Haifa,City Of Museums

Statue of the Prophet Elijah at the Mukhraka.
Collection. Dudi Eldar

Statue of the Prophet Elijah at the Mukhraka. Collection. Dudi Eldar

by Sarah Bronson
Special To The Jewish Week

Haifa — Israel’s third-largest city is best known for its high-tech industry, its enviably positive relations between Arabs and Jews and for the stunning gardens at the Bahai World Center. Located on Mount Carmel on the Mediterranean coast, Haifa features several miles of beaches, though they don’t garner as much attention as those in the more glamorous Tel Aviv.

“Haifa works, Jerusalem prays, and Tel Aviv plays,” say Israelis, and residents of Haifa consider it a compliment. With new tourist attractions opening all over the country, Haifa has lost much of its allure to American visitors in the last 10 or so years.

Nevertheless, Haifa has a rich history and several attractions — including at least a dozen museums — to entertain

and educate visitors of all ages. I took a trip there recently with tour guide Peter Abelow, managing director of Keshet – The Center for Educational Tourism in Israel (www.keshetisrael.co.il), and discovered several little-known, and wonderful gems.
We started with the Mukhraka, outside the Druze suburb of Daliat El Carmel. Site of the Prophet Elijah’s “showdown” against Jewish idol-worshippers in I Kings 18, the Mukhraka is now home to a Carmelite monastery, from the top of which (at 482 meters above sea level) is a spectacular view of the entire Jezreel valley. On a clear day, you can see all the way to Mount Tabor and Bet She’an in the east and to the Mediterranean Sea in the west.
Next we headed to the Israel Railway Museum, a great destination for families, especially those with little boys (and perhaps girls) who love trains. Visitors can explore the inside of several historical locomotives, coaches and sleeper wagons from the Turkish and British-mandate eras, as well as older Israeli trains, and examine old engines, tickets, and other rail-related paraphernalia. A visit normally takes 30-60 minutes, including a 10-minute movie that is available in Hebrew only.

The National Maritime Museum is well known to Israelis, and its exhibit of Phoenician ships and cargo is excellent, but I would recommend it only to those with a particular interest in seafaring history or in underwater archeology.

The museum next-door, however, is a must-see, and well worth the 60 to 90 minutes it takes to fully absorb: The Clandestine Immigration and Naval Museum features a powerfully touching film (in English) about the thousands of Jews who attempted — only sometimes successfully — to smuggle themselves into Palestine on 140 sea voyages between 1934 and 1948. Housed in the Af-Al-Pi-Hen (the “Nevertheless,” the ship which brought hundreds of Jews to Palestine immediately after the voyage made famous by “Exodus”), the museum also features parts of the lost Dakar submarine and a moving exhibit about the detention camps in which many Jews were detained after their capture by the British.

“There is no precedence for a nation trying to sneak into its own homeland,” Abelow said. “It’s a wonderful story of courage and determination, and the spirit in which the State of Israel was founded.”

Across the street from the Clandestine Immigration Museum is the entrance to Elijah’s Cave, where the prophet is believed to have hidden from King Ahab and his wife Jezebel, and later to have taught students. The cave is accessible through a Carmelite monastery and is a popular spiritual destination for Jews, Christians, and Muslims.

The Museum for Science, Technology, and Space is housed in the Israel Institute of Technology, known as the Technion, Israel’s premier high-tech university. And though the architecture is a bit Old World (the museum uses the Technion’s first classroom building), the exhibits are thoroughly modern, interactive and geared to children 5 to 14. My favorite room featured wall hangings with different optical illusions. “Acoustics Hall” was another favorite of mine. Other topics one can explore include car safety, green energy, genetics and dentistry. But buyer beware: several of the interactive exhibits around the museum were broken, or were explained in such difficult terms that even adults may have a hard time sorting them out. Tours are available in English with prior arrangement.

Haifa is home to several art museums and galleries, and we visited two. The Chagall Artists’ House boasts free entry and many excellent works (paintings and sculptures) by Israeli artists. About half of the works are abstract, and most have Jewish or Israeli themes. An art lover could spend hours there if it were better ventilated. The Mane-Katz Judaica Collection houses dozens of works by the famous French-Jewish painter (1894-1962) who left his collection to the city of Haifa upon his death. His biography and a guide to the collection are available in English at the desk.

About a dozen restaurants in Haifa are certified as kosher; a list of those establishments is available at www.eluna.com. When planning a trip to the Haifa, it is imperative to call the sites ahead of time and establish the times they are open, as many close at 2 or 4 p.m., or give tours only at specific hours. It would be helpful to have a fluent Hebrew-speaker make those calls, since few of the receptionists speak English.

One hopes that Haifa will soon invest attention into marketing itself once again as a tourist destination and making its many fascinating tourist sites more foreigner-friendly. Like its high-tech industry, the city’s historical and cultural sites offer a large pool of attractive resources. The city — and tourists — need only to tap into them.

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