The memory of ordinary, everyday intercultural or interreligious relationships, in brief 

In the early twentieth century, Haifa expanded and developed a thriving port industry. A new web of multireligious relationships developed in the city, experienced in the workplace and in the labour movement, and in neighbourly relationships in the market and in residential areas. These are recalled with nostalgia by many families who fled in 1948, and seen by the city’s residents today as the roots of the city’s current, proud multireligious, multicultural reputation. 

The context in which these relationships made a difference at the time 

Post-1948, the city of Haifa has made an international reputation out of its embrace of multireligious and multiethnic coexistence – widely acknowledged to be imperfect in many ways, but equally to be a deliberate assertion of city identity. Over the previous 50 years, Christians came from across the region, Jews came from around the Middle East and from across Europe, and Bahai came to the world centre of the Bahai faith. Haifa drew immigrants because of the need for labour in its port, and because it did not have an exclusivist city establishment, narrowed to one group only.

As may be seen in the work of Manar Hasan and Ami Ayalon, it is not easy to find objective data and criteria for an outside to assess the nature or quality of Jewish-Arab relationships in a city like Haifa. Residential areas, social interaction, and work life changed swiftly through the first and second halved of the 20th century, and the impact this had on changing friendships and working relationships does not necessarily match the best-known outsider perspectives about separation and mixing. The memory bank encourages contributors to share wherever you associated a specific place or locality in Haifa with an inclusive encounter – we see how the public reflection on places of memory in Haifa can be greatly enrichened by this.

What has happened since, which makes the memory valuable 

Due to the continuing political conflict and recurrent acts of aggression divide the population across the Holy Land, the memory of a common life or coexistence in Haifa is both celebrated as exceptional, and viewed askance as socially and politically suspect. The city of Haifa celebrates the extent of Jewish-Arab coexistence as a prominent part of its identity, most distinctively through its public celebration of the religious festivals of Jewish, Christian and Muslim tradition when they fall at the same time. Manar Hasan and Ami Ayalon have written about the degree to which memories of social interactions before 1948 are viewed through the prism of later events: after the violence of the 1930s and 1940s, the flight of many Arab residents in 1948, and the attempts to establish lives and livelihoods afresh in Haifa after the founding of the State of Israel. The celebrated writer Mahmoud Darwish, who edited the newspaper of Rakah, the Jewish-Arab Communist Party, here after 1961, writes both of the reality of Jewish-Arab coexistence in Haifa, while also intimating that the memory of the past here involves a troubling distance – also picked up by Israeli writers of the literary ‘New Wave’ from the 1970s. 

A great deal has been written about Haifa’s Jewish-Arab encounters by academic experts and intellectuals. This abstracted encounter across binary cultural identities – Jewish versus Arab – is widely understood to be inadequate, and yet it continues to be the dominant prism through which relationships across difference are associated with Haifa. Personal memories, subjective reflections on personal and family experience, can therefore add greatly to the understanding of the realities of life in Haifa, and to the effort to understand how difference has been experienced in everyday, ordinary lives here. The story of common pluralistic life in Haifa involves limitations and possibilities which cannot be generalised about objectively, and above all the value of the memories that are passed on cannot be reduced to the analyses of experts: the testimonies gathered in the Memory Bank can centre attention on the value of real relationships between individuals and communities of different communities, beyond the generalising narratives at the political level. 

How might the memory be used in bringing people together in practice now? 

The Memory Bank is a vehicle for sharing personal memories about Haifa – and many other locations – which mean a great deal to families now living around the world. The aim of our work is also to contribute to the active, practical use of memories of friendship and cooperation where they can help build inclusive community cooperation today. What lessons can be drawn from the memories you have come across, and from the memories you share about your locality? What can we learn about change and habits of cooperation: Should we understand relationships being primarily shaped by the big economic and political changes that are used to define histories of the Middle East? Are there also ways in which valuable memories counter these generalisations – for instance, by giving pride of place to stories in which individuals stood up against expectations? Do Haifa memories have inspiration – or practical wisdom – to offer for the future?

Some additional context

Haifa’s diversity may also be related to its historically marginal situation in the region, a point that is raised by many outside observers. Haifa is a hilly location, by the coast, but also in a hilly area which historically provided shelter for religious minorities which were often the subject of discrimination, and repeatedly the target of persecution. Next to the city, there are villages with Druze and Christian populations. The kind of attraction that may be felt both ways can be seen in contemporary literature, in the autobiographies of figures such as Amos Oz and Bishop Elias Chacour, who recall encountering the cultures and communities of the other here in stories of very personal engagement and interest

Some additional reading
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haifa
A rich source of stories and reflection will be found in M. Yazbak and Y. Weiss, Eds, Haifa before and after 1948: Narratives of a mixed city, 2011, online at https://ihjr.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Haifa-Before-and-After-1948.pdf and https://ihjr.org/detailed-summary-haifa-before-after-1948-narratives-of-a-mixed-city-2/