The old mivkeh
One result of the blessed rains this season is that the old mikveh of the Eitz Chaim shul in Tiveria has water in it for the first time in twenty years. The water in the mikveh is, so far, about 1.20 meters deep. It gets filled up by the rising of lake Kinneret.
For almost twenty years there was no water in the mikveh, says R' Yossi Revach, the gabbai of the shul. Last year there was a bit of water but this year it has filled up much more.
The shul and mikveh were built by HaRav Chaim Abulafia about 280 years ago.
HaRav Abulafia was born in Chevron and then became a rov in Turkey. When he was more than 80 years old, the ruler of the Galil area, Sheik Dahr el Umar, asked him to come to revive the Jewish settlement in Tiveria.
The story is told that the Sheik had the same dream three days in a row that the should bring Jews back to Tiveria where they had not been living for forty years. He contacted HaRav Abulafia since his grandfather had been the last Jew living in Tiveria forty years earlier.
When HaRav Abulafia arrived with a number of Jews from Turkey, the Sheik greeted them royally and built them a residential neighborhood on ten dunams (about 2.5 Acres).
Even though HaRav Abulafia was 82 when he arrived, he oversaw the building and the construction of stores and an olive and sesame press, as well as agriculture. He also build a shul that was the nicest in Eretz Yisroel according to the book Zimras Ha'aretz.
Under the shul they built a mikveh that was connected to the Kinneret by tunnels.
