Upper Galilee

The Upper Galilee is Israel’s green, mountainous north, rising to Mount Meron, at 1,208 meters the highest peak in the Galilee, and running up to the Lebanese border. At its heart is Safed, one of Judaism’s four holy cities, perched at 900 meters with blue-painted alleys and ancient synagogues. In the 1500s Rabbi Isaac Luria, the Ari, and Rabbi Joseph Caro, author of the Shulchan Aruch, made it the center of Jewish mysticism, and the roots of the Kabbalah reach back to Meron and Peki’in, where tradition says Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai hid from Rome.

The Bible is here too. Tel Hazor, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was the largest city in Canaan, “the head of all those kingdoms.” At Tel Dan stand the oldest arched gate in the world and the first evidence of King David outside the Bible, and Tel Kedesh was a city of refuge where Deborah and Barak began their war. Later layers follow: the synagogues of Bar’am and Gush Halav, the Crusader castle of Montfort, the pioneer villages of Rosh Pina and Yesod HaMa’ala, Tel Hai, and the Hula Valley, where more than 500 million birds pass twice a year.