Tsfat

Yesterday and today I was in Tsfat ("that place I can't pronounce," says mom). Tsfat is a mystical city. The Jews of Spain in the Middle Ages started to get quite a mystical tradition going, and when they were expelled in 1492, a bunch of them settled in Tsfat. Tsfat is high on a mountain. It is as you can see still green there, unlike most of Israel now.

Tsfat has a lot of synagogues. A lot of art galleries. A lot of ultra-orthodox. A lot of Americans who started out secular, did a lot of drugs, and then found orthodoxy and kabbalah. A lot of trinkets and magical crap. A lot of Tsfat is suffused with mysticism/superstition. The grocery store where I bought breakfast this morning is called "Super Rav-Hesed," which means "super great in compassion." I stayed at the Ascent Institute of Tsfat. They are among other things a hostel that charges 60 shekel a night for a bed, but refunds you 10 shekels for every class you attend on Judaism. Yesterday morning, when I went to check in, I asked, "Is there a bed available?"

"Are you Jewish?" asked the innkeeper.

A little offended at having my Judaism challenged, I responded, "Yes," but as soon as I had I regretted it. Did the availability of a room depend on my religion? In the United States it would be illegal (I'm pretty sure) for her to ask me the above question in that context. I immediately wished I had simply repeated my question, as in, "First tell me if there is a bed available and then we can discuss my religion." In any case, there was a comfortable bed available in a clean room, and before I could even check in I was accosted by a wild and bushy American hasid asking me where I was from, what I studied in college, telling me how much more fun I must be having now than he had when he had my youth and good looks, and trying to give me a tape of some kabbalistic stuff.

I went to two Judaism classes, so my stay was only 40 shekels.

So what are these pictures?

I went on a hike this morning to the Nahal Amud, which is a wadi, or seasonal river. I didn't know where the trail was, so I cut cross country, scrambled over boulders, clung to trees, etc. to get down to the wadi. This was all before sunrise, since I knew as soon as the sun was up I'd have to get indoors. On the way through the brush and jumble, I came across a couple tombs of old rabbis out there in the forest. They were hollows in rocks, sort of cemented into little bunkers, with blue dombed roofs. Inside, burned up candles, notes from the faithful, lots of books, some old chairs. I came across what looked like a hermit's sukkah. The hermit was not home.

Something about the air in Tsfat is elevating. Out there in the quiet morning, things just seemed so clear. It was exactly the kind of place I would like to go to everytime I have an intractable problem. A good place to go to let the pieces fall together. The trees and rocks and wildflowers all seem to say, "There are answers out there, and you are so close to finding them." I guess those rabbis felt the same thing. The patterns of wear on the limestone boulders were pretty distinctive too. They were linear cracks and scratches, crossing each other obliquely. They made me think of perhaps a homo habilus's first grasps toward abstraction - just scratches made in clay or rock as he tries to get his head around the idea that an image in his mind can be manifest in the world through a stroke of his hand.