Haifa’s Happy Holidays: Three religions, one giant block party
It’s rush hour and news blares from car radios across Israel’s traffic-clogged roads about one overarching story of the day: Hamas militants in Gaza have fired 400 rockets into southern Israel over the past 24 hours. About 100 miles north up the coast, in the port city of Haifa, two young art curators, one Jewish and one a Palestinian citizen of Israel, are dealing with something decidedly less fraught: They are planning the logistics of an art installation that will include 88 pounds of white pepper, za’atar, sumac, and ginger.
The piece is an exploration of what notions of “home” mean, a loaded concept in a land claimed by two peoples. It is planned as a centerpiece of a new art exhibition for the Holiday of Holidays, the only event of its kind in Israel and a rare celebration of religious and cultural diversity in the fractious Middle East. The festival honors Christmas, Hanukkah, and Muslim traditions over three weekends in December in a gathering that is part block party, part intercultural artistic extravaganza. It draws as many as 70,000 people a day. This year will mark the 25th anniversary of the festival.
Every year there is a different theme and this one is “the third dimension,” an invitation to look at what happens when different cultures and identities influence each other to create something new – a hybrid space – as Yael Messer describes it. Ms. Messer is curator of the art gallery run by the Beit HaGefen Arab-Jewish Cultural Center. Messer, who is Jewish, is going over plans with Haneen Abed, her deputy, a Palestinian Israeli, in their shared office. The staff of the center is made up of
