"Let Them Eat Cake": May Day in Haifa and the Mimouna

This year the Jewish calendar is playing tricks and the Mimouna, the North African Jewish celebration which marks the end of Passover, happened on May Day, the International Workers’ Day. This coincidence is too symbolic to ignore, and it is hard not to acknowledge  the prosperity of the former and the demise of the latter.

Growing up in Haifa, the workers’ town, or as some call it “Red Haifa,” I got to participate in many May Day celebrations, and parades. Haifa (and its surrounding towns), is a major industrial center and workers, both Jewish and Arabs, have always been a high percent of the population. Thus May Day used to be a significant day for Haifa, and we all took part in the activities.

I read today that in 1984 (7 years after Menachem Begin came to power) Haifa held its last official May Day. About 100,000 people attended the celebrations, and dignitaries like Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin were present.

I wonder if May Day had to disappear in order to make room for the Mimouna. Throughout the years this tradition was has been promoted and used by politicians, and gained popularity and prominence in Israeli society. However,  it doesn’t mean that North African Jews, especially in the peripheral towns are as prominent as well.

Please keep reading in the Times of Israel

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/let-them-eat-cake-may-day-in-haifa-and-the-mimouna/

Don't Block My View With Your Disabilities: The Case Of Yonah Yahav

I don’t mean to justify what Yonah Yahav, the mayor of Haifa, said about moving the home for troubled kids from their previous residence, in one of the poor areas of Haifa, to a new house, in one of the most desirable neighborhoods, Merkaz Hacarmel.

It is inexcusable and inhuman. However,Yahav is hardly the problem, and although we should condemn his bigotry and his hateful public expressions, he is only the symptom, and it is hypocritical to blame him for all the ills of our society.

Next to my parents home in one of the quiet neighborhoods on the Carmel Mountain, very close to that Merkaz Hacarmel (center of the Carmel Mountain), that Yonah Yahav so bravely protected, there was a care center for autistic kids. We frequently saw them taking group walks, and every so often we heard very loud screams. One day, when I visited my parents, one of the neighbors knocked on the door, she was there to collect signatures to have the center removed.

Please keep reading in the Times of Israel

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/dont-block-my-view-with-your-disabilities-the-case-of-yonah-yahav/

Roads I didn’t Take And Public Transportation

Many years ago when we were students and newly wed, I worked part time at one of the Steimazki bookstores in Haifa. A colleague, a lovely lady, had just moved to Haifa and told me that she was selling her house in Binyamina in order to buy an apartment on Mount Carmel. At that time, almost forty years ago, a house with a substantial yard in that small sleepy town cost the same as a modest apartment in the Carmel.

I had never really been to Binyamina, at that point, but felt that I knew the place since the train from Haifa to Tel Aviv stopped there. It seemed as though the town was within an easy reach from Haifa.

That night I went home and told my husband about that house, I wanted to buy it but he wasn’t at all sure. The main reason for his reluctance was that the train did not run on Saturday, and we would be stranded there. One could not move outside of town with no car, my husband argued, and that would mean additional expenses. In Haifa busses ran on Saturday and we did not need a car.

Although I was convinced that we were letting a lifetime opportunity slip away, I didn’t pursue the matter further. My husband was right, moving away from the city meant more than getting a good deal on a house.

Perhaps we should have listened to my intuition and invested in real estate in Binyamina. Prices in that town went up and prices in Haifa went down.

But today all those years later the train still does not run on Saturday and people without a car are stranded. Haifa, on the other hand, is still the only civilized city in Israel with public transportation on Saturdays and holidays.

Earlier this holiday a Facebook protest encouraged users to complain on the page of the transportation minister Israel Katz and express their frustration at the fact there is no public transportation in Israel on Saturdays and holiday and in particular on the long second holiday this year. Omri Hazut a public transportation user reminded the minister that "The seventh day of Passover is on Thursday, and the last night is Friday. From Thursday afternoon until Saturday night, there will be no public transportation!"

The Minister responded with the following outrageous argument: "Tell (Isaac) Buji Herzog to commit not to sit in a government that won't change the status quo. The display of hypocrisy by you and your friends on the left ... was proven in the last elections and got the appropriate response at the polls."

The Minister reacted like a bully in the most unprofessional way. As we well know Buji was not elected to be our prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu was and it is the government’s responsibility to take care of the  people who depend on public transportation.

In Haifa, people who use public transportation on Shabbat could do so because the “left” and the founding fathers of that workers’ city have always cared about the welfare of the residents and made sure that on their day of rest they could enjoy the city and get around, even as far as the sea shore.

It’s a shame that the “right” has no interest in doing the same. my guess is that Katz’s own people never ride the bus.

The essay appeared in the Times Of israel

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/roads-i-didnt-take-and-public-transportation/

Life Through A Small Window

In my last year of high-school when I was supposed to study for the matriculation examinations, I discovered life. It came in the shape of a tiny studio apartment  on the ground floor in the building where my best friend used to live.

Until then our days consisted of going to school and study, but all of a sudden a young man, who moved into that room  filled our dull existence with excitement and joy.

He was a university student about nine years older than us, at sixteen it was a huge difference, he was even older than my brother. To my mind in those nine years he managed to do everything: to  get married to be divorced, to almost complete his degree and to collect a huge number of exciting friends who packed the apartment day and night.

Although in theory he was still a student, at that time, he took some time off to reflect about life and to figure out what to do next. In the meantime, it seemed that, all he wanted to do was to have fun, and we were there to watch and admire.

The apartment had a window strategically positioned at the bottom of the stairs, where we could stand on the steps and peek in.

Thus even before I was ever let in, my friend his neighbour had met him first, I noticed that the walls of his room were covered with beautiful posters. It was 1971 and in Israel the sixties were still going strong.

 Through the window we could also listen to the music which was always playing, and to hear voices of people talking. As many of his  friends came to Israel from different counties the conversations were often in foreign languages.  Standing outside the window we could often smell a sweet scent in addition to that of  regular cigarettes.

As there was no phone, that window also helped  deciding how to act, if you saw people inside, it was a sign that you could come in. If the window was closed and you heard music but also muffled voices  it meant that our friend  was busy and should not be disturbed.

Although I spent time inside the apartment,  there was nothing like the pang of excitement and anticipation that I got from standing on the steps and looking through the window. And often it was safer just to stay outside.

In a way  that window was also the opening to my adult life, growing up in a quiet neighborhood on the Carmel Mountain in Haifa we had  never met people like those who filled the apartment. They were doing things that we only read about in books, and the sights, sounds and smell were all new and exciting. 

But what I saw through the window was not really my life, not at that time and not later. It was a short year and then I graduated high-school, enlisted to the army and left home. Sadly, that wonderful apartment remained behind and was no longer the center of my being

Still there were consequences; since I hardly studied my grades suffered, and I didn’t do so well on my matriculation exams. As a result I couldn’t major in what I had  originally planned  to study and took literature instead.

As I could not imagine my life without literature, this digression was probably for the best, and of course I don't regret the most exciting period of my youth.

  

PS. Although slightly different, Barbara Pym has a beautiful passage about being inside and outside the window: In a talk given in February 1956  on  “The Novelist’s Use of Every Day Life,” she said  : “Everyday life is not for every novelist, but . . . each one must make use of some of it. . .  Many people enjoy the kind of novel that they might be living in themselves, and that constantly reminds them of their own lives; more amusing, more interesting perhaps, but familiar. And sometimes much worse, but still probable – the kind of thing that could happen, but fortunately doesn’t very often. I always think that reading these novels is like looking in through a window. You’re interested in what is going on in the house but glad not to be inside it."