

After the First World War and under the British Mandate, Haifa grew from a small Ottoman port town into a regional metropolis and industrial center around a deep seaport. The city was part of an open space that extended from Cairo to Damascus through Beirut, in a region where Syria, Palestine, and Lebanon were part of the same fluid, interconnected space. During the Second World War, Haifa became a border town. Under French Vichy, the border between Lebanon and Syria ran sixty kilometers to the north and hardened only after the creation of Israel in 1948 and the wars with Lebanon. Haifa’s architectural modernism developed in relation to the city’s geopolitical environment. No building better manifests Haifa’s predicament than the modernist casino building, built in the city’s Bat Galim seafront district.
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