The picture of harmony?

A visit to the artists’ colony of Ein Hod and the neighboring Arab village of Ein Hud sheds light on the fragile trust built among the residents.

By MAURICE PICOW
Ein Hud restaurant 521 (photo credit: MAURICE PICOW)
Ein Hud restaurant 521
(photo credit: MAURICE PICOW)
Ein Hod, a well-known and picturesque artists’ colony in the Carmel region, is a popular weekend destination for many Israelis. Located a few kilometers further east and accessible only by a narrow, two-lane road that until a few years ago was unpaved, the village of Ein Hud receives somewhat less attention. On a recent visit to the area, we went to talk to residents of the two villages.
Mubarak Muhammad Abu Hijah, the mayor of Ein Hud and owner of Habayit restaurant and guest house there, considers himself and the other 250 residents of Ein Hud (who all belong to the Abu el-Hijah clan) to be Palestinian Arabs, even though they hold Israeli citizenship.
Abu Hijah’s grandfather, Muhammad Mahmoud el-Hijah, was a resident of what is now Ein Hod, at that time an Arab village that had been continuously inhabited for a thousand years. He and his family were forced to leave in July 1948, when the village was overrun by Israeli military forces. El-Hijah and 35 members of his extended family hid in a wadi east of the village, and there founded what became known as Ein Hud on a 100-dunam piece of land that he owned and where he had once grown olives, grapes and other crops. This was the start of a long and bitter fight for recognition by the Israeli government, which took until 2005.
“We finally got electricity when the village became recognized, and now sewage lines are being laid to the village. Many houses are still being built without permits though. We have to get ‘special permits’ for building homes by paying sums of money to the Israel Lands Authority for land that should already belong to us,” says Abu Hijah.
After Ein Hod’s original inhabitants left, there was a brief attempt to establish a moshav there.
Following the failure of this venture, the village was abandoned again, and remained uninhabited until a small group of Tel Aviv- and Haifa-based artists, led by Dadaist movement icon Marcel Janco, moved in.
“Conditions in Ein Hod were very bad when we arrived in 1953. The village was nearly empty and we had to start here from nothing. There were no doors or windows in the houses we found there,” says Ein Hod artist and icon Clair Yaniv. Yaniv, one of the oldest working artists in the colony, arrived there together with Janco “and a few others from both Tel Aviv and Haifa.”
Janco chose Ein Hod to settle in since he considered it to be “not just another deserted village but an ancient settlement, with Roman, Jewish and Arab histories.” Janco was at that time employed by the government as a chief landscape designer for the Government Planning Department. He was immediately impressed by the village architecture and its location on the side of Mount Carmel’s western slopes.
“Janco was also impressed by the ‘light’ here, as being good for artists. He was around 70 at the time, and considered the environment here to be much better than that of Tel Aviv, where he and I had both been living,” Yaniv adds.
Still painting and studying abstract art technique at age 91 (“I study all the time” she says), Yaniv was born in Iraq in 1920, and lived in Baghdad and Basra before arriving in Palestine with her parents in 1928 at age eight.
She lived for many years in Tel Aviv, where she began her art studies at age 15. Her mentors included Haim Glicksberg and Ya’acov Frankel, and prior to Israel’s independence, she studied at the Studia art school, under artists Yehezkel Streichman and Avigdor Stematsky.
The harsh reality of having to create both an artistic and living environment in dwellings “without any doors or windows” was at first too much for Yaniv. “I had small children who I needed to take care of, so I left the village and lived elsewhere in the Galilee before returning to Ein Hod over a year later. We hired someone to guard the house we had moved into while we were gone.”
Originally a member of the “group of 10” (well-known artists from Tel Aviv, including Elkana Halperin and Shula Tal) Yaniv and her husband had to “recreate” their art careers in Ein Hod.
“My husband was also an artist, with a style in the same ‘direction’ as mine. For a long time, most of the artwork in the village was paintings.
No one did ceramics or metalwork. Ceramics was introduced later by Janco and others to give people living in Ein Hod an occupation. Now, all forms of art work are done here, including metalwork and engravings,” Yaniv says.
Yaniv’s interaction with the Arab residents of Ein Hud village was rather uneventful, she says.
“They came to Ein Hod to do work like plumbing, renovations and gardening from time to time. But other than that, we didn’t have much of a relationship with them.”
A TRIP to Ein Hod is not complete without spending some time in The Art Bar, owned and managed by Danny Shlyfestone, originally from Detroit, Michigan. The Art Bar’s specialty is home-brewed beer. Shlyfestone first came to Israel as a child in 1963. He served in the IDF in the mid-1970s and after “living a number of years abroad” came back to Israel for good in 1995. He discovered beer brewing in Los Angeles when a friend invited him to “come over and taste some home-brewed beer.” That experience enticed him to learn beer brewing that included working in a brewery in England in 1992.
“Working in a brewery helped me a lot and I decided to open my own brewery when returning to Israel,” he says. Following his return, Shlyfestone ran his home brewery in several places in Israel, including Zichron Ya’acov and Ein Carmel (another artist village) before settling for good in Ein Hod where he met and married his wife, Analia. Danny’s dark beer, which many claim is “as good or better than Guinness,” won second place in a local dark beer brewing contest in 2006.
In addition to homemade brewing specialties, the Art Bar is a mini-gallery for Analia’s paintings, which include some very unusual “wall art” designs. Live music is available on weekends, ranging from Israeli pop tunes to blues, jazz and rock.
The Shlyfestones often visit Ein Hud, where they eat at Abu-Hijah’s popular Habayit restaurant. Analia, who also works in the oncology department at Haifa’s Rambam Medical Center, was involved in a fund-raising campaign to help one of the Ein Hud children who was suffering from cancer. “We also held a bar mitzva party at the restaurant there for one of our grandchildren,” Shlyfestone added.
“This village we now live in was continuously occupied by local Arabs for at least 1,000 years.
But what happened during the 1930s and ’40s, and even during biblical times – happened.
What we now have to do is rectify things with the former residents, some of whom founded the newer village of Ein Hud. I helped to clean up the old Ein Hud cemetery that’s across the road from Ein Hod’s entrance. This project, in which a Reform rabbi assisted, helped to give proof that the Arabs lived in this village from at least 900 CE. Ein Hud people visit the cemetery occasionally, but no new graves are allowed by the Ein Hod municipal council.”
Shlyfestone took us on a tour of the village, which included climbing to the top of what had once been the village mosque and is now a popular boutique restaurant. He is also acquainted with other long-time Ein Hod residents and artists, including Prof. Joseph Chaaltiel and his wife, Ora Lahav-Chaaltiel, both well-known artists.
Ora, 71, has lived in Ein Hod since 1956, after leaving Kibbutz Mizra in the Galilee. Joseph, 80, was born in Izmir, Turkey, and has lived in Ein Hod since 1955.
JOSEPH CHAALTIEL’S stained-glass windows are known all over the world. He is the recipient of several art awards, including one from the Biennale Internazionale di Grafica in Italy in 2000.
The Chaaltiels say that, for the most part, their interactions with the Ein Hud residents has been friendly.
“When we came to Ein Hod, no one was living here – no one had for about five years. Ein Hod started with five families on the west side of the village. Through the years, we have had a good relationship with the Arabs living in Ein Hud, but we came to realize how many bad feelings they still have about what happened to their old village and what they have had to go through to develop their new one. We wanted to have good relations with our Arab neighbors, even though arguments have broken out from time to time,” says Ora.
She adds that even though the Ein Hud village was recognized by the government, its inhabitants don’t really try to integrate. “They have had opportunities, like those involving sport, etc., but they don’t take advantage of these. I was once an art teacher and several times I tried to teach art to them.”
“During the ’91 Gulf War, no one wanted to take gas masks to Ein Hud, but we went and showed the people how to wear them. Privately, we have a good relationship with the Ein Hud residents, but not on a ‘public level.’ A lot of Ein Hod residents don’t want people from Ein Hud to come here,” Joseph adds.
“Once, members of the family who used to live in this house came to see us and we invited them in for coffee” Ora told Metro.
Ein Hud mayor Abu Hijah says village residents no longer “fear that the state will make them leave,” but that even with official recognition there remained a serious land shortage problem. Only a few plots are still available to build new homes, he says, and several houses are still unfinished due to ongoing issues with the Israel Lands Administration. “We have no land available for farming or industries. Most people have to work outside the village. Tourism is the main local industry here.”
Besides his popular restaurant, which is “almost always full on weekends,” Abu Hijah recently completed some bed-and-breakfast accommodations for weekend guests. Another restaurant, “View of the Wadi,” is also about to be completed by another resident. “Many Jewish tourists and guests come to us as well as foreign tourists, via organizations and by word of mouth,” he says.
Eating a meal at Habayit is an experience of its own and an opportunity to eat a traditional Palestinian “set meal” that begins with soup and a huge assortment of freshly made salads using fresh herbs such as coriander and parsley.
The main entrees include chicken, beef and lamb with numerous rice and vegetable dishes alongside. The sumptuous meal is finally concluded with traditional baklawa and Turkish coffee. Members of Abu Hijah’s family wait on customers during the week, and are assisted by Jewish youths on the weekends when business is heavy.
Overall, Abu Hijah has mixed feelings concerning the past and his village’s relationship with the people of Ein Hod. But he is optimistic that the situation is improving and that Ein Hud will be able solve the land and other issues that are still ongoing.
“Ein Hud must now look to the future and not dwell on what happened in the past. There are good and bad people in all places. But we have to look forward. We have developed good relations with some people in Ein Hod, and some not so good relations with others,” he says.