#tzefat

But the music is there, still.

On Jerusalem Street, Tzefat by tatzlum.photo Via Flickr: The Ancient City of Safed, Israel. January, 2018

Padre👨🏽and I🙋🏽rented a car and are heading to #Tzefat. So far we've hit a dead end, almost one cat😾, and have driven in two lanes at the same time. #Sababa #adventuresintelaviv (at כפר קסם)

Although Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Haifa are considered the main cities of Israel, you don’t have to go far from any of them to find areas considered to be “The Periphery” in today’s terms. This is used to refer to places that basically aren’t one of those three. This includes the far north, and our first visit today was to Nahariyah, a seaside town just a little south of Lebanon where our Temple Emanu-El Women of Reform Judaism has a sister chapter. Nahariyah itself is a pretty town on the coast, once a vacation destination for Israelis that was initially settled by German Jews but eventually fell on hard times. In recent years Argentinian Jews immigrated there during their severe economic crisis, reviving the area. We met in the bomb shelter/synagogue with Emet v’Shalom’s leadership and very part-time rabbi, Rabbi Ariella Graetz. The facility is basic in the extreme, but apparently is better and more accessible than their old synagogue facility which was a truly bedraggled old bomb shelter. While there are many Orthodox synagogues in little Nahariyah with fine buildings and state-supported rabbis, the small Reform congregation, which is now 50 years old, has to make do with this medium-sized room, divided in half by a concrete wall. They are extremely grateful for our congregation’s support and friendship, and Lisa Erly brought them some Ben’s Bells this time, while Roberta Watson brought more of the hand-knitted kippot our WRJ has been making for them. We had a good briefing on the reality of Reform Judaism in Nahariyah from Sue, a community leader, and Marco, originally an oleh from Argentina, and had an interesting discussion of what it can be like to live in the shadow of rockets coming in from Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. In spite of their challenges they attract hundreds to their holiday celebrations, which are held above ground in a community center or in a theater. For many of our group this was an introduction to bomb shelter experiences in Israel as well. Nowadays all new buildings in Israel are required to be constructed with safe rooms and stairwells that are reinforced into bomb-shelter-quality protection, but the older buildings still have shelters beneath them. These bomb shelters might more properly be termed missile shelters today, and they are not just theoretical protections. If in earlier times in Israel’s history the fear was of Egyptian or Syrian airstrikes, the current very realistic worry is of mostly un-aimed Katyushas or other rockets fired by the terrorist entities Hezbollah or Hamas, or long-range rockets from Iran, or even the new Islamic jihadis in Iraq and Syria. Not a common worry in Tucson. From Nahariyah we moved south, although not very far, to the Crusader capital of Akko and its remarkable castle and port. The last stronghold of the final Crusader kingdom, the huge walls, moat, great room and refectory are nearly as powerful to me now as they were when I was a slightly more impressionable teen. Akko itself is a smallish town, built around its medieval castle, with a gorgeous seaside “protected” by its Crusader sea wall, a typical but fun little shuk, and winding streets and battlements. The tunnel exit from the castle was the Templars’ final escape route from the Mamelukes in the 14th century, and they withdrew to Cyprus and Rhodes until they were given Malta by the Pope after the Ottoman Turks drove them out of those strongholds. It was on Malta that the “Maltese Knights” held out against the last great Muslim drive to take the western Mediterranean, which led to the Battle of Lepanto and the Christian reconquest of the eastern parts of the Med. Having been on Malta last year the connections were clear, but wild nonetheless. Nothing is stranger than the reality of history. From Akko we drove across the north, inland from the sea finally, to the magical, mystical, commercial town of Tzefat. I always learn something I didn’t know about Tzefat, and this time it was a combination of things. First, I have always wondered why it was that this small town became the center of both mysticism and Jewish law in the 16th century. Understanding that the Expulsion from Spain in 1492, and from Portugal in 1496 meant that Sephardic Jews had to go somewhere, and adding the fact that the Roman Papal version of the Inquisition also began to drive Jews from Italy in the 1500’s there was reason for all Jews, and perhaps particularly the outstanding rabbinic mystics of these countries to leave. The astonishing group of Kabbalists who arrived specifically in Tzefat did come because it is the closest town to cave on Mt. Meron where Shimon Bar Yochai was said to have written the Zohar. But they also came because the Ottoman Empire established a valuable textile industry in the dying of wool there, and wanted skilled craftsmen and businessmen to make it thrive. The Jews fleeing Spanish, Portugese, and Vatican persecution had those skills. Not for the last time successful Jewish businessmen supported a religious leap forward in our tradition, and led to an incredible fertility in mystical and legal development in Judaism. Lurianic Kabbalah, named for the greatest of the mystics, Rabbi Isaac Luria, the “Ari”, developed the mystical system to an extremely high and even abstruse level, and many of our current Shabbat practices, including the preparations of Kabbalat Shabbat and the beautiful poetic song Lecha Dodi, were developed in Tzefat. Second, while visiting the little gem of the Abouhav Synagogue, which has three separate arks (!) for some obscure reason, I also learned that Tzefat’s famed, lovely, tiny synagogues, each named for and dedicated to the memory of a great rabbi of its golden age in the 16th and 17th centuries, are essentially rebuilt structures following the catastrophes of two major earthquakes over the centuries. As wonderful as the multicolored Ari Synagogue is, for example, in his own day it was merely a field that the youngish rabbi—he died at the age of 38, his entire legendary career in Tzefat just two years long, about the same amount of time as Jesus’ entire recorded ministry in the same region about 1500 years earlier—used to welcome the Sabbath with his disciples. And finally, I also learned that the commercial aspect of Tzefat still is integral to its mysticism. After touring the lovely streets and beautiful small synagogues that wind around the hillside town, our group immersed itself in the contemporary, and perhaps contemplative, practice of shopping the many art and Judaic stores and galleries of Tzefat. To judge by the contented smiles and lighter wallets of our own congregation this proved to be an emotionally successful experience of the divine as well. I have many memories of past visits to Tzefat, ranging from a glorious egalitarian Rosh Chodesh service we conducted secretly in the Caro Synagogue to getting kicked out of the Ari Synagogue for attempting the same thing two years later, from a frigid Shabbaton with Chabadniks at Chanukah time to an intense late-winter Shabbat morning spent with the Bratslaver Chasidim there. Each time I go it is the same, and yet very different and somehow never quite predictable. Rather like Israel in general, but more so. From Tzefat we headed to the beautiful Kibbutz Hotel at Kfar Blum, not far from the Lebanese border—you can see a town above it that is technically divided between Israeli and Lebanese sovereignty. It is a green and very fertile region, the Hula Valley, that was once swamp, a true early Zionist project. As pretty as the Kibbutz is, there is an odd element to the guest area. Some commented that it seemed much like the old Catskills Resorts, with older—mostly Orthodox Jews—sitting out around tables on the lawns before and after dinner. A funny element in a very Israeli setting.

Haven't checked tumblr since I went to Israel for my graduation trip. Just checking in! This photo was taken in Tzefat, while I was walking through its beautiful streets.