Source the Water in the Mikvah of the Ari Hakodosh Discovered Under House In Town’s Old City

 

600 years ago, the Mamluks, slave soldiers who conquered the land of Israel from the Muslims, made Tzfat their capital and invested in an elaborate water system which includes a subterranean passage hundreds of meters long and tens of cisterns to descend and draw water from the pure water source.

During the course of a renovation of his childhood home in the old city of Tzfat, Naftali Orbach stumbled upon this water system and was amazed to discover that it leads to the famous Mikve of the Ari, meaning that this is the source which provided the water for the Ari’s Mikve further down the hill. Naftali invited Professor Yaron Shivtiel of the Tzfat Academic college to descend the narrow 10-meter cistern to the source and Shivtiel ascertained that the water was indeed the same water type, since samples of the water had exactly the same minerals and content as that in the Mikve of the Ari, who lived in Tzfat nearly 500 years ago.

Kan 11’s news correspondent Rubi Hammerschlag descended into the passage and brought back documentation of the remarkable subterranean tunnel.