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As a young man, Rabbi Isaac Luria had a fondness for out-of-body experiences. The fact that his body was in 16th century Egypt with his wife and children didn't stop his spirit from paying nightly visits to Jewish sages who had lived hundreds of years before. Floating from one heavenly yeshiva to the next, he learned from Rabbi Akiva, Rabbi Hillel and Rabbi Shim'on Bar Yochai, exploring the deepest mysteries of the Torah. When he was 35, the prophet Elijah appeared to Luria with some celestial advice: It was time for him to leave Egypt for the hills of Galilee to join a circle of Jewish mystics in the city of Tsfat.
I heard this story from a bearded Hasidic rabbi at Sharei Bina, an Orthodox girls' seminary in the Old City of Tsfat. It was a radiant morning and the students, who had been knitting and doodling, were listening to the rabbi with rapt attention. They were mostly Americans from observant families, girls who had never quite fit in. Instead of buttoned-up shirts and long straight skirts, they wore peasant blouses and layered hippie dresses. They lived in an old stone building adorned with an inner courtyard, curlicue ironwork and bright sprays of flowers. At night, when their last class ended, they climbed to the top of a nearby hill and sang devotional Hebrew melodies beneath the stars.
According to Jewish mystical tradition, Tsfat -- variously spelled Safed, Tzfad, Tzfat and Zefat -- is one of four holy cities, each infused with potent divine energy. Religious Jews like to say that the cities mirror the four natural elements. Jerusalem, with its ancient Temple offerings and burning religious passions, exudes the power of fire. Tiberias, stationed beside the Sea of Galilee, reflects the properties of water. Hebron, the site of the ancient Patriarchs' Tomb, embodies the solidity of earth. And Tsfat, with its legacy of mystics and astral travelers, is the dominion of air.
Geographically speaking, Tsfat is Israel's nearest equivalent to a Himalayan mountain village, a small city of 27,000 perched high on a hilltop overlooking northern Israel. It is remote by Israeli standards, an hour or more from the urban centers of Jerusalem, Haifa and Tel Aviv. Its appearance, too, is ethereal:...