Safed

Safed
Safed COA.png
Safed 2009.jpg
Safed is located in Israel
Safed
District North
Government City
Hebrew צְפַת
(Translit.) Tz'fat
Arabic صفد
Also spelled Tsfat, Tzefat, Zfat, Ẕefat (officially)
Population 28,500[1] (2007)
Mayor Ilan Shohat
Founded in Canaanite age
Coordinates

Safed (Hebrew: צְפַת‎‎, Tz'fat; Arabic: صفد‎, Ṣafad), also known as Zefat (Ashkenazi: Tzfas; Biblical: Ṣ'fath), is a city in the Northern District of Israel. Located at an altitude of 900 metres (2,953 ft), Safed is the highest city in the Galilee and of Israel.[2] Due to its high altitude, Safed experiences warm summers and cold, often snowy, winters.[3] Since the sixteenth century, Safed has been considered one of Judaism's Four Holy Cities, along with Jerusalem, Hebron and Tiberias;[4] since that time, the city has remained a center of Kabbalah, also known as Jewish mysticism.

Due to its beautiful setting surrounded by pine forests and its mild mid-year temperatures, Safed has become a summer holiday resort frequented by Israelis and foreign visitors alike.[5]

Contents

History

According to the Book of Judges, the region was assigned to the Tribe of Naphtali.[6] The city of Safed itself first appears in Jewish sources in the late Middle Ages.[3] It is mentioned in the Jerusalem Talmud as one of five elevated spots where fires were lit to announce the New Moon and festivals during the Second Temple period.[7] Legend has it that Safed was founded by a son of Noah after the Great Flood.[3] Safed has been identified with Sepph, a fortified Jewish town in the Upper Galilee mentioned in the writings of the Roman Jewish historian Josephus (Wars 2:573).

Crusader ruins

In the 12th century, Safed was a fortified city in the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem known as Saphet.[3] The Knights Hospitaller built a castle there. In 1266, the Mamluk sultan Baybars wiped out the Christian Templar population and turned it into a Muslim town called Safad or Safat. Samuel ben Samson who visited the town in the 13th-century mentions the existence of a Jewish community of at least fifty members there.[8] According to al-Dimashqi (who died in Safed in 1327), writing around 1300, Baybars after levelling the old fortress, built a "round tower and called it Kullah...The tower is built in three stories. It is provided with provisions, and halls, and magazines. Under the place is a cistern for rain-water, sufficient to supply the garrison of the fortress from year´s end to year´s end.[9] According to Abu al-Fida, Safed "was a town of medium size. It has a very strongly built castle, which dominates the Lake of Tabariyyah. There are underground watercourses, which bring drinking-water up to the castle-gate...Its suburbs cover three hills... Since the place was conquered by Al Malik Adh Dhahir from the Franks, it has been made the central station for the troops who guard all the coast-towns of that district."[10]

Safed rose to fame in the 16th century as a center of Kabbalah, or Jewish mysticism.[11] A Hebrew printing press was established in Safed in 1577 by Eliezer Ashkenazi and his son, Isaac of Prague.[7] It was the first press in Palestine and the whole of the Ottoman Empire.[12]

Seraya: the Ottoman fortress

After the expulsion of the Islamic rule from Spain during the reconquista which ended by 1492, many prominent rabbis found their way to Safed, among them the kabbalists Isaac Luria (Arizal) and Moshe Kordovero; Joseph Caro, the author of the Shulchan Aruch and Shlomo Halevi Alkabetz, composer of the Sabbath hymn Lecha Dodi. The influx of Sephardi Jews made Safed a global center for Jewish learning and a regional center for trade throughout 15th and 16th centuries.[11] The Kurdish quarter was established in the Middle Ages and continued through to the 19th century.[13]

Under the Ottomans, Safed was part of the vilayet of Sidon. The orthodox Sunni courts arbitrated over cases in 'Akbara, Ein al-Zeitun and as far away as Mejdel Islim.[13] In 1555, the Jewish population was 8,000-10,000. By the end of the century, it had grown to 20,000 or 30,000. An outbreak of plague decimated the population in 1742 and the Near East earthquake of 1759 left the city in ruins. An influx of Russian Jews in 1776 and 1781, and of the Perushim in 1809 and 1810, reinvigorated the community.[14]

Muslim quarter of Safed circa 1908

In 1812, another plague killed 80% of the Jewish population, and in 1819 the remaining Jews were held for ransom by Abdullah Pasha, the governor of Acre. The Galilee earthquake of 1837 killed 2,158 inhabitants, of which 1507 were Ottoman subjects, Muslim or Jewish. The north, Jewish section of the town was almost entirely destroyed, while the south, Moslem section suffered far less damage.[15] In 1847, plague struck Safed again.

The Jewish population was increased in the last half of the 19th century by immigration from Iran, Morocco, and Algeria. Moses Montefiore visited Safed seven times and financed rebuilding of much of the town. Virtually all the antiquities of Safed were destroyed by earthquakes.

The Qaddura family was a major political force in Safed. At the end of Ottoman rule the family owned 50,000 dunums, this included 8 villages around Safed.[16]

Arab-Israeli conflict

Monument to the soldiers who fought in Israel's War of Independence

In the 1929 massacre in Safed, twenty Jewish residents of Safed were killed there.[17] By 1948, the city was home to around 1,700 Jews, mostly religious and elderly, as well as some 12,000 Arabs[3] .

In February 1948, Muslim Arabs attacked a Jewish bus attempting to reach Safed, and the Jewish quarter of the town had been under siege, even though there were British forces present. According to Martin Gilbert, food supplies ran short.

"Even water and flour were in desperately short supply. Each day, the Arab attackers drew closer to the heart of the Jewish quarter, systematically blowing up Jewish houses as they pressed in on the central area." [18]

On April 16, the same day that British forces evacuated Safed, 200 local Arab militiamen, supported by over 200 ALA soldiers, tried to take over the city's Jewish Quarter. They were repelled by the Jewish garrison, consisting of some 200 Haganah fighters, men and women, boosted by a Palmach platoon.[19] In the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, the Palmach ground attack on Arab Safad took place on 6 May, as a part of Operation Yiftah. The first phase of the Palmach plan to capture Safed was to secure a corridor through the mountains by capturing the Arab village of Birya [20] . The Arab Liberation Army had plans to take over the whole city on May 10, and in the meantime placed artillery pieces on a hill adjacent to the Jewish quarter and started its shelling.[21]

The Third Battalion failed to take the main objective, the "citadel", but "terrified" the Arab population sufficiently to prompt further flight, as well as urgent appeals for outside help and an effort to obtain a truce.[22]

According to Benny Morris, Azzam Pasha accurately described the aim of Plan D, of which Operation Yiftah was a part, when he said:

The Jews were following a perfectly clear and ruthless plan... They are now drawing [driving?] out the inhabitants of Arab villagers along the Syrian and Lebanese frontiers, particularly places on the roads by which Arab regular forces could enter the country. In particular, Acre and Safad were in very great danger of Jewish occupation. It was obvious that if this continued, the Arab armies would have great difficulty in even entering Palestine after May 15.[23]

However, the appeals for help were ignored, and the British, now less than a week away from the end of the British Mandate of Palestine, also did not intervene against the second -and final- Haganah attack, which began on the evening of 9 May, with a mortar barrage on key sites in Safad. Following the barrage, Palmach infantry, in bitter fighting, took the citadel, Beit Shalva and the police fort, Safad´s three dominant buildings. Through 10 May, Haganah mortars continued to pound the Arab neighbourhoods, causing fires in the marked area and in the fuel dumps, which exploded. "The Palmah 'intentionally left open the exit routes for the population to "facilitate" their exodus...' " [24] According to Gilbert,

"The Arabs of Safed began to leave, including the commander of the Arab forces, Adib Shishakli (later Prime Minister of Syria). With the police fort on Mount Canaan isolated, its defenders withdrew without fighting. The fall of Safed was a blow to Arab morale throughout the region.....With the invasion of Palestine by regular Arab armies believed to be imminent - once the British had finally left in elven or twelve days' time - many Arabs felt that prudence dictated their departure until the Jews had been defeated and they could return to their homes.[25]

Victorious Palmach troops in a Safed street, May 1948.

Some 12,000 abandoned or fled (some estimate 15,000) from Safed and were a "heavy burden on the Arab war effort".[26] Among them was the family of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.[27] The city was fully under the control of Jewish paramilitary forces by May 11, 1948.[3] On that day Palmach troops secured the now empty Arab quarters, and confiscated "goods that could serve the combat units".

In 1974, 102 Israeli Jewish school children from Safed on a school trip were taken hostage by a Palestinian militant group Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) while sleeping in a school in Maalot. In what became known as the Ma'alot massacre, 22 of these school children were among those killed by the hostage takers. In July 2006, Katyusha rockets fired by Hezbollah from Southern Lebanon hit Safed, killing one man and injuring others. Many residents fled the town.[28] On July 22, four people were injured in a rocket attack.

Demographics

In 2008, the population of Safed was 32,000.[1] According to CBS figures in 2001, the ethnic makeup of the city was 99.2% Jewish and non-Arab, with no significant Arab population. 43.2% of the residents were 19 years of age or younger, 13.5% between 20 and 29, 17.1% between 30 and 44, 12.5% from 45 to 59, 3.1% from 60 to 64, and 10.5% 65 years of age or older.

Climate

Safed has a Mediterranean climate with hot and dry summers and cold, rainy and occasionally snowy winters. Summers are rainless and hot with average high temperature of 29 °C (84 °F) and average low temperature of 18 °C (64 °F). Winters are cold and very rainy, and often snowy. Winters have average high temperature of 10 °C (50 °F) and average low temperature of 5 °C (41 °F). Springs and autumns are pleasant and also rainy but less than winters. Safed receives 682 mm (27 in) of precipitation per year, enough amount although the dry summers.

Climate data for Safed
Month Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Year
Source: Israel Meteorological Service[29][30]

Income

In December 2001, residents of Safed earned an average of 4,476 shekels per month, compared to the national average of 6,835 shekels. In 2000, there were 6,450 salaried workers and 523 self-employed. Salaried men had a mean monthly wage of NIS 5,631 (a real change of 10.2%) versus NIS 3,330 for women (a real change of 2.3%). The mean income for the self-employed was NIS 4,843. A total of 425 residents received unemployment benefits and 3,085 received income supplements.

Education

According to CBS, the city has 25 schools and 6,292 students. There are 18 elementary schools with a student population of 3,965, and 11 high schools with a student population of 2,327. 40.8% of Safed's 12th graders were eligible for a matriculation (bagrut) certificate in 2001.

Aous Shakra, a 20th century existential philosopher who taught at Harvard University, was born in Safed .

Culture

Smoke rises over Safed after a Katyusha rocket attack

In the 1950s and 1960s, Safed was known as Israel's art capital. The artists colony established in Safed's Old City was a hub of creativity that drew leading artists from around the country, among them Yosl Bergner, Moshe Castel and Menachem Shemi. Some of Israel's leading art galleries were located there. In honor of the opening of the Glitzenstein Art Museum in 1953, the artist Mane Katz donated eight of his paintings to the city. During this period, Safed was home to the country's top nightclubs, hosting the debut performances of Naomi Shemer, Aris San, and other acclaimed singers.[31] Safed has been hailed as the klezmer capital of the world, hosting an annual klezmer festival that attracts top musicians from around the globe.[32]

Sister city

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Table 3 - Population of Localities Numbering Above 1,000 Residents and Other Rural Population" (PDF). Israel Central Bureau of Statistics. 2008-06-30. http://www.cbs.gov.il/population/new_2009/table3.pdf. Retrieved 2008-10-18. 
  2. ↑ Jewish Virtual Library Article: Safed
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 Vilnay, Zev (1972). "Tsefat". A Guide to Israel. Jerusalem, Israel: HaMakor Press. pp. 522–532. 
  4. ↑ Jewish Encyclopedia: Tiberias
  5. ↑ Planetware Safed Tourism
  6. ↑ "Hadassah Magazine". Hadassah.org. http://www.hadassah.org/news/content/per_hadassah/archive/2004/04_DEC/traveler.asp. Retrieved 2009-05-06. 
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 "Safed". Encyclopedia Judaica. Vol. 14. Jerusalem, Israel: Keter. 1972. pp. 626. 
  8. ↑ Schechter, Solomon. Studies in Judaism: Second Series (Jewish Studies Classics 3), p. 206. Gorgias Press LLC, 2003. ISBN 1593330391
  9. ↑ Dimashi, p. 210, quoted in le Strange, p.524
  10. ↑ Abu al-Fida,p. 243, quoted in le Strange, p 525
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 "Safed". Jewish Virtual Library. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vie/Safed.html. Retrieved 2008-10-25. 
  12. ↑ "Ottomans and Safavids 17th Century". Michigan State University. http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~fisher/hst373/chronology/seventeenth.html. Retrieved 2008-10-25. 
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 R. Y. Ebied, M. J. L. Young (1976) Some Arabic Legal Documents of the Ottoman Period: From the Leeds Manuscript Collection University of Leeds. Dept. of Semitic Studies Brill Archive, ISBN 9004044019 p 7
  14. ↑ Morgenstern, Arie (2007). Hastening Redemption: Messianism and the Resettlement of the Land of Israel. Oxford University Press. 
  15. ↑ "The earthquake of 1 January 1837 in Southern Lebanon and Northern Israel" by N. N. Ambraseys, in Annali di Geofisica, Aug. 1997, p.933,
  16. ↑ Ottoman Reform and Muslim Regeneration: By Buṭrus Abū Mannah, Itzchak Weismann, Fruma Zachs by I.B.Tauris, 2005 ISBN 1850437572 p 178
  17. ↑ 'Arab Attack At Safed', The Times, Saturday, August 31, 1929; pg. 10; Issue 45296; col D.
  18. ↑ Martin Gilbert Israel, A history William Morrow & Co, NY 1998 ISBN 0-688-12362-7 pg 174
  19. ↑ Benny Morris, 1948, The First Arab-Israeli War, 2008 Yale University Press, pg 157
  20. ↑ Gilbert, 1998, pg 177
  21. ↑ Benny Morris, 1948, The First Arab-Israeli War, 2008 Yale University Press, pg 158
  22. ↑ Morris, 2004, p.223
  23. ↑ Broadmead to HC, 5 May 1948, SAMECA CP III\5\102. Quoted in Morris, 2004, p.223
  24. ↑ Morris 2004, page 224 quoting unnamed source from Book of the Palmah II
  25. ↑ Gilbert, 1998, pg.177
  26. ↑ Morris, 2004, page 224 quoting Yigal Allon from Book of the Palmah II
  27. ↑ Sarah Honig, Jerusalem Post [1] Another Tack: Self-exiled by guilt July 17, 2009 Abbas is quoted as saying "People were motivated to run away... They feared retribution from Zionist terrorist organizations - particularly from the Safed ones. Those of us from Safed especially feared that the Jews harbored old desires to avenge what happened during the 1929 uprising.... They realized the balance of forces was shifting and therefore the whole town was abandoned on the basis of this rationale - saving our lives and our belongings."
  28. ↑ Myre, Greg (2006-07-15). "2 More Israelis Are Killed as Rain of Rockets From Lebanon Pushes Thousands South". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/15/world/middleeast/15voices.html?_r=1&oref=slogin. Retrieved 2008-10-25. 
  29. ↑ "Climate data for several places in Israel" (in Hebrew). Israel Meteorological Service. http://ims.gov.il/IMS/CLIMATE. 
  30. ↑ "Weather Records Israel (Excluding Mt. Hermon)" (in Hebrew). Israel Meteorological Service. http://ims.gov.il/IMS/CLIMATE/TopClimetIsrael/. 
  31. ↑ Ashkenazi, Eli. "An Inside Job?". Haaretz. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1024907.html. Retrieved 2008-10-25. 
  32. ↑ You can take the music out of the shtetl, Jerusalem Post

Bibliography

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