By Stephen Kramer
In Part 1, our trip north to Galilee with friends, enjoying a wonderful hike through a stream near Lake Kinneret. Our destination was Safed (Zefat), one of Judaism’s four holy cities.
Bet Hameiri (Hameiri House), a fascinating recreation of local history, concentrating on Safed during the 19-20th centuries. Entered via one of Safed’s many lovely courtyards, the museum has many floors and rooms, including two large, vaulted halls. My favorite exhibit displays photographic portraits and associated oil paintings of some of Safed’s most colorful characters of recent generations. The accompanying texts tell their stories, from the eccentric to the heroic.
Other exhibits include the Reconstructed Room, showing a typical Safed home of the turn of the 19th century, preserving the simplicity and meager means of its inhabitants. In the Religious Life of Safed, there is a collection of ritual objects used by many generations of Safed’s Jews, including inscribed stones, illuminated manuscripts, candlesticks and many other items on display. The Heroic Safed exhibit illustrates the seemingly hopeless struggle for survival of Safed’s tiny Jewish Quarter, until the town’s liberation in the May 1948 war. Throughout the museum are images, documents and utensils illustrating the hardy nature of this unique community.
One of the most prominent elders portrayed is Rabbi Avraham Zeide Heller. During the War of Independence, Rabbi Heller headed Civil Defense and the local draft board in assisting the Haganah fighting force, the precursor of the IDF. Despite receiving death threats from the families of malingerers, Rabbi Heller fought draft evasion among the religious inhabitants of Safed. Rabbi Heller’s most significant acts may have been the Jewish legal precedents he instituted, waiving the observance of commandments, such as working during the Sabbath, in order to save lives. These waivers were favored by a large consensus of the town’s residents. Despite being only a small minority in Safed, the Jews managed to defeat the Arab forces, securing the Jewish position in the Upper Galilee.
Later, we drove to the Menara Gondola lift, which extends from an elevation of 2,500 ft. at the Naftali Heights to 300 ft. at its base in Kiryat Shmona. This is in an area of the Galilee that is as similar to the Alps as it gets in Israel. Though not nearly so mountainous as in Europe, the vistas are very dramatic. The Menara complex offers many activities, which can be accessed at the top, in the middle where the lift briefly stops, or at the bottom. We chose the 2-person cart ride at the bottom, which was basically a fairly tame roller coaster. Nevertheless, we enjoyed a thrilling ride. Other activities include rides on special mountain sledges, abseiling (rappelling), bike trips, and nature walks.
After an afternoon rest at the hotel, we took a 40-minute drive to Lake Kinneret to enjoy a delicious fish dinner at one of the venerable lakeside restaurants along the Tiberius promenade. Upon exiting our cars, we were immediately reminded of the topography of Tiberius, which is more than 600 feet below sea level at its lowest level. The temperature was at least 10 degrees F. warmer and much more humid than in mountainous Safed. After dinner, we briefly walked along the promenade, passing some of the large, noisy boats catering to tourists, before returning “home.”
We dedicated our last morning to exploring a few of Safed’s most interesting art galleries, which were a far cry from the commercial galleries and artist’s booths which line the narrow streets of the Artists Quarter. The first was the Frenel Frankel Gallery, which is as much a museum as a gallery, located in the huge house where Yitzhak-Alexander Frenel (also called Frankel) worked and lived. Fernel came to Israel in 1919 in the Third Aliyah (1919-1923), together with 40,000 mostly Eastern European pioneers who engaged in both agricultural and industrial endeavors. (Few from this aliyah returned to Europe.)
Frenel, who had studied art in Odessa, joined an artists’ collective in Herzlia and a second in Jaffa. He opened his own studio in Tel Aviv after a few more years of study in Paris. Frenel mentored many other artists who followed him to Safed (1934), where they established the Artists Quarter Association after Israel’s independence in 1948.
An Expressionist painter who was the great-grandson of the Hassidic Master, the Ba’al Shem Tov, Frenel frequently painted traditional Jewish life though he wasn’t religious. He is also well known for his landscape paintings. Frenel won many international prizes and his work is hung in museums and private exhibitions in Israel, the United States, France and elsewhere.
Frenel’s cosmopolitan daughter Arianne, and her sister, take turns running the gallery to preserve their father’s heritage. Arianne guided us through the large building, her childhood home. Her father was a generation older than her mother, and Arianne had step-brothers much older than herself. She explained how her father welcomed many students, but excluded one young man whom he suspected of coveting his wife.
Sure enough, after Frenel’s death, the young man, whose name was Hadad Yakob, wooed and married Arianne’s mother. We visited Hadad’s gallery too. It was located nearby, in the former home of another well-known Israeli artist, Moshe Castel. Coincidentally, we visited that gallery and bought a beautiful watercolor there on our last visit to Safed. Hadad’s gallery was also huge, in the Safed tradition, with many older, excavated rooms and additions that he had added. Similar to the other homes, this one also had a beautiful courtyard.
After our explorations, we spent the rest of the day relaxing and enjoying the fabulous view from our hotel’s porch. On the way home, we stopped in another popular Arab-owned restaurant, joining the throng of Israelis who were heading south to Israel’s center. Between this visit to Safed and our visit in the spring we’ve managed to visit many interesting places in that town. However, we’ve in fact only scratched the surface of fascinating Safed, which should be included on any tourist’s itinerary.
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This article was previously published by the Jewish Times of South Jersey. Author Kramer’s works may also be read on the website, www.encounteringisrael.com