Safed History

Revision as of 19:22, 20 October 2011

(Hebrew: צפת / Hebrew Ashkanazi: Tsfas; Hebrew Sepharadi: Tzfat; Arabic: Safed. Alternative spellings: Zefat, Zfat, Zefas, Zfas, Zefad)

Tzfat is a northern Israeli city whoes history dates back thousands of years, though its Golden Age it came together with the Jews who, fleeing the Spanish Inquisition, developed the town into an important center of Jewish life.

Contents:

Early History

Biblical Times

Crusader Period

Middle Ages

              Refugees from the Inquisition

        City of Kabbalah

Modern History

       Immigrants from Eastern Europe -- Hassidic and Lithuanian communities

         Earthquakes

       Famine

       British Rule

       War of Independence

Tzfat Today

Early History

There are limited references to pre-Crusader Safed history. Early writings note that during the time that the Temple stood in Jerusalem, citizens would light huge bonfires on Tzfat’s Citadel, one in a line of stations, to announce each New Month. Some scholars believe that Tzfat was one of the 40 Biblical “Cities of Refuge” and served as a sanctuary for priestly families which fled Jerusalem during Roman rule in the 3rd and 4th centuries. Josephus, in his “War of the Jews” mentioned stationing a battalion of soldier in “Sepeph” which many scholars believe referred to Safad.

The Crusaders arrived in Tzfat in the 11th century and built a huge fortress on Tzfat’s “Metzuda”, the Citadel. This is the largest Crusader fortress built in the Middle East. A Jewish community existed in Zefat during this time and some Arabs began to move into the town and establish an Arab Quarter. With the fall of the Crusaders and the rise of the Mameluke rule in the 13th century, the existing Jewish and Arab populations began to grow slowly.

Middle Ages

Many Jews who fled the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal made their way to Israel in the 15th and 16th centuries. Most settled in Jerusalem but some were drawn to Tzfat, especially the Kabbalists. The study of Kabbalah first developed in the 2nd century A.D. in northern Israel. Many Kabbalists who moved to the Land of Israel after the upheavals of the Inquisition wanted to live and study in the area where the sage, Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, author of the Kabbalistic “Zohar” had lived and taught.

Rabbi Isaac Luria, the ARI was one of the great Kabbalists who came to live in Zefat during the 16th century. The ARI only lived in Tzfat for three years but during this period he learned, taught and refined the study of Jewish mysticism. Lurianic Kabbalah emphasizes how a Jew’s understanding of the secrets of the Torah can enhance his relationships with God and with his fellow man. Lurianic Kabbalah played a strong influence on the development of the Hassidic movement and most Kabbalah scholars, even today, study the ARI’s teachings. Due to the ARI’s influence in Tsfat, the Jewish World began to regard Tzfat as the City of Kabbalah.

Other great scholars who lived in Tzfat included Rabbi Moshe Cordovero, Rabbi Ya’akov Beirav, Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz and Rabbi Yosef Caro. Rabbi Caro’s scholarly work “Shulhan Aruch” played a major role in guiding post-Inquisition far-flung Jewish communities maintain proper Jewish observances and laws.

Post-Middle Ages

Tzfat’s Jewish “Golden Age” ended with a 1759 earthquake which toppled much of the local economy as well as the physical structure of the city. Ashkanazi Jews, beginning with the Lithuanian students of the Vilna Gaon and supplemented by Hassidic followers of the Ba’al Shem Tov augmented the existing community of Sephradi (Mediterranean and North African) Jews but famines, epidemics, more earthquakes and Druze and Arab pogroms once again decimated the Jewish population. The Jewish and Arab population numbers remained fairly equal until World War I when European donations dried up. Many Jews left Tzfat at this time. Some moved to other areas in Israel but others emigrated to America, Australia and South America. When the British routed the Turks during World War I and imposed the British Mandate in Israel, the Jews of Tzfat welcomed them, believing that they would support the Jews’ dream of self-rule. British policy turned decidedly pro-Arab, however, and contributed to the deterioration of Jewish-Arab relations in Tzfat.

A watershed event in Jewish-Arab relations occurred in 1929. Arabs throughout the country rioted, convinced that the growing Jewish population was intent on removing them from their lands. In Safed, the Arabs rioted for three days, killing 18 people, wounding many more and burning down a large part of the Jewish Quarter. Witness reported that the British soldiers looked on impassively, only protecting Jewish lives after the initial rioting subsided. These riots occurred during the same period as the riots in Hebron. Unlike the survivors of the Hebron massacre who escaped to Jerusalem, the Jews of Tsfat had nowhere to go. They rebuilt their homes and began to drill in self-defense skills.

War of Independence and the Beginning of the State

Both Jews and Arabs focused on Tzfat as the “Capitol of the North” during the War of Independence. The British turned over the high lookouts of the city to Arab forces and left in April 1948. The Jewish Haganah and Irgun, quasi-military organizations, fought side by side against the Arab forces which included troops from Syria and Jordan. Jewish forces successfully held off numerous Arab assaults until they were able to capture the city’s strategic police station and Citadel and end the battle.

In the years following the establishment of the State of Israel, Tzfat absorbed thousands of immigrants, most of whom were refugees from their native countries. Many Hungarian, Polish and Romanian Jews from Eastern Europe settled in Tzfat, among them a sizeable number of Holocaust survivors. The immigrant waves also included large numbers of Moroccan and Tunisian Jewish refugees. In the 1980s Safed became a center of absorption for Ethiopian immigrants. In 1990 thousands of Russian Jews arrived in Safed to make their home in the area.