Safed (or Zefat, Tsfat, Zfat, Safad, Safet, Tzfat)

After our visit to the Hula Nature Reserve and Rosh Pina, we drove on to the city of Safed, where we were staying for the weekend. I hadn't been there since 2010 so was excited to go back and have another look around. Our friends had booked rooms at the gorgeous Artists' Colony Inn in Safed's Old City. The inn itself deserves a mention. Susan, the owner, was very friendly. The inn is beautiful, uniquely designed with a perfect mix of old and new. The Israeli breakfast was delicious and the views were amazing. We will definitely be going back.

Safed is an ancient city located in northern Israel, 900 meters above sea level, in the mountains of the Upper Galilee. It is one of Judaism's four Holy Cities, along with Jerusalem, Hebron and Tiberias and today is considered to be the centre of Jewish mysticism. According to the great mystics of the past, the Messiah will come from Safed on his way to Jerusalem. The city has also become known as Israel's art capital, though sadly many of the galleries seemed to be closed when we visited, probably victims of Covid-19 and the lack of tourists in the country.

According to some sources, the city was founded in 70CE. It flourished in the 16th century, when many famous Jewish religious scholars and mystics moved to Safed following the Spanish Expulsion, fleeing from the horrors of the Inquisition. It was here that the first printing press in the Middle East was set up, in 1578 publishing the first Hebrew book to be printed in Israel. At that time the town was also a thriving trade centre. However, Safed suffered terribly during the ensuing years due to earthquakes, plagues and Arab attacks. In modern times, the liberation of Safed was one of the most dramatic episodes in the 1948 War of Independence. We learnt all about it when we visited the Citadel or Metzuda, located on a hilltop in the centre of the city.
The Citadel is in fact the remains of what was in its day the largest Crusader fortress in the Middle East. Throughout history, whoever controlled Safed's citadel controlled the whole of the Galilee. It has been fought over by every major power from the Romans onward, with the most recent battle being in 1948 during the War of Independence. The fledgling Jewish army captured the Citadel from the local Arab forces who took advantage of its towering location to bomb the Jewish Quarter down below. Today there are two memorials at the Citadel, one listing the names of the 14 Palmach soldiers who fell in the battle for the Citadel and a second spire monument, on the top of the hill, commemorating the 42 soldiers who fell in the battles over Safed.

We walked down the hill from the Citadel, towards the town. We spotted a pillbox, above, jutting out into the road and on the other side of the road, one of the buildings of Safed College. During the Mandate period these two buildings were part of the city jail and police station compound. Before the British left the town they handed this strategic location, along with three other high points in the city, to Arab forces. During the battle for Safed it was essential that this extremely important site was captured and there was fierce fighting over the location before victory went to the Palmach. You can still see bullet holes in the two buildings. Even though the old pillbox has no practical use today it has been left as is due to its historical status.

Opposite the pillbox is a Davidka monument. The Davidka was a homemade mortar that was constructed in secret during the pre-independence period. It was very inaccurate and its effectiveness was due more to the amount of noise it made, rather than on the shell's ability to deliver a decisive blow! The mortar was crucial in the battle of Safed and was used by Palmach and Irgun soldiers in the battle for the Citadel. Every year there is a memorial ceremony in front of the Davidka, on Yom HaZikaron (Remembrance Day), when the city honours its dead, and a wreath is laid on the cannon itself.

We walked further along and found the Great Stairs. The stairs begin at the bottom of the Old City and run right up to Safed's main shopping street near the top of the city. We started at the top (very sensible!), stopping first to look up and directly across the road where you can still see the searchlight and the gun placement slits of the old watchtower built by the British to guard the stairs, below.
The stairs were built by the British to separate the Jewish and Arab quarters (now the Old City and the Artists Quarter respectively) after riots in 1936. They were heavily guarded and at night a searchlight swept the stairs to make sure no one jumped from quarter to quarter.
During the period leading up to and during the War of Independence, to cross from one side of the stairs to the other was to take your life in your hands. It was so dangerous that it became known as Stalingrad Alley, after the Battle of Stalingrad.
The stairs are called, in Hebrew, Ma'alot Olei Hagardom, in memory of the members of the Irgun (an underground Zionist paramilitary group that operated in Mandate Palestine between 1931 and 1948) who were hung by the British in Acre and later buried in Safed after the War of Independence.

We started to walk down these steep stairs, soon turning right. There we found many of Safed's historic synagogues, including the Abhuav Synagogue which has a Torah scroll from the Middle Ages. In the Yosef Caro Synagogue you can see the famous Shulhan Aruch (literally the "set table"), which dates back to the Middle Ages and is still used as the primary source for understanding Jewish religious laws. I simply enjoyed the narrow cobblestone lanes and alleys and the doors and windows painted blue in mystical symbolism to confuse evil spirits.

Back at the Great Stairs we turned left, which took us right back into the Artists Quarter where we were staying. Before returning to the Artists' Colony Inn I set off to find the Ziffer Sculpture Garden, a small garden that was bequeathed to the Safed municipality by the sculptor Moshe Ziffer and his wife Rachel. When I was an art student in Liverpool back in the late 1980s I had picked up a book of Ziffer's work (and found a note inside handwritten by the sculptor!). I still have it on my bookshelves here in Israel. I was keen to see his work for myself.

Moshe Ziffer was one of Israel's premier sculptors. His work was exhibited in galleries in Tel Aviv and Safed, as well as on the campuses of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the Tel Aviv University, the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, New York and Brussels. He was an environmental sculptor and worked in stone. He sculpted several large sculptures, measuring over two metres high. These sculptures are scattered around the garden for visitors viewing pleasure though, despite the fact that Ziffer requested that the city care for the premises and use the small house as a venue to assist new artists, I found the garden terribly overgrown and in rather a mess. The sculptures were still impressive.

Photo credit: The Artists Colony Inn

* This post has been shared on Creative Mondays Link Up, The Good. The Random. The Fun., Wordless Wednesday (on Tuesday), Our World Tuesday, Tuesday's Treasures and My Corner of the World.