Ascent in Safed Doubles Size

Ascent, a center for Jewish edu-tourism in Safed, offering mystical Jewish experiences since the early 1980s, signed a mortgage on the nearby Tel Aviv Hotel in time for the Passover tourism rush. Spring break and Passover visitors to this picturesque northern city looking for a spiritual experience, who are on a budget but not willing to bunk up with strangers hostel-style, now have 40 more rooms to book.

Ascent’s hostel remains open, and the new acquisition – freshly painted, carpeted, and spiffed up – increases the center’s total capacity from 70 to 250 guests. “Now we can cater to families and couples who want more meaning out of their vacation than six meals a day,” said Ascent director and Chabad representative Rabbi Shaul Leiter.

The learning experience begins as guests walk into the clean, airy but spare lobby. The original stone building at the heart of the hotel served as the consulate of the Austro-Hungarian Empire when Israel was under Ottoman rule. During the British mandate period, the building was used as the maternity ward of the Rothschild Hospital. As women labored and gave birth, the Hagana, Israel’s pre-independence defense force, used other parts of the hotel to secretly train new recruits.

“Educational tourism can take place anywhere. You can give a Torah class in any hotel. But the uniqueness of Safed is that the holiness is everywhere,” not just in the conference room that’s been turned into a study hall, said Rabbi Leiter.

Ascent was founded to offer English-speaking backpackers in search of a spiritual high, a cheap, safe place to stay in Safed. The program is an adult version of the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s emphasis on summer camps as places where Jewish learning has the greatest impact, a world apart from Torah lessons crammed into a life already booked up with school and work.

When the first intifada scared away most international tourists, Ascent reinvented itself for an Israeli crowd. The additional hotel space allows Ascent to present its programs in Hebrew, English, and Russian on beginner and advanced tracks at one time.

Families, bar mitzvah tourists, Birthright Israel-Taglit groups, and entire yeshiva student bodies have rented out space at the new hotel. Many guests learn about Ascent on the center’s websites: kabbalahonline.org and its Hebrew counterpart which has a subscribership of 25,000 to its e-lessons in Jewish mysticism.

Keren Barda, an engineer born in Tel Aviv, Googled her way to Ascent. She and her boyfriend were looking for a getaway weekend in Tzfat, booked a room, and broke up before the vacation. Barda kept her reservation.

“The first time I got there, Ascent felt like family. My soul connected to them.” She did not want to go home after Shabbat and extended her stay for a few days. Upon returning to the city, she kept her connection with Ascent and made time in her work schedule to enroll in Chabad-run classes closer to home.

She returns to Ascent about once a month and often sees Israeli military groups – new recruits and officer candidates – at the hotel taking part in the Ascent Shabbat experience. “At first the soldiers feel suspicious that someone wants to make them religious,” said Barda, “but then they fall in love with the place and there’s a lot of positive energy.”

On Shabbat, Ascent’s staff presents a series of classes that examine the Jewish lifecycle, walks through Tzfat’s historic sites, and workshops on the spiritual side of Jewish thought. Designated weekends are devoted to the Jewish-mystical side of psychology, natural medicine, or other specialty topics.

“One of the main reasons to stay at [Ascent’s] hotel is that it is steps away from the old city of Tzfat and a few feet away from Rechov Yerushalayim,” the old quarter’s main street, said Mordechai Kaplan a who brought a yeshiva group to the new hotel.

Getting to know the locals is part of spending Shabbat with Ascent. Chabad families in the area open their homes to Ascent’s guests week after week. By the time the first course is served, “It’s a culture shock,” said Yakov Leiter, Ascent hotel manager. The media in Israel shows ultra-Orthodox in a negative light, said Leiter. The guests “are shocked to find they enjoy a full Shabbat meal with an ultra-Orthodox family.”

Esther and Chaim Berkovitz of Cholon encountered Ascent at a natural medicine convention. The Berkovitzes’ son chose to become a Breslov Chassid, and they wanted to know more about his lifestyle choice. Mrs. Berkovitz praises the teachers at Ascent for welcoming questions and “always being ready to sit and talk and explain things very well.” The Berkovitzes are not ready to follow their son’s path, but after multiple stays at Ascent. “I feel like a have become a better person, more spiritual, I want to know more and more about Judaism.”