When the beit midrash (“study hall”) of Haifa’s Avot U’Banim synagogue was struck by a Hezbollah missile around 8 p.m. on Saturday night, November 16, 2023, Shlomo Gerst, the shul’s chairman, took it hard.
Just a few hours earlier, Gerst had been inside, enjoying a seuda shlishit (“third meal”) before the end of Shabbat with other synagogue members who had gathered at Avot U’Banim’s intimate study hall.
In October and November, when the current war escalated on the northern front, the missiles had rained down on Israel’s third-largest city.
The blast of the missile that hit Avot U’Banim’s study hall resonated throughout the 23 Orthodox synagogues on the ridge of Mount Carmel, from the Mercaz and Ahuza neighborhoods right down to the lower and more densely populated ultra-Orthodox Geula and Vizhnitz communities.
Gerst couldn’t help asking himself what the chances had been of a synagogue in Haifa being demolished by a Hezbollah missile.
“The feeling was: ‘What have we done wrong?’” Gerst told the Magazine.
“Our study hall had originally been a Templer-built private home. It was one of the rare preserved buildings left,” he explained. “The shul neighborhood was established 200 years ago as part of the Templers’ German colony in Haifa. Of course, the Germans aren’t here anymore. They left in World War II.”
The Hezbollah missile damaged the rooftop of Avot U’Banim’s stone-hewn building beyond repair. A crane had to be brought in to retrieve the study hall’s treasure trove of holy books, Torah scrolls, and the personal belongings of the men who prayed there daily. The missile left only the exterior walls standing, and piles of broken glass to sweep up at the entry to the main synagogue next door.
The impact also caused severe damage to vehicles in the vicinity and to the balcony windows and sliding-door frames of nearby apartment buildings. The Haifa Auditorium (a theater and film complex), the epicenter of Haifa’s cultural life, situated just a few minutes away on foot, miraculously didn’t sustain a scratch. Only one injury was reported, sustained by a woman running for shelter when the air raid siren went off.
After speaking to Rav Baruch Kind, a rabbi from the Neve Yosef neighborhood, Avot U’Banim chairman Gerst came to see it from a different perspective: “Rabbi Kind said that we have a great merit: ‘Your synagogue saved the Carmel because in this place you pray,’ he told me. From that day on, my feelings changed.”
Rabbi Kind said that the synagogue had saved Haifa and that the study hall had taken the missile hit for the entire neighborhood.
Haifa's resilient ultra-Orthodox character
ONE OF Haifa’s best-kept secrets is that the city has maintained a strong, resilient ultra-Orthodox character for over a hundred years.
The restaurant menus may not be the most kosher in all of Israel; the occasional bus may whizz by on Shabbat; but Haifa has a strong Orthodox presence, most striking in the lower Hadar neighborhood of Geula, with its plethora of synagogues and yeshivas, and Egged buses connecting Haifa to ultra-Orthodox communities as widespread as Ramat Beit Shemesh, Bnei Brak, Jerusalem, and Ashdod.
It’s well known in ultra-Orthodox circles that Eliyahu Yosef She’ar-Yashuv Cohen, chief Ashkenazi rabbi of Haifa for 26 years, maintained close relations, corresponded, and consulted with the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Keeping pace with the changing times and the absorption of many new immigrants from Russia, Ukraine, and other places where Judaism had been banned or forgotten, Rabbi She’ar-Yashuv Cohen took on the responsibility of upholding the traditional Jewish character of Haifa.
English speakers are still in a minority in Haifa, roughly only 50,000 among a population of over 300,000. This disparity is reflected in Orthodox synagogue life. Prayers and weekly Torah sermons are conducted in Hebrew throughout Haifa’s 240 plus synagogues, including yeshivas and day schools. The Magazine was interested to find out how English natives have found practical ways to enjoy synagogue life in Haifa.
For Hebrew-speaking American Shoshana Litner, the language has been less of a barrier than finding the right social fit for her teen children. Litner, and her family were regulars at the Mercaz HaCarmel Great Synagogue, one of the grandest shuls atop Mount Carmel, but its predominantly older population made it hard on the teenagers.
After a short time on the Carmel, the Litners moved to the nearby neighborhood of Kiryat Shmuel, on the fringe of Haifa’s low-lying industrial zone, not known for its air quality. Surprisingly, despite an asthma condition, Litner calls it “a good move.” It is a religious community of 8,000 residents which she describes as a haven of Orthodoxy that their family is happy with.
Their children have made good friends at local schools.
“I grew up in a rich religious community, and it’s nice to be back in it, hear singing on the street when it’s a holiday. Everyone is celebrating, and the streets are closed. Somehow, Kiryat Shmuel feels like a bit of an island. Even though we’re part of Haifa, it feels disjointed, like I’m in another place.”
FOR EVAN and Rebekah Saltzman and their three teenagers, finding the right school has been key to the childrens’ assimilation. In Ahuza, a verdant mountaintop neighborhood overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, the Saltzmans have generously opened their home to countless new Haifa residents since they made aliyah from Riverdale, New York, in 2014.
With Evan employed in hi-tech, Haifa was a natural choice for the Saltzman family. His specialty is emergency preparedness and crisis management, ensuring operational resilience for businesses in times of crisis. His wife, Rebekah, is a specialist and author focusing on home and lifestyle organizing and decluttering.
“We decided to immerse ourselves in the local synagogue life. Our shul is called Heichel Binyamin Zeev (unofficially known as The Harofeh synagogue), and it started about 30 years ago as a minyan in the nearby Carmel Hospital. After the shul’s being moved around in different parts of the building, the shul committee petitioned the government to designate land, and eventually they gave it. Still, money had to be raised to build the building.”
The Saltzmans are the only fully Anglo family at their shul; despite the challenges of Hebrew mastery, they are staying put.
“What solidified our stay is the friendly welcome we received in our shul,” recalled Saltzman.
“A few weeks after making aliyah in August 2014, it was Rosh Hashanah. I’m a Kohen. It’s customary for Kohanim to sing or chant during the blessings from where I came.”
He was the only regular Kohen in the Harofeh synagogue during Rosh Hashanah, and after his first Birkat Kohanim (blessing by the high priests), he said, “I learned that it was not in the shul’s tradition to sing during the High Holy Days. The gabbai said to me, ‘Evan, because you sang today, we’d like you to do it again tomorrow!’ That’s the story of how they welcomed me,” Saltzman recalled, adding: “I chanted the tunes I was familiar with, and soon enough the congregants started joining in with me during the blessing, and a new tradition was established.”
SANDY AND Ira Aron, a lively octogenarian couple from New York City, illustrated a splendid feature of synagogue life in Israel, so different from New York. Here, there’s no such thing as pledging allegiance to one shul alone.
They told the Magazine that when they made aliyah in 1980, there was almost nothing in English in Haifa.
“When we arrived, we had no specific goal, except to be in Israel. We found a program that gave you a place to live and food, taught you Hebrew, took you around to see society, and taught you to teach English to speakers of Hebrew and Arabic.”
They had come as part of a group of 23 families and individuals, organized by the Education Ministry in conjunction with Haifa’s Gordon College and the Aliyah and Integration Ministry.
As English speakers, the Arons found “two options for synagogue life.” There was the Kehilat Moriya Conservative synagogue in Ahuza, and the pluralistic Leo Baeck Education Center.
Sandy Aron recalled the dearth of Torah learning in English and how much times have changed.
“Through Internet access, Torah learning is bursting out. You don’t have to be in any particular place to learn,” she said.
Since COVID began in 2020, Sandy has been facilitating a popular weekly online Torah study group via Zoom that attracts Haifa English speakers. Over half the members are in their 80s and 90s. Sharp and articulate, they take turns reading from an exciting weekly selection of Torah commentary that Aron curates from rabbinic luminaries such as Jonathan Sacks, Manis Freedman, and David Forhman.
After more than 40 years in Haifa, Sandy is pragmatic about her synagogue life here.
“In Israel, there’s the synagogue you walk to, the synagogue you go to by car, and the synagogue you go to for cultural activities. For years, we attended the Kehilat Moriah Conservative congregation. Like us, most [of the members] come from another country, and the relationship was emotional, social, interactive, and impassioned.”
THE ORTHODOX Avot U’Banim Synagogue continues to be where the Arons go for the High Holy Days, and where Ira prays on weekdays. When the missile hit its study hall, what flashed through the couple’s minds was not the loss of the personal belongings that Ira leaves in the shul for his daily prayers but how this was an extraordinary act of divine providence.
Sandy explained that “In the 1970s, when the main synagogue was built, the original plan was to take down the little building on the corner, as well as the original shul, which was like a railroad car, a long one-story shtiebel.
“But the municipality said, ‘You can’t because it was this was a Templer building of historic importance.’ Therefore, This little building on the corner became our study hall, the one that was hit; where my son had been praying and had his third Shabbat meal, two hours before the missile hit. “
Ira joined his son and the rest of the community in rescuing what they could from the destroyed building – the books, private property such as tefillin, and prayer shawls, and the synagogue’s library of Talmudic and prayer books. They had managed to get the Torah scroll out on the first day.
“I just said thank God it happened when no one was there and no one was injured,” said Ira.
Opening Elijah’s Cave for Shabbat prayer
Elijah’s Cave, seaside facing and situated at the mountain base of Stella Maris’s impressive forested property, would seem the logical place for Jews to pray. The cave interior has undergone a NIS 15 million renovation, with its cozy, stone-walled synagogue atmosphere, prayer books in ample supply, and separate areas of worship for men and women.
However, not everyone is happy with its strong Jewish character now.
“Long ago, it was a cave and, as a cave, should be open to everybody because it’s a holy place to everyone,” said architect and Haifa historian David Bar On, a local resident since 1962.
“The cave was sacred to Christians, Muslims, and Druze, but now these other religions don’t feel they have a right to be there anymore,” he continued.
Bar On’s words point to the Haifa Municipality’s failure to balance the complexities of Jewish religious life and the reality that Haifa is very much a mixed-religion city.
Elijah’s Cave shul has just one glitch for Jewish worshipers: It closes on Friday afternoon and remains shut all of Shabbat.
After the War of Independence in 1948, the upwardly mobile Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews of Haifa were ready to trade their gritty port-side downtown neighborhood, pock-marked with bullets and lingering trauma, for the fresh air and mountaintop views of the Mediterranean Sea from Mount Carmel.
Bar On writes a weekly column of historical interest which is translated into English on Hai-po, the Haifa Municipality’s online publication, a source of news and city information. It was on one of his regular scouting walks around the city that the architect chanced upon Hadrat Hakodesh, an abandoned synagogue with a history that dates back to the 1930s.
“The shul’s locked gates are decorated with two Stars of David. It’s completely devastated. The first time I went there, I felt ashamed. I don’t know how the Haifa authorities, religious or not, can leave such a place in such a state,” he said, adding: “The region in which the synagogue is located is empty of Jews. That’s my understanding. That is the reason it’s completely abandoned. No prayers. No minyan. It’s a shame that the religious authorities, despite the history of the place, didn’t find any interest in preserving it,” he told the Magazine.
“It feels very strange, shameful, that the religious authorities didn’t find the funds or the way to restore the place even as a historic building, a museum of the Jewish settlements in Haifa,” he said.
Bar On discovered that Hadrat Hakodesh had been built on top of a much older synagogue, believed to have been visited by Rebbe Nachman of Breslov on his trip from Ukraine to visit his hassidic disciples in Haifa, Tiberias, and Safed in 1798.
Separately, Liza Stromberg came upon the synagogue in the middle of an Arab neighborhood quite by chance and decided to research its history.
“I found out that it’s an incredible historical building. It was the main synagogue in Haifa before the War of Independence, with an impressive interior that’s fallen into ruin.
“Because it’s a public building, someone can’t just buy it and refurbish it. It was declared a historical site by Moreshet Israel [Israel’s heritage society], which is supposed to be the one to renovate it with Jewish National Fund [KKL/JNF] donations, earmarked for this kind of project.”
Stromberg wants to believe that Hadrat HaKodesh will eventually make a comeback.
“All the ducks are in a row to move the project forward. We were told there was no money for this synagogue but that if we raised the funds, we could fix it.”
The author is an artist and writer based in Haifa. See www.genesiscards.com for her illustrations of Haifa life and its history and to learn about her art classes.