A report on Safed, Joseph Karo and Kabbalah

Artistic conception of Karo's appearance. Painting of 19th century
Jewish Kabbalists portrayed in 1641; woodcut on paper. Saxon University Library, Dresden.
The Red Mosque in Safed, 2001. It was originally built by the Mamluk sultan Baybars in 1275, and renovated or expanded by the Ottomans in 1671/72
Synagogue of Maran, R. Joseph Karo, in Safed
Kabbalistic prayer book from Italy, 1803. Jewish Museum of Switzerland, Basel.
The Mamluk mausoleum of Zawiyat Banat Hamid, originally built in 1372
Karo's grave in Safed
Latin translation of Gikatilla's Shaarei Ora
The Red Mosque
Title page of Karo's Shulchan Aruch
The Ark of the Covenant in Solomon's Temple was the seat for God's presence. Ezekiel and Isaiah had prophetic visions of the angelic heavenly Chariot and Divine Throne
Hebrew book printed by Eliezer Ashkenazi in 1579
Grave of Rabbi Akiva in Tiberias. He features in Hekhalot mystical literature, and as one of the four who entered the Pardes
Originally built as a caravanserai by the Ottomans in the mid-1700s, the "Saraya" (house of the governor) currently serves as a community centre
The grave of Shimon bar Yochai in Meron before 1899. A Talmudic Tanna, he is the mystical teacher in the central Kabbalistic work, the Zohar
Safed in the 19th century
The 13th-century eminence of Nachmanides, a classic rabbinic figure, gave Kabbalah mainstream acceptance through his Torah commentary
Muslim quarter of Safed circa 1908
The leading scholars of Safed in 16th-century invigorated mainstream Judaism through new legal, liturgical, exegetical and Lurianic-mythological developments.
Melkite Greek Catholic Church in Safed
Synagogue Beit El Jerusalem. Oriental Judaism has its own chain of Kabbalah
Beit Knesset Abuhav, one of the city's historic synagogues
The 16th-century Maharal of Prague articulated a mystical exegesis in philosophical language
Street art in Safed
Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, a leading Italian kabbalist, also wrote secular works, which the Haskalah see as the start of modern Hebrew literature
Beit Castel gallery in the artists' colony
The Vilna Gaon, 18th-century leader of rabbinic opposition to Hasidism—a Kabbalist who opposed Hasidic doctrinal and practical innovations
Scottish church in Safed
Synagogue of the Baal Shem Tov, founder of Hasidism, in Medzhybizh (Ukraine). It gave a new phase to Jewish mysticism, seeking its popularisation through internal correspondence.
Panorama Safed and Mount Meron
The Kabbalist (c. 1910–1920), portrait of an Hasidic man in Jewish religious clothing performed by the Austro-Hungarian Jewish painter Isidor Kaufmann (Jewish Museum, New York)
View to the east and Lake of Kinneret
Metaphorical scheme of emanated spiritual worlds within the Ein Sof
Safad 1937
Scheme of descending Sephirot in three columns, as a tree with roots above and branches below
Mandate Police station at Mount Canaan, above Safed (1948)
In the 16–17th centuries Kabbalah was popularised through a new genre of ethical literature, related to Kabbalistic meditation
Safed (1948)
Amulet from the 15th century. Theosophical kabbalists, especially Luria, censored contemporary Practical Kabbalah, but allowed amulets by Sages
Safed Citadel (1948)
Joseph Karo's role as both legalist and mystic underscores Kabbalah's spiritualisation of normative Jewish observance
Safad Municipal Police Station after the battle (1948)
Building on Kabbalah's conception of the soul, Abraham Abulafia's meditations included the "inner illumination of" the human form
Bussel House, Safad, 11 April 1948: Yiftach Brigade headquarters
16th-century graves of Safed, Galilee. The messianic focus of its mystical renaissance culminated in Lurianic thought.
View of Safed from Mount Canaan (1948)
Title page of first printed edition of the Zohar, main sourcebook of Kabbalah, from Mantua, Italy in 1558
Mandate administration building on the eastern outskirts of Safed (1948)
Golden age of Spanish Judaism on the Knesset Menorah, Maimonides holding Aristotle's work
Yiftach Brigade, with their Hotchkiss machine guns, based at Bussel House, 1948
Kabbalah mysticism on the Knesset Menorah, which shared some similarities of theory with Jewish Neoplatonists
Druze parading in Safed after the Palmach victory in 1948
Tikkun for reading through the night of Shavuot, a popular Jewish custom from the Safed Kabbalists
Monument to the Israeli soldiers who fought in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War
A version of Lekhah Dodi song to welcome the Shabbat, a cross denomination Jewish custom from Kabbalah
Safed in 2009
View of Safed
View of Safed
Houses in Safed
Doorway in Beit Castel gallery, Safed

After a century of general decline, the stability brought by the Ottoman conquest in 1517 ushered in nearly a century of growth and prosperity in Safed, during which time Jewish immigrants from across Europe developed the city into a center for wool and textile production and the mystical Kabbalah movement.

- Safed

He later settled in the city of Safed, Ottoman Galilee, where he arrived about 1535, having en route spent several years at Salonica (1533) and Istanbul.

- Joseph Karo

Passing through Salonica, he met the great kabbalist Joseph Taitazak.

- Joseph Karo

In the 16th century, the community of Safed in the Galilee became the centre of Jewish mystical, exegetical, legal and liturgical developments.

- Kabbalah

The author of the Shulkhan Arukh (the normative Jewish "Code of Law"), Yosef Karo (1488–1575), was also a scholar of Kabbalah who kept a personal mystical diary.

- Kabbalah

After the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, many prominent rabbis found their way to Safed, among them the Kabbalists Isaac Luria and Moshe Kordovero; Joseph Caro, the author of the Shulchan Aruch and Shlomo Halevi Alkabetz, composer of the Sabbath hymn "Lecha Dodi".

- Safed

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