Zefat (Safad, or Safed) Israel Israel
424 CE to 435 CE
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The Middle of The Earth
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Following the expulsions of Jews from Iberia, small numbers of them go to Safed in upper Galilee, where a small Jewish community exists.
Teachers coming from families expelled from Spain provide the main impetus for the establishment here of a religious center of extreme importance for Judaism.
Isaac ben Solomon Luria, the Jerusalem-born son of an immigrant Ashkenazic father and a Sephardic mother, had in Egypt studied the Talmud and the Zohar, the central and revered work of the Kabbalah.
The thirty-six-year-old Jewish mystic had settled round 1570 in Zefat in Galilee, where he had studied under Moses ben Jacob Cordovero, the greatest Kabbalist of the time.
Although Luria’s teaching will traditionally be associated with Safed, he dies on August 5, 1572, having spent only the last three years of his life here.
The influential Jewish mystic, whose thinking combines kabbalistic mysticism and messianism, had held a form of emanationism, teaching that, by voluntary self-contraction (tsimtsum), God had made room for creation, which took the form of an emanation, or "overflowing," of the divine light.
This light was enclosed in finite "vessels" (kelim), which shattered and brought darkness (evil) into creation and mingled with the light.
To prepare the way for the Messiah, humankind, through the practice of saintliness and asceticism, must release the divine sparks from this mixture to make possible the restoration (tikkun) of God’s divine light.
His disciples continue his school of mysticism, referred to as Lurianic Kabbalah.
Although Luria had written very little, his doctrine will be transmitted, amplified, and probably somewhat distorted through the works of his disciples, of which the main one is Hayyim ben Joseph Vital, who, a couple of decades on, will write 'Etz Hayyim (”Tree of Life”), the standard presentation of Lurianic Kabbala.
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.
Seventy disciples of the late Vilna Gaon, the foremost leader of misnagdic (non-hasidic) Jewry, arrive in Palestine on August 8, 1809, in accordance with the Vilna Gaon's wishes.
This immigration is one of the first modern Jewish migrations to Palestine, although Hasidic immigration was already active in the 1780s (even by the rebbes themselves, such as the elderly Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk).
The disciples of the Vilna Gaon, known as Perushim due to how they isolate themselves from worldly concerns to study Torah, originally settle in Safed because the Muslim authorities in Jerusalem prevent Ashkenazi Jews from settling there.
In parallel to the peasant uprising in Palestine (south of the Damascus Eylaet), Galilee-based rebels capture Safad and Tiberias in the eastern Galilee.
The Hauran is also encompassed by the rebellion.
The most severe events take place in Galilee, climaxing with the 1834 looting of Safed, which is mostly an attack against the Jewish community of Safed.
It begins on Sunday, June 15, 1834, and will last for thirty-three days.
The district governor tries to quell the violent outbreak, but fails to do so and flees.
The arrival of Bashir's Druze troops follow intervention of foreign consuls.
In late July 1834, Emir Bashir leads his forces toward Galilee, but before advancing further southward, he makes a number of proclamations advising that the rebels of Safad surrender.
The rebel leadership in Safad agrees to negotiate and sends Sheikh Salih al-Tarshihi as an emissary to Bashir to arrange a meeting.
Bashir invites the leaders of Safad to the village of Bint Jbeil where they agree to surrender and submit to Egyptian authority.
Afterward, Bashir arrives in Safad where he arranges for rebel leaders from nearby areas to surrender as well.
Bashir's Druze forces under the command of his son Amin, enter Safad without resistance on July 18, 1834, making way for the displaced residents from its Jewish quarter to return.
The wintertime slows communication in the area, and nearly eight days pass before reliable reports come in from Safed regarding the nature of damage there.
The letters state that the town, along with Tiberias and many other villages, has been overthrown.
The British, evacuating the area of Zefat, give the Arabs the fortified police post on nearby Mount Canaan (Har Kenaan) three thousand one hundred and forty-nine feet (nine hundred and sixty meters) above sea level and five hundred feet (one hundred and fifty meters) above the old Jewish section, because the population of Zefat is predominantly Arab.
The Haganah nevertheless takes the city on May 12, 1948, and the Arab population flees.