Four Holy Cities

The Four Holy Cities (, ) is the collective term in Jewish tradition applied to the cities of Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed and, later, Tiberias, the four main centers of Jewish life after the Ottoman conquest of Palestine. The "holy cities" concept dates to the 1640s, with Tiberias joining in 1740, resulting from the creation of an association between the cities for the collection of halukka (funds for the needy).