Safed (In Arabic, Safad; in Hebrew, Tzefat)
SAFED (in Arabic, Safad; in Hebrew, Tzefat)
City of Galilee; birthplace of Simon ben Yohai, presumed author of the Zohar. Safed is mentioned by the Roman historian Flavius; it was later an administrative center of the Mamluks. A city of mixed Arab and Jewish population, in the late eighteenth century Safed saw the influx of two large Jewish groups, the Hasidim and the followers of Rabbi Elijah Goan of Vilnius. In 1929 Arabs attacked and destroyed the Jewish quarter, which was rebuilt in the 1930s. In 1948 the Jewish population of the city was only 2,000, of a total population of 12,000. After the British evacuated in April 1948, Arab forces attacked Safed. When Palmakh forces launched a counterattack in May, most of the Arab population fled the city. Modern-day Safed (population 27,000) is considered a center of the arts and of Jewish mysticism.