In al-Bireh, the town adjoining Ramallah, the annual “Loyalty to Heritage and the Ancestors’ Legacy” festival is organised by the Al-Bireh Youth Foundation, alongside the al-Bireh heritage festival, to show the daily life of the town and its people.
The town has an older craft history: residents farmed — olives above all — traded between neighbouring towns and villages, and worked in shoemaking, clothing, foodstuffs and pottery, until the early twentieth century, when many emigrated to America.
What happens at the festival each year is not only a return to the past, but an affirmation that memory is made anew every day.
Source: “Al-Bireh” — Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Bireh
Cover photo: יעקב — Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
