by Laurie Rappeport of Home in Safed
Almost 30 years ago I “made aliyah” — a term used by Jewish people to indicate an “elevation,” as in a move to Israel. In that time I became a founding member of a new kibbutz, left the kibbutz, got married, moved to a northern town known as the City of Kabbalah, had five kids and got divorced. I taught day care providers, taught English to school kids and worked for 13 years in the local school system. My family spans the entire Jewish spectrum from less-religiously-observant to more-so and I spend a lot of my time trying to balance my kids’ needs with my own.
Sound familiar? I mean, basically, I’m just like almost every other 54-year-old that you know.
I live in Safed, a mountaintop town in Northern Israel. After my divorce I was able to keep my home, which is located in the Artists Quarter. Interspersed among the Hassidic and other ultra-Orthodox Jews, my neighbors include a large percentage of “alternative” types. Safed isn’t known as the “Berkeley of the Middle East” for nothing.
I have several neighbors who were founding members of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach’s House of Love and Prayer in San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury district in the 1960s (you can Google it) and others who helped found the Aquarian Minyan in Berkeley in the 1970s (you can Google that too, but the name should tell you something).
The thing about Safed, that makes it different from Williamsburg or Jerusalem or Monsey, is that all of these different “types,” from the former hippies who have turned Hassidic to the former hippies who are–well, still hippies–is that they all get along very nicely here.
So every once in awhile, when I think about the possibility of picking up and moving somewhere to start over, I look at my porch view of the Mt. Meron mountain range, listen to the tourists walk down my street oohing and aahing at the quaint stone houses (they’ve never tried to patch the antiquated plumbing or an invisible leak in these houses) and think, naw, I’ll stay.
Safed has a large expat population — out of a total population of about 33,000, there are easily 2000 expat Americans here (with a sprinkling of Brits, Aussies and other English speakers). Interestingly, many of the expats are “Jews by Choice” — converts who found their way to a city that seems tailor-made for seekers. There’s a great English library in town which runs completely on donations and volunteerism as well as a number of Anglo-operated charities that benefit the entire city. Not everyone is religious here either, but many people are “spiritual” of one type of another. Most, like myself, know nothing about Kabbalah.
As for me, personally — I’m in the middle of a mid-life crisis, of sorts. I left my job with the Tourist Information Center last month and am trying to “find myself,” or at least figure out what I want to do when I grow up. Luckily, I’m living in a city full of people like myself, but it’s still a little scary. In the meantime, although I live in the Artists Quarter of Safed, I don’t do much creatively except write, so that’s what I’m doing these days.
Photo credit: www.britannica.com/
Jane Gassner
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