How the Founder of As Promised Magazine is Searching for Humanity
By Victoria Hood
Creative Director and Editor in Chief David Haliva is on an inquisitive search for empathy and understanding. As the founder of As Promised, an international, bi-annual print magazine about culture, food, art and design from the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, he is building a platform that showcases the diverse creative pursuits of a region with immense culture, history, and unfortunately religious and political unrest. This November will mark the magazine’s New York City debut with a two-month popup on Broome Street. Yet, before we get into details about the launch, let us address the elephant in the room: can a Jewish man living is Tel Aviv, Israel encourage humanity through the study of his neighbors’ creativity?
David grew up in environment where Jewish and Arab culture and traditions influenced him. While he was raised in Haifa in the north of Israel, his mother was born in Egypt and his father was born in Lebanon and raised in a kibbutz. He therefore grew up familiar with both the French language from his mother’s side, and Arabic from his father’s side. As a young adult he moved to Jaffa, a port city that was settled in the Early Bronze Age, fought over during the Crusades, ruled by the Ottomans for two-centuries, and is today has a heterogeneous population of Jews, Christians, and Muslims. There he decided to study Arabic because, as he mentioned, “it felt very connected to my roots.”
While predominantly a branding expert with a sharp eye for graphic design, art, and photography, David is no stranger to the publishing world. For his final university project in 1998, David launched a magazine called 42 degrees, which, he explains, “showcased an underground cast of creatives, giving a voice to the arts and culture iconoclasts that were shaping the region.” Later on in his career, as the Creative Director and Founder of his own agency, clients requested his help and knowledge in producing their own books. One notable literary project is 101 Treasures: From the National Library of Israel that recounts stories about the regions history and people starting from 5th century Babylonia to modern-day Tel Aviv.
In 2016, David published his first cookbook called Divine Food in collaboration with Gestalten. “Creatively, Divine Food was liberating for me to make. I had made cookbooks in the past, but they were for clients, and I had to compromise on the look and feel of each of them. Now I had full control: I was the editor who chose the right people for the level I wanted it to be,” shares David. Thoughtfully the book is divided into four chapters (The North, Jerusalem, The Coast, and The South), and demonstrates Israel’s relationship between Israeli and Palestinian, and more broadly Jewish and Arab, recipes.
David and I have a curious detail in common: he is the father of four sons, and I was raised with four older brothers. In Israel, national military service is mandatory for all Israeli citizens over the age of 18. In the region’s current political turmoil and war, it is therefore understandable that David fears for his children’s future. And as I type, my late mother’s words keep coming back to me, “parents, especially mothers, give life, and it is very hard for us to see it taken away.” And here we circle back to As Promised.
David launched As Promised magazine in 2019 as a means to encourage humanity in the region. In the words of the Editor in Chief, the publication “goes beyond the borders of Israel and explores the architecture, design, culinary, fashion, art and more in our neighboring countries and presents a combination of ancient and modern nomadism, a collection of adventures, a gateway connecting east and west.” Personally, for his children, family, and his country, he wants it to be a sign of hope for the future. With articles ranging from a photographer documenting Russian immigrants in a kibbutz, to a singer tracing her Iranian roots, to two creative Muslim collaborators living in Tel Aviv, and a first-of-its-kind ecological farm in the Sinai Desert, at the very least there is evidence that the magazine investigates and tries to understand.
On Wednesday, November 13th, As Promised will opens its doors to its first New York City popup. An evolution from their store in The National Library in Jerusalem, the popup will showcase art, design, fashion, food, and literature from both Jewish and Arab creatives and makers. With David’s partners based in New York, the city is logistically an easy choice for the magazine’s first international activation. Symbolically, as David searches for humanity in the region, he finds his next steps looking outward to help reflect on what he’s looking to understand. NYC, therefore, is an opportunity and exercise, if you will, to communicate with the international community his love and passion toward the myriads of related cultures and beauty from the region of the Levant in hopes to better articulate, and fine tune his own understanding and fuse it with those of the broader collective.
Read the stories from Issue 8 here.
As Promised: New York City Popup
Dates: November 13th, 2024 to January 5th, 2025
Hours: 11AM to 8PM (daily)
Address: 347 Broome Street, New York, NY 10013
Follow: @aspromisedmag
Credit
Michal Chelbin for Aharon Genish
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