If you know Venice Beach, you know Tiberias—just trade the weed for an excess of Jews. The main part of Tiberias, centered on the midrakhov, is loud and touristy, so embrace the kitsch. Befriend the angsty kid buying the “#1 Nayfish” T-shirt. Take a picture with the Christian pilgrims eager to poke through the city’s many tombs. Sayhello to the Ashkenazi Haredi men with long beards, black hats, and suits who sit on the midrakhov enjoying the sun while bare-chested boys and scantily clad girls sashay by. Worldly and commercialized, the city’s wind-whipped streets don’t get nearly as quiet for Shabbat as its neighbors to the north.

Travel back a few millennia, and you could easily have found some Sabbath peace: Rome’s figurehead ruler of Judea, Herod Antipas (that cad), tried to bring settlers into this spic-and-span new town. But some rebellious Jews—including a rising star in the vigilante world, a certain J. Christ—defied Herod and refused to enter the town that had been built on Jewish graves. A century later, Rabbi Shimon Bar-Yokhai made a declaration neither ridiculous nor fishy saying that the town was now suddenly pure and could be inhabited. Although at one time the population was split almost evenly between Jews and Arabs, since the war in 1948, the population has remained almost entirely Jewish.

Today, Tiberias’s fantastic location and cheap hostels make it a jumping off point for exploration of the Galilee and Golan Heights, as well as a hot spot in its own right. Sometimes that “hot” gets a little too literal, as the city’s low elevation guarantees a sweaty and mosquito-filled summer. But plenty of street fairs, air-conditioning, and price gouging keep you distracted from all the humidity.