The Tzfat quake that killed 5000
RECENT media publicity regarding anniversaries of Darwin’s Cyclone Tracy, the Newcastle earthquake and the Boxing Day Tsunami reminded me of another disaster whose anniversary occurs around this time of the year.
Firstly a personal anecdote. At around 6am on a November morning in 1995, unable to sleep owing to jetlag from having just arrived in Israel, I made my way to the dining complex of Kibbutz Beerot Yitzchak. As I sat down to drink a cup of coffee, the building shook to what I thought was the noise of the sonic boom of a series of planes flying overhead.
But such was not the case. It emerged later that what I had experienced was an earthquake centred in the Red Sea and felt across the region (nature does not respect international borders) and leading to casualties in Eilat and Akaba.
For Israel is in fact located in a geologically unstable region. The Great Rift Valley, of which the Jordan Valley, Arava and Red Sea are all parts, has long been known to be subject to earthquakes -— some of which inasmuch as they affected cities on the adjoining mountain ranges, have had terrible lethal consequences.
And as I had now learnt, the accompanying sound associated with the vibration of buildings etc. is the reason that in Hebrew an earthquake is termed “ra’ash” — noise.
Tevet 24 is the anniversary of the worst of such earthquakes to hit Israel in recent recorded history. On January 1, 1837, the Galil was shaken by an earthquake now believed to have measured around 6.75 on the Richter scale. The resultant death and destruction, particularly in Tzfat, had far-reaching consequences.
At the time that the earthquake hit, Tzfat had a thriving Jewish community, including both Sephardim and Ashkenazim. The immigration wave of the latter years of the 19th century termed the “First Aliyah” was certainly far from the first wave of European immigration to take place in what would become our modern Jewish State.
During the preceding two centuries, that far-flung corner of the Ottoman Empire attracted groups of religious Jews of various persuasions.
The first such group, led by Rabbi Yehuda Hechassid, arrived in Jerusalem in 1700. However, within two decades, the surviving members were so deeply in debt that their synagogue (on the site of today’s Churvah) was seized by Muslims. For a century no Ashkenazi Jew could enter Jerusalem, for fear of being arrested and held hostage for payment of outstanding debts
As a result, subsequent groups of immigrants settled in the Galil. In 1778, more than 300 Chassidim — students of the Baal Shem Tov led by Reb Menachem Mendel Vitebsker — settled in Tiberias and Tzfat. They were followed to Tzfat in about 1810 by students of the Gaon of Vilna, led by Rabbi Israel of Shklov. Both groups saw their return to the holy land as a precursor of Messianic redemption.
And so by 1836, the Jewish population of Tzfat numbered about 6000.
However, on that fateful day, an estimated 5000 died, of which four fifths were Jewish. As is still evident today, the old Jewish Quarter of Tzfat is located on a hillside with row above row of houses. When the quake struck, the rows of houses collapsed one onto the other; those inside were hopelessly trapped and, if not killed immediately, died in the ensuing days.
Following the quake — the second major tremor to hit Tzfat in less than a century — many survivors decided to leave. Believing that it may have been a sign of displeasure from heaven at their choice of Tzfat rather than Jerusalem as their place of residence, many hundreds moved to Jerusalem where a firman (decree) allowing Ashkenazi resettlement without fear of retribution had now been achieved through the good offices of the then ruler, Mohammed Ali.
This movement effectively marks the beginning of the settlement in Jerusalem of what has since been referred to as the Old Yishuv -— the very orthodox groups that to this day still make up the population of such neighbourhoods as Meah Shearim.
Two of the haftarot read on Succot include reference to quakes. Zechariah (14) prophesies that, pending the Messianic advent, the Mount of Olives will be split and the people will flee as they fled in the ra’ash in the days of Uzziah King of Judah. And Ezekiel (38) speaks of a great ra’ash on the lands of Israel at the time of Gog and Magog.
While we may hope to experience no more such events pending the Messianic era, one would hope that building standards as actually implemented take all possibilities into account.
Yossi Aron is The AJN’s religious affairs editor.