Tzippori ציפורי
The Galilean city where Rabbi Yehuda haNasi spent his last years and completed the Mishna.
Tzippori stands on a hill in the Lower Galilee — «a bird on a mountaintop», as the sages explained its name. After the crushing of Bar Kochba's revolt, Jewish life shifts to the Galilee, and Tzippori, with its clean air and prosperity, becomes one of its capitals.
On his physicians' advice Rabbi Yehuda haNasi moves here from Beit Shearim and spends his last seventeen years in the town. The Sanhedrin of his day sits here, the oral teaching is put into order, and around 3948 the Mishna is completed: six orders, sixty-three tractates, the first written code, which saved the Torah in a generation of persecution.
The city was later known for its twenty-eight synagogues; excavations have uncovered its streets, theatre and famous mosaics.