To Collect Haifa

The collections of Dr. Yirmiyahu Rimon (born in Haifa, 1933-2018), constituting one of the largest and most important private collections on the history of Palestine and Zionism, are the product of decades of enthusiastic and diligent collectorship. They bring to mind Walter Benjamin's definition, in an essay on collecting (in The Flaneur), of the collector as a courageous rebel, collecting objects not for their utilitarian value but rather according to their beauty and the memories they evoke.

The work of collecting is closely intertwined with Dr. Rimon's biography. In his childhood and youth in Haifa in the 1940s he studied at the Hebrew Reali School and collected stamps. He was introduced to the world of collecting through his father, Shmuel Rimon, a collector of artworks, particularly German Expressionism. During his army service in the Nahal Infantry Brigade, Rimon met his future wife Shoshana and began to cultivate her stamp collection, and to collect rare items associated with the history of the Palestine postal service. In the 1960s, upon completing graduate studies in aeronautical engineering at the Technion, Rimon continued to Ph.D. studies at Princeton University. From the late 1960s to the early 1990s he headed the Computer Science Department at RAFAEL.

Throughout the years, Rimon continued to cultivate his diverse collections: books on travel, tourism, and research; a collection of painted and photographed postcards and New Year's greeting cards; collections of unique posters and maps; a collection of photographs of the most prominent photographers working in Palestine and Israel, including Felix Bonfils, Leo Kahn, and Ya'acov Ben-Dov; artworks of the Bezalel School, including works by Ze'ev Raban, Boris Schatz, and others. The collections' range of interests is broad: tourism and research of Palestine, the Zionist Congress, Herzl, important events in the history of the Zionist Movement, the JNF, Jewish settlement in Palestine, Jewish soldiers during World War II, Holocaust survivors, the illegal immigration movement to Palestine, local transportation, and more. All these reflect Rimon's profound interest in the story of Zionism and the establishment of the State of Israel.

Rimon dedicated a special collection to the city of Haifa, containing thousands of items documenting its history from the Ottoman period to the late twentieth century. Thousands of photographs, postcards, documents, posters, and objects reflect a prominent chapter in the architectural and cultural history of the city, and the Zionist views of the founders of Jewish Haifa. These materials provide sources for research and study, and a basis for historical displays. It is thus no wonder that many curators and scholars have had recourse to the collection. Items from the Haifa collection have often been included in displays at the Haifa City Museum since the museum's founding in 2000, until, finally, the collection was recently acquired by Haifa Museums. This exhibition affords visitors a glimpse of Haifa's past as the Capital of the North, through rare gems from the Haifa collection of Dr. Rimon.