Talk:Haifa

Transliterations, translations and spellings of the word Haifa

Regarding various transliterations, translations and spellings of the word Haifa: we must keep the number of those small, to avoid cluttering up the first line. I agree that Haifa as a multi-lingual city, having a Hebrew-speaking majority and Arab-speaking minority, should mention the name of the city in both Hebrew and Arabic. However, I don't see why we need several alternative English names - "Haifa" is the only way this city's is ever written, by foreigners and by Israelis. I never saw the spelling "Hefa" anywhere (actually used), so I would leave that out. Also, if you want to explain how to pronounce the Hebrew and Arabic name (because you're right, both of them are not pronounced like English-speakers say "Haifa"), at least don't make mistakes. For the Hebrew, you write something like "Hefah", and insist on the last h. Why??? The letter 'he' in the end of the word is silent. It does not get pronounced like an h. This is why I removed it, and I don't understand why you put it back. Also, the pronounciation guides should not be bold, because these are not official names or spellings, just pronounciation guides. Just my 2 cents.... Nyh 06:53, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

Moreover, the "f" sound in the name is exactly the same letter in both Arabic and Hebrew, and pronounced exactly the same. So why use "ph" in Hebrew and "f" in Arabic pronounciations? Nyh 06:56, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

Lay vs. Scientific transliterations

Well, the civil Modern Hebrew transliterations are for lay-people, ordinary citizens who want quick information. The secondary information I've been putting all over the place is a scientific transliteration of Hebrew used by linguists to represent all the dialect-neutral phonemes. It's just for completeness. I don't dispute the removal of "Hefa", but "Hêphāh" is very good for all us dry academic researchers out there. :) Besides, other Israeli city articles have even more alternate names than this article, and they are all relevant to the history and linguistics. See Akko and Ashqelon for examples. As Haifa has a shorter history and only two languages, it only needs the three transliterations: civil/lay, scientific Hebrew, and scientific Arabic. - Gilgamesh 07:16, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

I agree - for language freaks like me :), the linguist's transliteration is very useful. It certainly doesn't reflect the modern pronunciation, but it's a pretty good guide to how Hebrew was pronounced about 2000 years ago, and it is a widely known academic standard. I wouldn't want it to be the only pronunciation info, but personally I think it has its place. - Mustafaa 07:37, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

Actually, I'd say that's more like 1200 years ago, Mustafaa. But I agree anyway. - Gilgamesh 19:39, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

Since Haifa did not really exist (or existed in a form irrelevant to today) 2000 or 1200 years ago, all this is irrelevent. But even if it were, I think you guys are wrong regarding pronunciation: The final he (much like Arabic "ta marbuta") in words ending in "a" sounds (usually signifying a female gender) was never pronounced like a consonant "h". Hebrew has a special mark, a "mapik", which says that the he is pronounced (in Arabic ta-marbuta and he are seperate letters). In fact, I believe (from what I read once) that when Hebrew originated (say, 2500-3000 years ago) from some proto-semitic language, it had no vowel marks whatsoever. Kelev and Kalba (male and female dog) were spelled exactly the same, with three consonant letters, but pronounced differently. Sometime later people began adding imot kria - letters he, yod, vav, aleph - to ease reading in some cases, and the final he was one of those letters added, and as far as I know was never actually pronounced as an "h". Regarding the "f" vs. "ph" - I believe that the Hebrew and Arabic letters sound the same, and originating from the same proto-semitic sound, so I don't understand why spell them differently just because in Hebrew the "p" and "ph" sound are spelled with the same basic letter form while arabic has no "p" sound at all.

The shrine of the Bab on the side of Mt Carmel

The shrine of the Bab on the side of Mt Carmel in the center of the terraced Baha'i Gardens is not a temple. It is a funeral monument housing the shrine and body of the Bab, the first prophet, the precursor of the Baha'i Faith, and of Abdu'l-Baha the son of the second prophet of the Baha'i faith, Baha'u'llah.

It's a nitpick, but it's a critical nitpick to Baha'is, hearing it called a temple drives Baha'is slightly nuts. Thanks for listening. - rboatright

I always thought the Bab was buried in Acre and that this was a central shrine. Danny 05:01 Feb 11, 2003 (UTC)

No, Baha'u'llah is buried at the Shrine of Baha'u'llah at Baji outside of Acca (Acre.) the Shrine on the side of Mt Carmel is the Shrine of the Bab. The Bab's body is interred in a room the "right hand" side as you face the mountain, and Abdu'l-Baha is interred in a room on the "left hand" side as you face the mountain.

The white domed building is a superstructure built over the quite plain fieldstone building that actually houses the two rooms that are the shrines themselves.

The Shrine of Baha'u'llah at Bahji is the turning point of Baha'i prayers and is the direction that Baha'is face when praying. The Shrine of the Bab is more well known and promenent because it's half way up Mt Carmel and visible for kilometers.

Some changes I made

I made quite a few changes to the layout of the page, essentially cutting the the data into topical sections to make things look a bit cleaner.
I removed some previous comment saying that "Haifa's cultural and social life focus mainly around football (soccer)" - This is not really NPOV, in my opinion. I consider removing the whole sentence about Maccabi Haifa and its championships, since there is already an entry on Maccabi Haifa.
I also expanded a bit on Industries.

Some stuff that's currently missing:

• Much more on the City's history
• Museums
• Festivals
  • Haifa film festival
  • Chag Kol Hachagim (how do you say that in english?)
• The port
• More on the city's neighborhoods
• Environmental issues
• Sacred places

Mikiher 21:26, 24 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Chag Kol Hachagim can be translated as the "Holiday of all holidays" and it is an event the celebrate the Jewish Chanukah, the Christian Christmas and the Muslim Ramadan and promote co-existence, since they are all occure together around December. MathKnight 21:34, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)

The narrative in this article is primarily an Israeli one, and seems to neglect the point of view of the many current and former Palestinian residents of Haifa. Credible historians - including some Israeli scholars - offer a very different narrative than the one provided here. Significant information has been omitted from this article, such as a treatment of Palestinian history and heritage related to Haifa over many centuries, the explusion/exodus of Palestinians in 1947-48, and the current predicament of Palestinian Arabs within Israeli society today. Israeli historians and scholars such as Benny Morris, Avi Shlaim, Elan Pappe, Baruch Kimmerling, Tom Segev and others have documented the factual basis and historical legitimacy of the events neglected here - citing previously sealed Israeli state archives among other sources - and have also chronicled some of the human experiences that tell the missing story. And Palestinians scholars such as Edward Said, Rashid Khalidi and others have offered similar narratives supported by documentary evidence, all of which is missing in the heavily Israeli POV offered here. A concise web source that offers a different POV can be found at http://www.palestineremembered.com/Haifa/Haifa/ - this is not an in-depth treatment but rather a summary, and I have not attempted to incorporate significant elements from this web page into the Wikipedia article on Haifa. Rather, I've made a few minor changes and removed a couple of obvious NPOV violations, in an effort to move in the direction of neutral POV, but this article remains significantly short of that goal. To reflect this, I added the POV warning until this article can be further rehabilitated. - GeorgeA

Chag Kol Hachagim is usually translated in Haifa municipal literature as "Festival of Festivals" which sounds better in English than the more literal translation noted above. I disagree with GeorgeA: the spirit of coexistence is certainly stronger here than the adversarial narratives proposed by Benny Morris (who has retracted many of his previous opinions) and Elan Pappe (whose graduate student Teddy Katz admitted in court to falsifying interviews from Arab witnesses). Whereas sectarian tension may be found in parts of Israel, there is not much evidence of it in Haifa. - John Kennedy, Kababir, Haifa, Israel may 2005

Recent Events

Am I justified in suspecting the contents of the "Recent Events" section is politicially motivated? --Admbws 01:29, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I was indeed playing with the thought of removing this section. In addition to possibly being pollitically motivated, it also looks a bit out of place in an encyclopedia article about a city (although the event itself was indeed painful and traumatizing to Haifa's inhabitants, along with the other 3 major terrorist attacks that happened in the city during the last few years). I think we can remove the Recent Events section or at least put it in the talk page for a while. -- Mikiher 01:51, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)

OK, I've just removed this section. I've pasted it below for a while for the sake of objections. -- Mikiher 01:58, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The city of Haifa known more lethal massacre during the last 4 years, including the Matza restaurant massacre and serveral lethal bus suicide bombings. Among the victims were Christians and Arabs as well. MathKnight 21:34, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Suicide attack

On Saturday, October 4, 2003 the palestinian terrorist woman Hanadi Jaradat executed a suicide attack in the popular restaurant Maxim's in Haifa, killing 21 people and wounding 51 others.

Changes of Hebrew definitions

See discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Judaism#New "twist and turn" as "Hebrew alphabet" is switched to "Hebrew languages" concerning appropriate uses of the word "Hebrew" here. IZAK 05:33, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Various religions

Noted by Jews for the Cave of Elijah, Haifa is also cherished by the Christian and Bahá'í faiths.

What about Muslims and Druze? Don't they also recognize Elijah as a prophet? Michael Hardy 03:28, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

NPOV

Nothing written here is fair or balanced. Haifa was always an arab city and now it is in Israel, we the Jews took it. End of story. Joseph FRIEDMANN

This doesn't really seem to be a reason to call the article NPOV. Convention is to use the current political boundaries, and refrain from political discourse one way or the other. I'm going to remove the NPOV tag from the article - if you have any other reasons why this should be discussed further, please return the tag to the article and post your concerns here. Also be sure to sign your comments with ~~~~. ESkog 04:32, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

I wholeheartedly agree. If you think that a specific fact in this article is biased, please fix it or discuss it here. The fact that "Haifa" is an existing city, in an existing country "Israel" cannot be disputed. Wikipedia is about reporting the existing facts, not about wishful thinking on how you'd like the facts to be. I'm removing the POV tag. If you want, you can eleborate in the article about Haifa's history, about the size of its Arab population before 1948, and about how certain people (who?) still consider it part of an occupied Palestine which is yet to be liberated. Nyh 08:28, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

Does anyone know where I can find actual results for the 1993 and 1998 mayor elections? Or at least know what day they were on, I only know they were in November. Pimpalicious 09:19, 28 November 2005 (UTC)