My Favorite City

I think Tzfat is probably my favorite city in Israel.  When I’m there, I feel how I imagine most people feel in the Old City of Jerusalem—elevated somehow—like the Schechina has truly chosen Tzfat as His/Her resting place.  I love the rich history that it has to offer, and how so many different sects of Jews live together in such a small space.  I love the artists’ colony, each shop selling a new and different expression of love and hope, different entirely from the souvenirs of Ben Yehuda Street.  And I associate Tzfat with my Bat Mitzvah, which was a very meaningful time in my adolescent life.  It is in Tzfat where I purchased my Bat Mitzvah Tallit (prayer shawl) and where I developed a deep and meaningful connection with my Bat Mitzvah parsha (chapter of the Torah) through a beautiful piece of artwork still hanging in my childhood bedroom.

I love the blue accents on each building, and I love the old synagogues at every turn.  When I enter the synagogues I feel transported.  To me, the synagogues are an honest expression of a man’s love for G-d, his fellow Jews, and his religion.  The colors and designs of these old synagogues express a loyalty and devotion lost on the modern day synagogue.  Each is honest and true, a place that invites sincere personal growth and reflection.  I love the old streets, and discovering something new everywhere I go.  So basically, yeah, I love Tzfat.

Andy and I spent a couple days up North during Hanukkah break, and we spent one of these days in Tzfat.  The weather was cold (I had to buy a sweatshirt from a local store because I was woefully under dressed) and overcast, but I was still thrilled to be in such a beautiful city.  As Andy and I began the ascent from the artists’ colony to where we had parked our car (at least ten flights of stairs higher), we encountered a group of young teenage boys, and one adult.  I witnessed one boy drop a plastic bag on the steps and walk away, without even a second glance, and I reacted as if this boy had personally offended me by dropping trash on my front lawn while I was out there gardening. 

“Did you just see that?” I asked Andy. 

I was appalled.  How could someone carelessly litter such a beautiful city?  Andy asked the boy to pick up the trash in Hebrew, which he did, and then dropped it in the same spot after we passed by.  Andy again asked him to pick up the trash, and this time his friends encouraged him, too.  For some reason, the boy refused to pick up the trash, and as the boys walked away, another boy picked up the bag.  We became aware that the boys were watching us depart, and when we turned around, sure enough, they were.  Things escalated very quickly, and soon the young boys were throwing around catcalls and insulting me.

Andy said something very powerful to the boys, which was completely lost on them, and on the adult who was with them who had refused to get involved.  He told them that they were living the lives of religious Jews, and that the way they behaved did not reflect the values they were supposed to be espousing.  We learn from various sources in the Jewish tradition that it is not enough just to study Torah, but that you must go out and live it.  What good are rules about fair business practice if you don’t have a business? Why should we learn to love our neighbor as ourselves and treat each other with kindness if we never have an opportunity to interact with anyone else? 

There’s also a teaching that says that one should not pray in a dirty place.  It may be that the boys we encountered took their home for granted, but I had been praying all day, even if I wasn’t reciting T’filot, and I did not want my place of prayer to become overrun with dirt and trash.  Nor did I want it to house the ugliness of a negative interaction between one person trying to do a mitzvah and another who refused to do t’shuvah.  I have to believe that this is why I took the dropped plastic bag so personally even though it was simply a careless act.

But I won’t let this negative interaction affect the way I feel about Tzfat—it just goes to show that teenage boys are teenage boys, no matter where they live or what religion they are.