'Haifa has potential'
• Polina Voronkova participated in the preparation of the article
"Irfaim" - an exhibition of photographs by Omer Moser - at the Monio Gitai Museum of Architecture in Haifa
Abandoned, abandoned buildings, tending to fall, stand as tombstones of neglect throughout Haifa. Behind them are stories, memories or a truly glorious history. Omer Mozer photographed them, the result was a pulsating and touching exhibition.

"The corona devoured the cards"
Omer Moser is an artist, photographer and basketball coach. He is 30 years old, born in Haifa, now lives in Hadar.
Several years ago he moved to Tel Aviv, wanted to see and experience the great city. Many of his friends then moved to Tel Aviv and Mozer decided that he too wanted to check out what all the noise was about and how life there is so different from those in the city of Carmel. "It was really very nice," he says, "until the corona destroyed the cards."

"What caught my eye"
So when the corona began to take over and the closures hovered over us all, Tel Aviv already looked strangely different. "People started losing their jobs, everything was closed, everyone was looking for themselves, and so was I," he recalled. "That's how I started taking pictures," he says. "It happened right at the height of the corona virus, I took a zoom photography course, bought a camera and started taking pictures of everything that caught my eye."
Little by little, as the epidemic took up more and more space, Omar got closer and closer to returning to Haifa, until finally he returned completely. At first he lived in his parents' house.

"total cake"
Moser says: "In the beginning I was completely in a daze. I wasn't sure I would stay here. The landscape here remains the same, but I changed. I didn't immediately acclimate here. I was with my parents for about 4-5 months and I was constantly checking where I wanted to live. It took a while until I started to feel at home In Haifa, it happened when I found my own apartment."

Taking photos in the streets
Eventually he found himself in the Hadar neighborhood and began to enjoy what Haifa has to offer. Photography took an extensive place in acclimatization. "I photographed in the streets, I photographed animals, buildings, people. One of the things that caught my attention was abandoned houses, it turned out to me that there is no shortage of such in Haifa."

"Suddenly we become a buzz"
"On the way out of my house there are a lot of abandoned buildings." says strange. "Haifa has such a variety of abandoned buildings, special and amazing buildings, I would even say it is a symbol of the city." That's how he went out every day and took pictures of more buildings in the city and started uploading the pictures to Facebook. The photographs aroused great interest and curiosity. "Some kind of buzz started to form", he says, "all of a sudden there were lots of responses and calls from a lot of people". Among the people who contacted Moser were also two curators - the architect Chen Shimoni and the architect Yonatan Ben David. "They contacted me and suggested that we put on an exhibition."

"Haifa has potential"
Omar has amassed a respectable collection of impressive photographs. "I reached 30 buildings," he says, "I could have reached more." When asked if there is a message that for him emerges from the photographs, he says that always, over the years, ever since he was a child in Haifa, he remembers a statement that has always been repeated: 'Haifa has potential'.

"Everybody has it"
"I think in the photographs you can see a lot of this potential," Moser says. "For example, let's take the building of Sirkin 21. It was an abandoned building, but they made something out of it, that's how you can do it with many places in the city. In fact, every building I photographed has such potential," he says.

He is ours
This is perhaps also the time to mention (full disclosure) that Mozer served for a certain period as a reporter for Hai Fe, and among his fascinating articles was one that dealt with the renovation initiative at Sirkin 21 and a photo article about abandoned buildings in the city.


The beautiful buildings of the past
Among the beautiful photographs you will find buildings from HaShomer, Halutz, Kibbutz Galvoit, buildings of old cinemas, hotels, old people's homes, pools and baths, stone houses and much more, all of which you can see in the exhibition "Irfaim".

"Irafaim" • Omer Moser's photography exhibition
Dozens of photographs - one city
Monio Gitai Vinerov Museum of Architecture | 135 Hanasi St. Haifa
בין התאריכים: 25/12/21-22/1/22.
Entry is free!
שעות פתיחה:
Wednesday • Hours 10:00-17:00
Friday • 12:30-15:00 p.m
Saturday • Hours 10:00-15:00
The entrance, as mentioned, is open and free - just come
Or rather - run!
I really want to come and see, but I won't be able to get there before Saturday 29.1. Maybe you will consider extending the duration of the exhibition? Thank you. Leave an email for an update.
You can destroy all these buildings and build much better buildings. Look at what they do in Dubai and copy it.
All these buildings were correct 60 years ago, it's enough to complain that these buildings are not resistant to earthquakes and energy saving standards
Take the bulldozers to the field and build the Haifa of the future
You can destroy the city hall and everything is fine, nothing will happen to start a new one.
Without a vow, I will come on Shabbat Mekrit Ono.
Curious
The idea is excellent and the execution is excellent. Good luck Omar...
I love you Omar, a charming exhibition, a charming, honest, modest and captivating human being.
Waiting for the next exhibition!!!
After everything you saw in the videos, how they rolled them from trucks to the desert and trained them to do black jobs and blue profets, shame on you, shut them up in crossings as a transit camp that became permanent, babies were stolen from their mothers, shame on you, we will never forget Pai Elek. The holocaust had no one to bring from Europe without the choice of being created here. An Arab majority expressed their views on Eastern European and Arab countries and it blew up in their faces. They wanted an arrogant Western Jewish state. They received a traditional religious majority that turned the country into a religious Jewish one because all the Sephardi arrived traditional and Gothic and belonged to religious kingdoms. Gurion went crazy and so did Herzl, so please move on from Grandma Isa's stories, a Mizrachi child could dream of a university or a degree lol.
Haifa woke up!!!
Quickly renovate and preserve all properties!!!! If not Haifa will become a garbage can!!! you have been warned!!!!
What is this stupid debate about Arab or Jewish buildings?! By the way, full disclosure! On my grandmother's side, our family has been in Israel for about 500-600 years! So enough of this stupid debate!!! Jews were always present here throughout all the years of exile and the Arabs, especially the Bedouins!!!
It is better to raze all these ruins that are all sitting on unused land and build new residential neighborhoods. There is taxation in land for construction in Israel but to perpetuate ruins. lack any economic and national consideration
I was born and raised during the British Mandate on Kishon Street, Hadar Hatton. The relations with the Arab population, our neighbors, were completely good relations. My father worked as a laborer in the port alongside Arab workers and there was no problem. The city of Haifa was a mixed city during the Ottoman period and during the Mandate period. Before Haifa was a city, Haifa was a small village whose inhabitants were all Arabs. The war in 48 caused a large part of the Arab population in Haifa to leave and flee by boat to Acre (by the way, not all of them deserted, many stayed) with the "encouragement" from above by the leaders of Mapai with Ben Gurion at their head.
The claim that there was also encouragement from the Mufti and Kaukji is certainly valid. However, to compare, for example, the Jewish community in Morocco with what happened to the Arab community in Haifa or other places in Israel, is complete nonsense. The Jews lived for many generations in Morocco under the auspices of the Moroccan royal house and came to Israel As new immigrants after the establishment of the state, with the encouragement of the government and especially with the encouragement of that David Ben-Gurion - to whom the immigrants from Morocco returned "thanks" with burning hatred, to him and to the members of his party. Their ridiculous claim was based on pure simple racism, as if there was discrimination between the European immigrants, the rest of the exodus, and them. As if the Ashkenazim who came from the Holocaust were given something and the Mizrahim from Morocco were thrown into the crossings, God have mercy. The remains of my family arrived from Europe exactly at David's Crossing in Haifa alongside those Jews from Morocco, Romania, Poland and others. This folly cannot be eradicated. Moroccan immigrants fed and continue to feed it with a spoon from generation to generation and the country eats it to this day and their opinion will probably never change. By the way, quite a few of the old North African refugees took up residence with permission in the homes of those Arabs in Haifa who fled, and this with the approval of the governmental "abandoned property" bodies.
In summary: in 48 the Arabs did flee, but absolutely not because of their desire to murder Jews. On the other hand, the Jews from Morocco did not come here due to persecution in Morocco but of their own free will with the encouragement of the Israeli governments.
A continuous response with factual disruptions. In Haifa, Jews were always attacked. Wild attacks that caused mass destruction from the lower city throughout the mandate period in wildness. The Arabs harassed the Jews in the city, especially in the Rerad El Yehud neighborhood, which got its name because Jews have always lived there. You grew up on Kishon Street and are ashamed that you don't know the history of Nachala Jews. You probably saw an idyllic time as a child and the bitter truth was hidden from you. Your entire response about coexistence in the mandate is nothing more than a lie and aims to disrupt the historical truth for future generations. There were thefts of property, bullying, fires, harassment, exclusion of Jews from the municipality, a white paper, of course the Mufti's action with Hitler to eliminate the Jews of Israel. What are you talking about and where is the alternative dead island wink from which reason? 48 Heitza is supposed to be the completion of the Holocaust of the Jews by the Arab armies who planned to do here what Hitler did in Europe. Whoever thinks otherwise, forgive me, needs to look. Those who talk about deportation when the goal was not the deportation of Israeli Jews but their complete annihilation.
The Moroccans showed respect for the Jews who lived in economic prosperity in Morocco until they learned that the State of Israel was established for the Jews, they started murdering and looting Jewish homes and they were expelled from their homes and their property was looted, my late grandfather who immigrated from there described to us shocking stories about that period for decades. Did the Jews live and leave in Morocco? Have you heard a story or two and you testify to the general rule? To this very day, their property has not been returned, my late grandfather's house was looted wildly, brutally, in the hatred of Jews that erupted and he was expelled from his country and you state that they left voluntarily? Abel's words are inclusive.
You don't understand what you are writing, there were riots in Morocco, if it was so good no one would come to the desert
Dear Sir, because it is clear from your response that there was no discrimination. Well, my late father immigrated to Israel in 1948, he was drafted and served until 51. He returned to Morocco on a mission and organized an illegal immigration to Israel until 1961. Following his marriage there, he immigrated to Israel with my mother and my daughter and two other brothers in the tree of their immigration to Israel. My mother was already an accountant. I was born and worked in a stock exchange company in Morocco. Well, dear sir, my parents went to Israel out of persecution or lack of anything. But you will find that they wanted to send them to Dimona. Tzfat Yeruham, who insisted on being in her office 48, sent my mother from They called it a job to work in Bafunja, and after two days she dropped out and returned to school because they didn't recognize her academic degree. In contrast, when she came to Tnuva in the 97s, the glorious immigration from Russia took place, and then a woman was sent from the labor office to the position of accountant, who after a week was thrown back from Tnuva to know work. from incompatibility." So before you judge and generalize, first study the umbrella and then turn it off, thank you for taking the time to read my response.
Egged central station should be turned into the new Talpiot market. To allow the surroundings of the Talfiot market in Hadar to recover from the heavy damage caused by the outdated and smelly market. To become a quality living environment again.
The Talfiot market building will be renovated into a neighborhood shopping center with creative spaces and galleries for artists living in the area and cafes.
The vicinity of Egged station is accessible to produce trucks. In the heart of 3 huge neighborhoods and a main road. Excellent for a lively and large urban market. Imagine coming from a bath at Bat Galim beach and entering the market for Friday shopping and going home from there. pleasure. The ramp runners are great for goods trucks to the second floor of the building. The offices in the tower will be rented as retail and trading offices for the market stalls below. It will be one of the grandest outdoor markets in the world. You can light up the building and the market and have holiday markets, holiday celebrations, special lighting, night parties that don't disturb because it is not adjacent to residences. There can be a market that will wake up the whole of Haifa and increase the value of the neighborhoods around it, as happened in the Mahane Yehuda market.
The current Talfiot market is bad, stuck, shabby and hinders the regeneration of the environment.
And who will pick up the gauntlet you threw down? Unfortunately no one…..
As much as Haifa tries to lose its identity as the city of the future of the Jewish people in Herzl's vision and celebrate the Christmas Market and lose its identity and the values of its builders like the Hadar Carmel and the Shmuel Estate Committee... it will also be abandoned by its disappointed lovers and filled with haters who justify their hatred with discrimination and hide how they lived in a filthy, wretched city in all their descriptions of the murderous history of Haifa itself towards other religions.
Love Jewish Haifa? Good luck in Tel Aviv (Herzl's vision...) here we love our years are different!
I will come
Basmat school. Standing like a tombstone on Balfour Street. It was the professional school, among the two best in Israel. I am a graduate of Basmat, your honor.
The central station building can be made as an addition to Rambam. Parking lots and wards.
An inspiring project involving photography and environmental-social awareness. Well done Omer for the initiative, for the execution and in general for who you are.
Abandoned?
Houses of deportees. Not abandoned, they have owners.
And what happened to all the Jewish homes that were expelled from Arab countries?? Do you think someone is keeping them abandoned so that the owners will come back sometime??? The Jews arrived in Israel and progressed in life. Enough of staying in the past and whining. It is a fact that many others chose not to flee and live among us without any problems (at least not from the Jewish side) to this day.
Come on, go grind water.
it's a lie. No one expelled the Arabs of Haifa, after they tried to murder all the Jews, the leaders of the Arab countries called them to leave the Land of Israel. This is on the grounds that their presence will interfere with the Arab armies that are about to invade the country and at the time were busy preparing for the invasion.
Deported?? What are you talking about ? My family lived in them, who paid well for the house.. Arabic nonsense is what you are talking about here.
This refers to the attackers who fled because they thought the Jews were weak...
Beautiful buildings with lots of potential. You can renovate them and turn them into palaces...