A report on Safed and Joseph Karo

Artistic conception of Karo's appearance. Painting of 19th century

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

The Mamluk mausoleum of Zawiyat Banat Hamid, originally built in 1372

Hebrew book printed by Eliezer Ashkenazi in 1579

Originally built as a caravanserai by the Ottomans in the mid-1700s, the "Saraya" (house of the governor) currently serves as a community centre

Beit Knesset Abuhav, one of the city's historic synagogues

Beit Castel gallery in the artists' colony

Mandate Police station at Mount Canaan, above Safed (1948)

Safad Municipal Police Station after the battle (1948)

Bussel House, Safad, 11 April 1948: Yiftach Brigade headquarters

Mandate administration building on the eastern outskirts of Safed (1948)

Yiftach Brigade, with their Hotchkiss machine guns, based at Bussel House, 1948

Druze parading in Safed after the Palmach victory in 1948

Monument to the Israeli soldiers who fought in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War

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

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

2 related topics with Alpha

Shulchan Aruch

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Most widely consulted of the various legal codes in Judaism.

It was authored in Safed (today in Israel) by Joseph Karo in 1563 and published in Venice two years later.

Jewish Kabbalists portrayed in 1641; woodcut on paper. Saxon University Library, Dresden.

Kabbalah

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Esoteric method, discipline and school of thought in Jewish mysticism.

Kabbalistic prayer book from Italy, 1803. Jewish Museum of Switzerland, Basel.

Latin translation of Gikatilla's Shaarei Ora

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

Grave of Rabbi Akiva in Tiberias. He features in Hekhalot mystical literature, and as one of the four who entered the Pardes

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

The 13th-century eminence of Nachmanides, a classic rabbinic figure, gave Kabbalah mainstream acceptance through his Torah commentary

The leading scholars of Safed in 16th-century invigorated mainstream Judaism through new legal, liturgical, exegetical and Lurianic-mythological developments.

Synagogue Beit El Jerusalem. Oriental Judaism has its own chain of Kabbalah

The 16th-century Maharal of Prague articulated a mystical exegesis in philosophical language

Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, a leading Italian kabbalist, also wrote secular works, which the Haskalah see as the start of modern Hebrew literature

The Vilna Gaon, 18th-century leader of rabbinic opposition to Hasidism—a Kabbalist who opposed Hasidic doctrinal and practical innovations

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.

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)

Metaphorical scheme of emanated spiritual worlds within the Ein Sof

Scheme of descending Sephirot in three columns, as a tree with roots above and branches below

In the 16–17th centuries Kabbalah was popularised through a new genre of ethical literature, related to Kabbalistic meditation

Amulet from the 15th century. Theosophical kabbalists, especially Luria, censored contemporary Practical Kabbalah, but allowed amulets by Sages

Joseph Karo's role as both legalist and mystic underscores Kabbalah's spiritualisation of normative Jewish observance

Building on Kabbalah's conception of the soul, Abraham Abulafia's meditations included the "inner illumination of" the human form

16th-century graves of Safed, Galilee. The messianic focus of its mystical renaissance culminated in Lurianic thought.

Title page of first printed edition of the Zohar, main sourcebook of Kabbalah, from Mantua, Italy in 1558

Golden age of Spanish Judaism on the Knesset Menorah, Maimonides holding Aristotle's work

Kabbalah mysticism on the Knesset Menorah, which shared some similarities of theory with Jewish Neoplatonists

Tikkun for reading through the night of Shavuot, a popular Jewish custom from the Safed Kabbalists

A version of Lekhah Dodi song to welcome the Shabbat, a cross denomination Jewish custom from Kabbalah

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

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.