Friday, April 15, 2011

Shabbat Shalom -- Jaffa Files -- Kalat Hayam -- Shushan

Shushan. Kalat Hayam


Music from the 2009 Israeli movie Jaffa.

The ancient port city of Jaffa (Yafa in Arabic, Yafo in Hebrew) is mentioned in the Book of Jonah and elsewhere in the Bible. Often referred to in Arabic as Urs al-Bahr (Bride of the Sea), a century ago Jaffa was typical of Levantine port cities in its religious, ethnic, linguistic, and economic mix. In 1900, out of a total population estimated at 35,000, approximately 23,000 were Muslims, with the remainder comprising Christians (5,000, of various denominations and nationalities) and Jews (7,000). Jaffa was the principal port of entry for tourists and immigrants to Ottoman Palestine and - after Jerusalem - it was the country’s second largest city as well as its commercial entrepôt. Relations between Arabs and Jews in Jaffa under the British Mandate (1917-1948) were punctuated by periodic cycles of violence, culminating in the mass exodus of 70,000 Palestinian Arabs from Jaffa as a consequence of the 1948-1949 Arab-Israeli war.
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You know we love Old Jaffa.
Previous Jaffalove here, here and here.

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