Safed Mystical City
Safed is the highest city located in Israel at ~900 meters and seems to touch the heavens. Coming from Rosh Pina one of the first settlements established in the New Yishuv, the snake road winds up the mountain towards Safed. The city was always one of the 4 holy cities where Jews came to settle with Jerusalem, Hebron, and Tiberius being the others. It has a mystical past tied to the present and future that comes to life in its alleyways. Safed apparently gets its name from Zofeh meaning in Hebrew lookout and indeed from the acropolis of the city where the Crusaders built their mega-fortress are panoramic views that open up the commanding gateway from the Hula/Jordan Valley into the Upper Galilee region. Today there are many historic synagogues dotting the labyrinth of narrow streets that urge the visitor to touch their spiritual side. Next to Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai (Rashbi) as the most revered person in Kabbalah was Rabbi Isaac Luria also known as the Ari (the Lion) by his followers. He was born in 1534 in Jerusalem, educated in Cairo, and lived in Safed only for two years before dying there in 1572. Today I visited with my friend Yitzhak two synagogues named after this great Kabbalist; the Ari Sephardi Synagogue and the Ari Ashkenazi Synagogue. Ari believed that he had frequent interviews with Eliyahu the prophet and was instructed by him to move to Safed. Eliyahu in short was his whisperer (Magid for Kabbalists). Ari developed the idea of creation with the belief that somehow God contracted himself to make room for the world that would be formed. This some advocate was the beginning of the "Big Bang Theory". To receive the Shabbat, Ari dressed in white almost radiating in a white light, looking like the messiah, would walk up the hill with his students from what was then known as Eliyahu's Synagogue before being renamed the Ari (Sephardi) Synagogue. The entourage would arrive at an apple orchard that then was outside the city and there would welcome the Shabbat before returning for prayers at the synagogue. The apple orchard would later be the site of today's Ari (Ashkenazi) synagogue. Why two synagogues with the same name recalls the old Jewish joke that a stranded Jew on a desert island built two synagogues. When rescued he was asked why the need for two? He responded that he needs to have two synagogues so he can say the other one he doesn't go to. This more than explains these two synagogues and the tens of other synagogues that also have long colorful histories. Later also visiting the Abuhav Synagogue and the Yosef Caro Synagogue I found myself falling into a white hole of Kabbalistic mysticism that has wet my appetite to walk these alleys again.
