I was navigating, but at times it was challenging, finding Safed is an example: I read about the place as Safed, my map said Tzfat, the roadside sign said something else. When you're driving on a freeway, it's a bit hard to do the mental conversion from one spelling to another at high speed. Here are just a few of Safed's identities: Tzfat Zefad Tzefiya Tsfas Zefas Tzefas Tzfot Tzefat Tsefat Zefat Sefat.

 

Safed is a town on the top of a mountain – I was at home straight away, Kati was unhappy being away from the sea. We had excellent, though quite complicated, directions to our airbnb, which we found easily. The room was nothing like the one alluded to on the listing: it was just big enough for two single beds and a kitchen sink, so our suitcases had to be left in the car around the corner.

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

​

Safed is a truly charming town, right on top of an 850 m mountain, it is the highest city in the Galilee and in Israel. When atop a mountain, I always get a sense of both vulnerability and power, and I suppose many people would feel closer to Heaven. In fact, that's how the Safedians must feel too, as so many of their doors and gates are painted blue to remind us all of God and the sky above.

​

Perhaps because of its elevated position, people attracted to Kabbalism were drawn to settle here. The main text of the kabbalists is the Zohar, which was written in the 12th century in Spain, but was based on teachings from the second century. It maintains that each word, each line in the Torah (the first five books of the Jewish Bible) has a special, deeper meaning which connects a person directly with a higher being. But as with anything to do with belief, there are many different versions of this mysticism; Hasidism is a modern manifestation of it.

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Legend has it that Safed was founded by a son of Noah after the Great Flood in an area that belonged to the tribe of Naphthali, one of the original 12 tribes of Israel. Much later the crusaders set foot in town, erected a citadel, and then the Muslims came, then the crusaders returned and built the largest fortress in the East, then the Mamluks (Muslims from Egypt) came who decapitated the men and sold the women into slavery, and then Safed became an important Jewish town in the 15-16th Century, when Jews began to arrive in large numbers after they were expelled from Spain in 1492 by the Catholic Queen Isabella. The town came under Ottoman rule soon after, when Jews (then about a quarter of the population) were treated well or badly depending on the then current ruler. Russian and Lithuanian (Perushim) Jews settled there in the early 19th century. Meanwhile, the population was devastated by the plague, by eathquakes, by rebellion, by the plague again, then there was more influx of Jewish people from Persia, Morocco and Algeria. Moses Montefiore, the British philanthropist, visited Safed numerous times and financed rebuilding much of the town. (My mother Erzsi lived the last seven years of her life in a Montefiore hostel in Sydney, Australia. The initial funds were provided by him). Today Safed is a Jewish town.

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

 

 

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

​

 

In the 1950s and 1960s, Safed was known as Israel's art capital and an artists' colony was established in the Old City. It is also the Klezmer music capital of the world, hosting a yearly world-renowned festival. And Safed has a Memorial Museum Of Hungarian Speaking Jewry, a museum dedicated to the lost communities of Hungarian Jews. We were so short of time that sadly we couldn't visit the museum. However, I did send a copy of my book, Red Danube, as a donation to add to their collection.