Hello again, everyone! I’m back with another post on my journey throughout Israel. Last week, I talked about the incredible opportunity I had when I went to the Golan Heights and rode around in Jeeps right next to the Syrian Border. I am truly not sure that anything else on my trip topped that portion. So, if you didn’t find that interesting, I wouldn’t read anything else I’m going to write about because it is highly unlikely you will enjoy anything else!
Upon leaving the Golan Heights, we made our way to a small town known as Tzfat, which is located north of the Sea of Galilee and west of the Golan Heights. Tzfat is an extremely interesting small city. It sits in the middle of a monotonous region and is home to countless Rabbis. If you are unfamiliar with what a Rabbi is, a Rabbi is a teacher of the old testament for the Jewish people. He or she leads services and usually is in charge of prayer. One of the most interesting concepts present in Tzfat, which I did not know about until I went there, is the color blue representing camouflage. In Tzfat, almost all of the buildings, streets, and houses are covered in blue. Why is this the case? Because the Rabbis of Tzfat have always thought that the color blue suggests the heavens, which can encourage beliefs of God. In addition, they believe that insects are repelled from the mystical town because of the color blue.
The second that I arrived in Tzfat, I could feel how mystical the town was. It was an incredible small city that sits all the way up in the mountains with incredible views, countless orthodox rabbis, and a plethora of free-living citizens. Here is a picture of the view on a deck of one of the buildings. The way that the sun reflects off the clouds and onto the mountains still gives me chills to this day:
When we arrived, our group leaders told us that we could go roam around the little market in the city for a little bit until our activity. We walked up and down these narrow streets while window shopping and buying souvenirs for our friends and family. All of the shops sold similar items. From IDF t-shirts to Pringles yarmulkes, you always saw something interesting in every shop. At the end of the row of stores, we stumbled upon this candle shop that my friend claimed was actually famous and that she had been there before. Here, there were candle sculptures of many biblical evets such as Noah’s ark and David and Goliath. Below are pictures of these two sculptures:
After shopping for an hour or so, we headed over to a small building on the side of one of the mountains. Here, there were two rabbis with goofy-looking instruments and we sat down in front of them on comfortable couches and chairs. The rabbis played different songs on these instruments while we sang along. I truly felt a spiritual connection to these songs and found myself actually singing to some Hebrew prayers that I learned all my life. Here is a video of one of the instruments that one of the rabbis was playing.
Soon after the musical indulgence, we left Tzfat and went back to our hotel in Akko. Since it was Ramadan while we were in Akko, everything during the day was very mellow and nobody was out on the streets because the Muslims fast all day during this month-long holiday. Around sunset, the call to prayer occurred and we watched from the roof of our hotel.
We ate dinner at the hotel and soon after, the sun set, Ramadan was over for the night, and everyone roamed the streets. Beautiful lights lit up the streets and this picturesque scene ended a phenomenal day: