Safed (Tzfat in Hebrew) sits at around 900 meters on a Galilee mountaintop, the highest city in Israel. It is one of Judaism's four holy cities, together with Jerusalem, Hebron and Tiberias, and the city most connected to Kabbalah.
Its golden age came in the 16th century. After the expulsion from Spain in 1492, many Jewish scholars settled here under Ottoman rule, and in a few decades Safed became the spiritual capital of the Jewish world. Rabbi Joseph Karo wrote the Shulchan Aruch, the code of Jewish law still used today. Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz wrote "Lecha Dodi", the song that welcomes Shabbat in synagogues everywhere. And Rabbi Isaac Luria, known as the Ari, taught a new mystical system that shaped Kabbalah for centuries.
Walk the old synagogue quarter and you will see the Ari Ashkenazi and Ari Sephardi synagogues, the Abuhav and the Karo synagogues, many with painted ceilings and the famous blue paint. Blue, locals say, reminds us of heaven and keeps away the evil eye.
Below them is the artists' quarter, filled with galleries of painters, micro-calligraphers and silversmiths - a movement that started in the 1950s. Taste the local Safed cheese, and look out over Mount Meron and the Sea of Galilee.
Our Mystical Safed tour explores the stories, the synagogues and the art with a local guide.
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