Place
Peki'in פקיעין
The Galilean village where, by tradition, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai and his son hid in a cave for thirteen years.
Condemned by the Romans for unguarded words, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai fled with his son Elazar and lived thirteen years in a cave—by tradition here, at Peki'in. A carob tree and a spring that rose at the entrance fed them; buried to the neck in sand, they learned Torah all day. The cave, the carob and the spring are shown at Peki'in to this day.
Peki'in is famous for another thing: local tradition holds that Jewish presence here has never broken since Second Temple times—a rare continuity in this land. And in the cave, tradition says, was born the hidden teaching that later became the book of the Zohar.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Shabbat 33b — the cave, the carob and the spring
- Jerusalem Talmud, Sheviit 9:1 — the same account of the cave in another version: thirteen years
Basis: tradition.