Zefat has achieved renown in the sixteenth…
1585 CE
Zefat has achieved renown in the sixteenth century as the principal center of the Kabbala, the occult theosophy and interpretation of the Scriptures forming the principal mystical system of Judaism.
The city has hosted such important Kabbalists as Isaac ben Solomon Luria and Joseph Karo, and the doctrines expounded here have spread throughout the Jewish world.
The Hebrew printing press established in Zefat in 1577 is the first in all Asia to use movable type.
Hayyim ben Joseph Vital had in about 1570 become the disciple of Luria, the leading Kabbalist of his time, and after Luria's death in 1572 had professed to be the sole interpreter of the Lurian school.
Having become the leader of Palestinian Jewish Kabbalism, he serves as rabbi and head of a yeshiva (school of advanced Jewish learning) in Jerusalem from 1577 to 1585).
His major work is the 'Etz hayyim (“Tree of Life”), a detailed exposition of Lurian Kabbala, which also appears in altered editions by rivals that he repudiates.