Then in 1525 several events, apparently unrelated, conspired to change the history of Safed, transforming it for some ninety years into one of the most significant communities in the world: a manufacturing city of sixty thousand, a trading center known through Europe and the spiritual capital of the Jewish people. The drowsy little town was about to enter an age of gold so luminous that its memory would be cherished by nations then not even in existence. The revolution was achieved by three unlikely conspirators: the camel, the spinning wheel and the book.
The miracle of Safed began with the camel. As the wealth and power of the Turkish empire grew, with Constantinople replacing Genoa and Venice in control of merchandise passing from Asia to Europe, the new prosperity affected centers like the manufacturing city of Damascus and the ruined port of Akka. Since the highway between these two communities had always passed through Safed, the latter town became a post from which to protect caravans and a stopping point for merchants. Each body of travelers left behind in Safed some of its wealth and occasionally a few of its personnel, for the enchanting location of the town, perpetually cool with snow in winter, appealed to men tired of the desert. Most who reached Safed by this means were Arabs, and they occupied the southern and eastern sections of town, building new mosques and additional lines of covered souks.
But without the spinning wheel the camels could have accomplished little, and it reached Safed in an ironic way. When Jews were expelled from Spain and later from Portugal, many of the best and most courageous were drawn not to new refuges like Amsterdam but back to Eretz Israel, the land of their longing. Disembarking at Akka they were told by sailors in the one inn still existing along the waterfront, “Jerusalem is a hovel and Tubariyeh is no more. The real Holy Land exists only in Safed.” By foot and by donkey these strong-minded Jews made the overland trip to Safed, where they began to swell the western quarter of the town, building small stone houses on the beautiful slopes which overlooked both a wadi and a mountain. Seldom have the victims of a religious persecution found a refuge so gentle as did those Jews of Avaro and other Spanish cities who escaped to Safed.
They brought with them the spinning wheel, which they had used in Spain to spin merino wool, and with it they initiated in their new home what was to become the foremost weaving center in Asia. Huge caravans began to assemble in the ruins of Akka, waiting for ships bringing the raw wool of Spain and France, and in Safed the Jews produced from this wool an excellent cloth, dyeing it by ancient processes and shipping it back through Akka to the markets of Europe. Unexpectedly the income of Safed rose from ten thousand florins a year to two hundred thousand and then to six hundred thousand, and its Jewish population from two hundred Jews to well over twenty thousand. It had become what the sailors of Akka had said, “The leading town in Palestine.”
But caravans of camels have come to many towns, and riches have multiplied for a while, leaving no world-memories. And the same would have happened in Safed had not the Jews who carried the spinning wheel also brought a book, one of the most extraordinary in history, and it was the impact of this book that spread the name of Safed to the remotest Jewish community in the world, luring to the hillside center scholars from a dozen nations as different as Egypt and Poland, England and Persia.
But again, many towns have received books and done little with them. It was the glory of Safed that it received in addition to its book three rabbis prepared to give that book significance: Rabbi Zaki from Italy, Rabbi Eliezer of Germany, and the charismatic Rabbi Abulafia from Spain.
The first of the three rabbis to reach Safed was Zaki the Shoemaker, who, after seven years of painful struggle through Africa and the shores of Greece, landed with his wife and three daughters at the ruined, rock-strewn port of Akka. A caravan set forth intended for Damascus, and camped the first night at the uninhabited mound of Makor, from which the ancestors of Zaki had fled more than a thousand years before; but the houses his people had lived in lay beneath a Crusader fort, and it lay beneath a heap of sand and flowers.
On the next day, at about four in the afternoon, the caravan reached the pass separating the plains from the hills of Safed, and for the first time Zaki and his family saw the lovely town that was to be their home. On the summit a few great blocks of stone from the Crusaders’ fort reflected back the bright sunlight, while below them, spreading out across steep slopes, flowed a collection of little houses, like petals falling from a flower.
Zaki, his heart bursting with the wonder of what he saw, uttered those singing words which God had used in urging Lot forward: “‘Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed.’” He had been in the plains and now the mountain beckoned.
“It looks as if it would be cold,” Rachel warned.
“In Salonica they assured us,” he reminded her. “Life is good here.”
“It looks as if the people would fall out of their houses and roll down the mountainside,” she complained.
“It only looks that way,” he said convincingly.
The road entering Safed led to a public square which spread out from the foot of the ruined castle, and this area served as the commercial center of the town. Here the camels were unloaded and their cargoes sorted for delivery to merchants. Turkish officials clustered about the muleteers, asking of news from Akka, and Rabbi Zaki was left alone, staring down at the heart of Safed; and whispering a prayer for his deliverance he looked beyond the limits of the town and saw between the hills to the south the sunset-colored waters of the Sea of Galilee.
His arm was grabbed by a strong hand, and he heard a rough, peremptory voice asking, “Are you intended for Safed?” He turned to find himself facing a burly, good-looking man with a stout black beard and workman’s clothes.
“I am sent here by Rabbi Jemuel of Constantinople,” Zaki replied.
“Blessed be his memory,” came the brusque reply. “That your family?”
“My wife Rachel and my daughters.”
“You’ll need a big house,” the Safed man said. “Right now we have none.”
“I told you not to come to Safed,” Rachel began to lament. “We were happy in Salonica.”
“But until we find one,” the bearded man added, ignoring the complaints, “you shall live with me. All the newcomers do at first. My name is Yom Tov ben Gaddiel.” And he led the family—they had scarcely any luggage—down a steep path and through alleys only a few feet wide until Rachel was dizzy, and she reminded Zaki: “I told you people would fall off this hillside.”
They came to a square, not a European plaza but a halting place on the hillside, perhaps twenty feet across, and here the little group rested, hemmed in by houses, and Rabbi Zaki was able to study Safed: a warm, tightly knit town where Jews were at ease. They then proceeded down the hill until they reached Yom Tov’s home, and from his door they could see the western hills and the pass they had negotiated, and extensive fields reaching to the horizon. Zaki covered his face and thought: It’s this we’ve been searching for; but his wife thought of Podi and Salonica and Izmir and all the other good places they had known, and she was disconsolate.
Next day, when the Jews of Safed learned that a rabbi from Italy was among them, they crowded Yom Tov’s house to question him, and many wanted to know why a Jew who had lived in Podi would have left such a well-regarded haven—and Rachel echoed the question: “Yes, why?” Zaki explained what his fears had been and told of how for seven years he had longed to get to Safed. He said that the fame of the hilltop town had spread throughout Jewry and that he had wished to make himself a part of the brotherhood.
His simple explanation was received in silence, as if the men of Safed knew that they did not merit such praise, and in the long moment of hesitation Zaki had a chance to inspect the faces about him: they were bearded faces, marked by deep-set eyes which seemed to express the quiet exaltation of the town. The men wore oriental-style gowns and some wore turbans as well; and there was
a stateliness about them, as if they had spent many years learning to control both their emotions and their fugitive thoughts. They were men, Zaki thought, with an intellectual power far surpassing his own, and he wondered if he could hold a place amongst them.
This fear was increased when Yom Tov said, “Shall we explore the alleys?” And leaving the women behind, Zaki set out to see his new home. First he was led back to the square at which the family had stopped the evening before, and from there he moved along a narrow lane to the south, where to his surprise he was brought to a yeshiva where a man in his late fifties was expounding the Talmud to a class of nearly a hundred devotees. It was the great rabbi of Safed, Joseph Caro, who spoke in a cold, deliberate manner, interpreting the law of Judaism. Never before in his life had Zaki seen so big a yeshiva, nor had he been aware that so many Jews were interested in philosophical discussion.
Yom Tov then led him down to a lower level and back to the west, where in a large house he was introduced to an even more persuasive teacher, the learned Moses of Cordova, the man of Safed who knew most about the mysteries of the Kabbala, and he, too, had a student body of nearly a hundred, listening to intricate speculations which Zaki knew he would not be able to comprehend.
Yom Tov then led his fat guest to another level of the town, where he found in close proximity four different synagogues, each with its teacher and sixty or seventy scholars. “It’s a town of wisdom!” he cried in the Ladino which he had picked up in Izmir and which served as a lingua franca in all except the German quarters of Safed.
“It’s also a town of work,” Yom Tov reminded him, leading the way to a large building through which a mountain stream tumbled, causing devices of various kinds to operate, and here Zaki became aware that his guide was both a respected rabbi, Yom Tov ben Gaddiel, and the leading cloth manufacturer of Safed. His plant employed three hundred men who were engaged in combing, fulling, washing and dyeing processes.
“In Safed we say, ‘Without work there is no Torah,’” the rabbi explained. He spoke of one famous rabbi who kept a shop, of another who was a barber. “I’ll find jobs for your women.”
“Doing what?” Zaki asked, for in the factory he saw only men.
Yom Tov led him back to the center of town, where they stopped at several homes, and in each, women were spinning wool imported from Turkey or weaving it into the stout cloth which accounted for Safed’s fame throughout the Mediterranean. Yom Tov explained that he owned the mill, another dyeing establishment at the edge of town and the warehouses.
“You must be very rich,” Zaki observed without envy.
“No,” the local rabbi corrected. “The money we make on cloth goes into the yeshivas and the synagogues.” Zaki stared at the black-bearded man in laborer’s clothes and said nothing, for the words he had just heard were difficult to believe.
When they returned to Yom Tov’s home Zaki was perspiring, and Rachel observed, “At last! You’ll climb up and down these hills so much you’ll lose some of that fat.” And she proceeded to describe in much detail how embarrassed she had been when her husband had lost his pants in the spring races at Podi, but none of the listeners felt embarrassment, because most of them, during their lives among the Christians, had suffered equal indignities.
“I shall give you four spinning wheels,” Rabbi Yom Tov explained to the women of Zaki’s family.
“What for?” Rachel asked suspiciously.
“To work,” Yom Tov answered sharply, and before Rachel could reply that she had not come to Safed to learn spinning, he added, “Here we all work. I’ll find you a house where the women can spin in the back and the rabbi can be a shoemaker in front.” And such a house was found.
As the family settled into its new life Rabbi Zaki confided to no one the principal reason for his joy in having reached Safed, but to himself he often thought: It’s wonderful! So many young men here without wives. If I don’t get the girls their husbands here, where in the world could I?
So wherever he went, whenever men gathered together to talk religion, Rabbi Zaki could be depended upon to cite either the Torah or the Talmud regarding the desirability of marriage. “As the Talmud says,” he used to quote in his shoemaker’s shop, “‘The unmarried person lives without joy, without blessing and without good. He cannot be called a man in the full sense of the term.’” And always in the course of talking with his customers he would remind them of the pregnant words of Genesis: “male and female created he them.”
It would have been difficult to find a poorer propagandist for marriage than Rabbi Zaki; Safed required very little time to classify him as uxorious and his wife as a shrew. As for the three girls whom the fat rabbi offered as God’s blessing to unmarried men, they were ill-tempered, petulant and bad-complexioned. It seemed unlikely that the older girl, Sarah, would ever marry, for she had a sharp tongue and a drawn face, while the two younger girls, Athaliah and Tamar, though prettier in feature were equally acid in nature.
And then one day a muleteer from Damascus, a stolid Jewish lad who had never read the Talmud or heard of the yeshivas of Safed, climbed down the many levels of the town to sit with Zaki at the shoemaker’s bench: “On the trip from Akka I watched your daughter, Rabbi.”
“You did?” The fat shoemaker leaped. “Which one?”
“Athaliah. She has a better manner than the others.”
“She’s a wonderful girl!” Zaki cried impulsively. “Oh, this girl she can cook … she can weave.” He became so excited that his words stumbled over themselves, for his daughters were getting old and this was the first time that anyone had even obliquely discussed marriage … He stopped cold, “You do want to marry her, don’t you?” he asked bluntly.
“Yes,” the muleteer mumbled. “I’ve told my mother.”
“Oh, Rachel!” the fat rabbi cried. And he summoned his family; and when the girls were lined up he announced, “This fine young man from Damascus … What’s your name?” He choked, grew red in the face and grasped Athaliah by the hand, delivering her to her suitor.
As soon as it was decently possible the muleteer led his bride away to Damascus, and that night Rabbi Zaki initiated the tradition that was to make him beloved in Safed and renowned throughout the Jewish world. He went to bed at dusk, for it was written in the Talmud that men should not be abroad after dark, but he could not sleep, for he was possessed by a great happiness at having found a husband for one of his girls; and when he thought of the way doomed Jews were living that night in Podi and Portugal and Spain, he felt driven to rise from his bed and dress and go out into the narrow streets of the town, and to walk up and down, crying, “Men of Safed! How can you sleep in your tranquillity when Jews throughout the world are unhappy and miserable? Do you appreciate the magnitude of your blessing? Jews of Safed, you happy, happy Jews, let us rise now and go to the house of God and give thanks.” And he routed out the scholars and the leaders and the men who would always know more than he and drove them to the synagogue, and there, in the light of a few candles, he recited the triumphant passages of Deuteronomy, and in his simple way brought many of the citizens of Safed closer to God than did all the Talmudic scholars and all the Kabbalists.
Two or three nights each month this sensation of absolute happiness would overcome Zaki, and he would roar through the narrow streets, summoning the Jews of Safed to praise their God for His bounty; and whereas it had been obvious to the scholars that Zaki of Italy would not attain a place of eminence in their schools—not even as a student, for he could not understand what men like the legalist Caro or the mystic Cordovero were talking about—he could, by the sheer simplicity of his faith, become one of the memorable rabbis of Safed. Although he left no writings, he so impressed his humanity upon the town that he modified subsequent religious behavior.
The keynote of his teaching, repeated again and again in his midnight discourses, was charity. “Gold does not grow out of the land,” he taught. “It is found in man’s labor. And those who profit from the gold must gi
ve a fair share back to the poor.” He used simple explanations, saying, “The mills of Rabbi Yom Tov could not run for a day if God stopped the mountain streams that feed them. If we live on God’s charity, should we not share what God gives us?” He argued that a man should distribute at least twenty per cent of his income to the needy, saying, “And if he gives less than one part in ten he may not call himself a Jew.” Again and again he pleaded with his listeners to be generous, and the joke was circulated through Safed: “Rabbi Zaki wants more than anything else in the world to give things away … especially his daughters.”
Outside the synagogue Rabbi Zaki was even more effective, for from his workbench he reviewed the homely precepts of the Jewish sages: “The great Akiba tells us: ‘Whosoever neglects the duty of visiting the sick is guilty of shedding blood.’ Have you been to see Rabbi Paltiel’s wife since she fell sick? Go now, and you can have your shoes when you return.” His round face and luxuriant beard became a trademark of humanity throughout the Jewish section of Safed, and he was the favorite Jew of the Arab quarter, too, for he offered his Muslim friends no religious argument, only laughter and mended shoes.
The young men of the town, watching his jovial passage, argued, “If his daughter, Tamar has lived with him so long, she can’t be as bad as she looks,” and one day a man came to the shop and said, tentatively, “Rabbi Zaki, I’ve been thinking that I might like to marry your daughter.”
“Sarah?” he cried. “She’s a fine girl.”
“I meant Tamar.”
“She’s a fine girl, too!” the shoemaker said enthusiastically, but after the marriage was celebrated he asked his son-in-law, “About Sarah. Do you happen to know any other men …”
“No,” the groom replied firmly, but that night Zaki again coursed through the alleys, calling for the Jews to celebrate the paradise they knew in Safed, so that the more cynical observed, “Watch! When he finally gets rid of that oldest daughter we’ll have midnight services for a month.” But Safed enjoyed the exuberance of their fat rabbi, for everyone acknowledged—even the great scholars—that from time to time someone ought to call the attention of the people to the everyday joys and triumphs of a decent life. “And there is no greater triumph imaginable,” dour Joseph Caro opined, “than finding a husband for a daughter like Tamar.”
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