Shabbat in Safed

I spent last weekend as a guest of family friends in Safed, the Galilee home of Jewish mysticism and kabbalah. The picture above is of the entrance to the Ari Ashkenazi synagogue, which was built on the very spot where during the 16th century Jews used to gaze at the fields as Shabbat began to see if the Messiah was walking across the fields, come to usher in a period of redemption and eternal peace.

This was the first time I have ever spent more than a couple of hours there, the first time I visited the town since I came to live in Israel 20 months ago, and the first time I have been up north since the recent war. Some of the most influential and innovative Rabbis lived here and shaped Jewish theology, liturgy, and mysticism. You can read all about it here.

From a cultural and spiritual perspective, Shabbat in Safed is really something special, dare I say it, even more than in Jerusalem. I had a great time and took lots of photos, and was made to feel very welcome by my hosts, who live an orthodox Jewish lifestyle.

The views from the town are amazing. Hope you enjoy the pictures:



















View of Mount Meron (the highest point within Israel's pre-67 borders). The army base at the top of the mountain was a big target for Hezbollah (not that they didn't have plenty of civilian targets to be getting on with). If you look carefully you can see that the slope of the mountain is scorched from the many katyusha rockets that fell a little short of their target and burned trees.




















A better view of Mount Meron.





















The minaret is evidence of Safed's Arab past. During the Israeli War of Independence in 1948 ten thousand Arabs (including Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas) fled the town – 5/6th of the town's total population. The town's 2,000 Jews, whom the British army tried to evacuate, were able to remain in their homes.





















Crater left by a katyusha rocket hitting the road.





















The

















The ugly municipal building. If you look closely at the concrete structure in the middle of the picture you can see the shrapnel holes made by the rockets from Lebanon. The rockets can only kill from their explosions within about a 10 metre radius, so Hezbollah stuffed each rocket with thousands of ball bearings to add an effective shrapnel effect.





















The view southwards. The heat haze means you can't see much but at least you get an idea of how the town in perched in a vantage point over the Galilee. I think Mount Tabor is the peak in the distance.


I stayed for Sunday, the day after the Sabbath, so I could wander round the town when everything was open. People think of Safed as a religious town and it is, but all kinds of Israelis live there, including secular people. I love the clean fragrant air of Jerusalem, its mountain feel and the smell of pines. Safed has it too, but doubled.

While I was wandering through the town an elderly ultra-orthodox man saw a book I was carrying and stopped to ask me about it. I was surprised to hear an American, west coast accent. I looked into his shining blue eyes and heard his warm, energetic voice saying "revolution, revolution!" as he tried to book me into a Chabad guest house – and I realised that this guy could have been Timothy Leary, so to speak. I mean if he hadn't got religion (I'm pretty sure he wasn't born religious), he could have been talking the same way with the same gleam in his eyes and trying to turn people onto LSD or transcendental meditation or pacifism in San Francisco. I don't mean to mock him at all. I just mean that all these Jewish radicals doing their things, they are all part of the same timeless tradition of a culture that is always seeking breakthroughs between man and man, and between man and spirit.

After morning prayers on Shabbat with my host in the beautiful Abuhav synagogue we went to a brief mini-lunch with his Rabbi, attended by about a hundred of his followers. At one point the elderly Rabbi said a few words. As he started to speak all conversation stopped, everyone leaned forward in anticipation, and those sitting near him paused in mid-movement. This total devotion to a charismatic Rabbi is part of the ultra-orthodox Jewish world. I couldn't understand why it all looked so familiar – it wasn't part of my life experience… then it hit me that this is just what the most famous Jewish radical of all – Jesus – would have looked like with his disciples all eagerly awaiting to hear one of his parables of a mere few sentences. Jesus (another Galilee native) just would have been wearing robes, not a black hat and coat, that's all.

Most Jews I have known deliberately avoid learning much about Jesus or identifying with him in any way, for obvious reasons. Most Jews I know find the miracles, the faith healing etc. ludicrous… yet Safed abounds with stories of charismatic Rabbis like the Baba Sali who is supposed to have healed the sick, and performed at least one miracle I know of within this very town (scroll down to "A Story on the Baba Sali").

Sometimes it seems that the more things change, the more they stay the same.