The Room Beneath the Synagogue

The people of Tzfat have long pointed below the synagogue. There, they say, beneath the study hall where Maran taught by day, was the small house where he lived — and where, in the stillness of the night, the Maggid came to him and revealed the secrets of the Torah.

Visitors today are shown a small underground chamber close to the synagogue. It is a humble room: stone walls, a low ceiling, nothing to see but the space itself. That is its power. In a room like this, with a candle and a book of Mishnah, a man in his sixties and seventies sat awake through the night, repeating the words he knew by heart until they began to answer him.

Whether this is the very room no one can now prove; the earthquakes of 1759 and 1837 rearranged much of the old city. But generations of Jews have come down to it to stand quietly for a moment, and many still do. Ask the gabbai to show you.