Kfar Bar'am
- This article is about the village in Upper Galilee known as Kfar Bar'am. For other uses, see Kfar Bar'am (disambiguation).
| Kfar Bar'am | |
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| Ancient synagogue ruins. | |
 Shown within Israel
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| Coordinates | 33°02′37″N 35°24′51″E / 33.043611°N 35.414075°E |
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Kfar Baram (Hebrew: כְּפַר בַּרְעָם), also Kafr Bir'im or Kafar Berem, is the site of an ancient Jewish village in Northern Israel, 3 kilometers from the Lebanese border. An ancient Hebrew inscription from one of the village synagogues reads: "Peace be upon the place, and on all the places of Israel."
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[edit] Etymology
The name is often assumed to mean "Son of the People," incorporating the Aramaic word bar בר, meaning "son" and the Hebrew word am עם meaning "people". However, if like at Shfar'am, both elements are Hebrew, the name could derive from a literary Hebrew word בר indicating cleanliness, purity, pristineness and wholesomeness - "The wholesome people" or "wholesomeness of the people". In modern Hebrew, בר is most commonly used in phrases to indicate "wilderness" or "nature".
[edit] History
Bar'am was established in ancient times as a Jewish village. At an unknown point following the Arab conquest of Palestine in the seventh century, but before the thirteenth century, Jews abandoned the village.[1][2] By the nineteenth century the village was entirely Christian. A church on the site , the Maronite church, is maintained and is always open.
Kafr Bar'am was badly damaged in the Galilee earthquake of 1837. The local church and a row of columns and other standing remains of the ancient synagogue were thrown to the ground.[3] In the 19th century the village had a population of 160 males, all Maronites and Melkites.[4]
The town was captured October 31, 1948 by the Israel Defense Forces during operation Hiram. The villagers were made to leave.[5] In 1949, with cross-border infiltration a frequent occurrence, the government of the new State of Israel decided not to allow Arab villagers to return to the border zone, which included Bir'im, for security reasons.[6]
Kibbutz Bar'am was founded nearby on 16 June 1949 to guard and hold the border with Lebanon by demobilized Palmach soldiers.
According to tradition the prophet Obadiah and Queen Esther, wife of King Xerxes, were buried at Kfar Bar'am. On Purim, the Megillat Esther (Scroll of Esther) was read at her grave. However, the city of Hamadan (ancient Ecbatana) is where the tomb of Queen Esther and her uncle, Mordechai have been presented for countless centuries.
Kfar Bar'am can be reached by the road running north from Meron to Sassa (9 km/6 mi).
[edit] Synagogue
The synagogue is preserved up to the second story and has been restored. The architecture of the synagogue is similar to that of other synagogues in the Galilee built in the Talmudic period. In 1522, Rabbi Moses Basula wrote that the synagogue belonged to Simeon bar Yochai, who survived the Second Jewish War in 132-135 CE (the Bar-Kochba revolt). But archeologists have concluded that the building was built at least a century later. The Israeli archaeologist Lipa Sukenik (1889-1953), who was instrumental in establishing the Department of Archaeology at the Hebrew University, excavated a relief in one of the synagogues in 1928, and dated the Bar’am synagogue to the third century CE.
The synagogue is made of basalt stone, standard for most buildings in the area. The six-column portico is unusual. The front entrance of the synagogue has three doorways that face Jerusalem. In front of the entrance are some of the (originally eight) columns with Attic bases which supported a porch. There is an inscription under the right window on the facade, which reads: "Banahu Elazar bar Yodan", which means "Elazar bar Yodan built it". Elazar bar Yodan is a Jewish Aramaic name. The interior of the synagogue was divided by rows of columns into three aisles and an ambulatory.
An unusual feature in an ancient synagogue is the presence of three-dimensional sculpture, a pair of stone lions. A similar pair of three-dimensional lions was found at Chorazin.[7] A carved frieze features a winged victory and images of animals and, possibly, human figures.[8]
There was a second, smaller synagogue, but little of it was found. A lintel from this smaller synagogue is at the Louvre. The Hebrew inscription on the lintel reads, "Peace be upon the place, and on all the places of Israel."[9]
In 1901, publication of photos of the ancient synagogue led the Jewish Hospital of Philadelphia, (now the Albert Einstein Medical Center,) to erect a synagogue, the Henry S. Frank Memorial Synagogue, inspired by Bar'am and other ancient Israeli synagogues. The hospital's synagogue replicated the round arch of the door of the standing ruin and the lintel from the smaller synagogue that is now in the Louvre.[2]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Judaism in late antiquity, Jacob Neusner, Bertold Spuler, Hady R Idris, BRILL, 2001, p. 155
- ^ a b Art and Judaism in the Greco-Roman world: toward a new Jewish archaeology, Steven Fine, Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. 13-14
- ^ "The earthquake of 1 January 1837 in Southern Lebanon and Northern Israel" by N. N. Ambraseys, in Annali di Geofisica, Aug. 1997, p.933,
- ^ Robinson, Edward. (1856) Biblical Researches in Palestine and the Adjacent Regions J. Murray: pp.68-71.
- ^ Benny Morris (2004): The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, ISBN 0521009677, p. XXII, settlement #160.
- ^ Israel's border wars, 1949-1956: Arab infiltration, Israeli retaliation, and the countdown to the Suez War, Benny Morris, 2nd Edition, Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 124
- ^ Art and Judaism in the Greco-Roman world: toward a new Jewish archaeology, Steven Fine, Cambridge University Press, 2005, p. 190.
- ^ Art and Judaism in the Greco-Roman world: toward a new Jewish archaeology, Steven Fine, Cambridge University Press, 2005, p. 92.
- ^ Art and Judaism in the Greco-Roman world: toward a new Jewish archaeology, Steven Fine, Cambridge University Press, 2005, Chapter 1, Building an Ancient Synagogue on the Delaware, pp. 12-21
[edit] External links
- Bar'am synagogue (Talmudic period)
- Ancient Synagogues in Bar'am and Capernaum article written by Jacqueline Schaalje, from Jewish Magazine, June, 2001 Edition
- Bar’am National Park, an ancient synagogue and a Maronite church
- Coexistence - Kafar Berem article written by Hanna F. Farah
