Reading about Safed

Image via Wikipedia//The citadel of Safed

One day before Shabbat, on a very busy day, I opened and couldn't stop finishing this book about the city of Safed. Lots of interesting cultural and historical facts, written in a simple and modest way, with many explanatory pictures. I've been several times there, as well as in Meron, but now I wish I can go again and think more about what I've found out.

A symbolical competitor to Jerusalem, Safed is mentioned in Zohar as the place where the dead will arise and assemble at the time of the resurrection. One of the most populated cities at the end of the 16th century, it played continously an important role in the process of Torah dissemination.

Victim of earthquakes, pandemics or Arab riots, the city of Safed was a city of refuge for various Sephardim groups and since the 18th century, of Hasidim escaping the Europe of pogroms, but also for great names of Judaism, as Baba Sali, R' Shlomo Eliezer Elfandan, R'Chaim of Czernovitz.

The same force of spiritual attraction was represented by Meron, another important point on the map of Zohar scholars. Two are the moment considered appropriate to visit Meron if a lover of Zohar: ten days before Shavuos and ten days before Rosh HaShanah.

An interesting journey in a very inspiring place, although only mental for the moment.

R' Cordovero on meditation and prayer

Pardes Rimonim, Shaar HaKavanna, ch. 1, p. 78b:

"The prayers of one who utters his words without kavanna, deep meditative concentration, are not heeded by the King from within His palace. Instead, it is like a mortal king who hears the incoherent cries of one of his subjects standing outside the palace walls and making noise. The king can respond only indirectly. He will forbid the man entry to his palace, preferring to send one of his servants to attend to such a one's needs. Similarly, prayer without kavanna simply cannot ascend into the palace of the King of Kings. Prayer without kavanna lacks wings to fly through pure and holy air, and cannot break through the refined firmament and heavenly hosts.

One who prays with kavanna, however, affixes wings to his prayers and they will be guided heavenward. His prayers will ascend all the way to the palace of the King. There they will be received within the palace, and their ascending influence will be answered by the King Himself with a reciprocal descending influence, earthward from Heaven".