Tzfat. Yacov Kaszemacher, french-born from a polish family, a Hassidim artist, and a photographer living in Sfat. The city is the center of Jewish mysticism, Kabbalah, and one of 4 holy cities of Israel. Tzfat, Israel's highest city in upper Galilee, is one of the four holy cities of Israel, with Jerusalem, Tiberias, and Hebron. Perhaps this proximity to heaven, blue like the colour of the doorways in the cobbled passages, accounts for its reputation as the "Capital of Kabbalah," the Jewish mystical tradition. The Kabbalistic wisdom, the oldest in the history of humanity, investigates and explains the codes of the universe. For thousands of years, very few Jewish mystics knew the secrets of Kabbalah. For many centuries Tzfat has been the home of masters of Kabbalah. After their expulsion from Spain in 1492, many Jews arrived in Tzfat, seeking refuge in the tolerant Ottoman Empire, attracting the best scholars of Kabbalah. The Tzfat's modern-day mystics come from different backgrounds, descendants of traditional rabbis and baalei teshuva, "masters of return," who turned to Hasidic Judaism after a life in an agnostic experience.