A Journey from the Ma’abara to Architecture

A Story Unfolding Across Timelines.

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Our Family's Story Begins

My father, Nissim Portal, was born in Marrakesh, Morocco. He is the ninth of 11 children born to Haim and Zohara Portal and survived. The middle-class family lived comfortably and had precious memories from when they lived in Morocco, relative to what Jews could expect living in the diaspora. While some of the older children arrived in Israel earlier, my father arrived with my grandparents and the younger children in the early 1960s.?

The Portal family arrived in Haifa to the Ma’abara and, in plural Ma’abarot, immigrant and refugee absorption camps, which constituted one of the largest public projects planned by the Israel state to implement its sociospatial and housing policies. In practice, Ma’abar was a tent camp that served as a temporary housing solution for all Jews who arrived in Israel after its establishment.?

The vast majority of Jews that arrived in the first decades were refugees, and the young country didn't have any housing solutions to provide. As a result, the government established dozens of tent camps as a temporary solution for arrivals. Most immigrants were refugees and arrived with nothing but clothes they wore.?

In the first decade after Israel declared independence, about a million immigrants arrived in the new country. During that time, the Israeli government imposed an austerity policy to overcome the economic crisis that hit the young country in the early days after its establishment. The austerity policy officially ended in 1959; however, most of the public was still poor.?

The Life in the Ma’abara

My grandparents, my father, and his siblings arrived in Israel in the early 1960s to the Ma’abara. Living in poverty life after having a comfortable life in Morocco was a shock for my grandparents, who needed to provide for their seven young kids. They didn’t have jobs since their professions weren’t relevant in the new country, and available jobs to establish a country required skills and knowledge they didn’t have. Like many families that arrived from North Africa and Arab countries, they were unemployed and barely provided the family's basic needs for survival.

After living in the Ma'abara for several years, the family moved to a small 750-square-foot public housing apartment that had to accommodate nine people. Living in these conditions while my grandfather couldn't find a job was a daily struggle, and my father remembers the poverty and many hardships.?

In the early days of the country, Jews who arrived in Israel from North African and Arab countries faced severe discrimination from government institutions. Almost all Moroccan Jews were sent to Ma'abarot (plural of Ma'abara) as immediate housing solutions. Then, the public housing provided to them was located in the suburbs or along the borders of the country, and residents were not provided with job opportunities or training for employment that was needed at the time.

Rise Above the Circumstances

Fast-forward to his 20s, my father did the impossible, overcame tremendous challenges, and got accepted into architecture studies at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology . He was the first and only one in his family to earn an academic degree in an Israeli university at that time. His curiosity and passion for learning, along with his love of the arts and entertainment, led him to accumulate knowledge in various areas of life.

After graduating, one of his first jobs was as a project manager for the renewal of public housing projects built during the 1950s and 1960s to accommodate Jewish immigrants who arrived in Israel after its establishment. Over the years, what began as an idealistic, pioneering effort to provide fast and affordable housing solutions for nearly a million immigrant refugees had turned into neighborhoods plagued by poverty and crime.

Life has a strange way of bringing things full circle. Growing up in the very housing projects his family moved into after leaving the Ma’abara, my father began his career as an architect in those same neighborhoods. Recognizing the social damage caused by these housing projects, the Israeli government initiated dedicated efforts to rehabilitate these distressed areas. My dad was hired to help repair the damage caused by government decisions that had shaped his own childhood and influenced the person he became.

Public Housing: A Global Social Disaster

Over time, public housing projects evolved into severe social problems of poverty and crime, not only in Israel but also in Europe and the United States. So I couldn’t help but wonder, how did these once-promising public housing projects, built with innovative technology to address urgent needs, turn into similar social disasters in different cultures and distant continents??

While housing remains a critical issue even today, the construction industry continues to evolve and innovate. However, the public, especially first-time homeowners, often doesn't grasp the complexity of what it takes to build successful neighborhoods. Given my father's firsthand experience with all aspects of Israeli housing projects, from growing up in these neighborhoods to helping repair them, I asked him to learn about these projects, starting from their inception.?

In the following episodes, I’m sharing my dialogues with my father and inviting you to join our conversation. He begins with a brief overview of what happened in the pre-state period until we reach the early days of Israel and the construction solutions adopted to house almost a million immigrants who arrived in Israel with nothing but the clothes they wore.

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