The national park of Bar’am between Kibbutz Sasa and Moshav Dovev, near the Lebanese border, contains the remains of the Maronite village of Kafr Bir'im, built on the site of the ancient Jewish village of Kfar Bar'am, from which the name is derived. Nearby is the modern Kibbutz Bar'am.
Bar'am was established in ancient times but, at an unknown point between the 7th and 13th centuries CE, Jews abandoned the village. After a period of Muslim inhabitation, by the 19th century the village was entirely Maronite Christian.
When we visited during Chol Hamoed Pesach, we found the scant though impressive remains of the larger of two synagogues that existed at Kfar Bar'am, along with the ruins of the later Maronite village of Kafr Bir'im, the church of which is the only building not ruined, and which is still in use by the Maronite community. The peace at this beautiful place belies a painful unresolved seeming injustice in Israel's modern history.
We enjoy a matza, smoked salmon and labane picnic.
But I will start at the beginning of the story, as far as it is known. Bar'am is not mentioned in the Talmud, and it has been assumed therefore that this was not a community which produced scholars or leaders. However it was clearly a wealthy town, since the town's main synagogue is an opulent structure built of large and beautiful ashlars, attesting to the presence of a thriving Jewish community here in the fourth and fifth centuries CE. The scant remains of a second smaller synagogue, of similar period, whose lintel is in the Louvre in Paris, were discovered in 1865. This lintel is inscribed "Peace in this place and all of Israel. Yosef HaLevi son of Levi made this lintel. May his deeds be blessed. Peace." Both synagogues were of an earlier style, of the third century CE. Today only the main synagogue remains,
The southern entrance facade and portico of Bar'am's main synagogue.
The forecourt beneath the remains of the six-columned portico conceal a cistern, unusual for the Galilee, whose entrance stone is visible here.
Detail of the central doorway.
Above the right hand doorway is this Aramaic inscription which tell that the building was built by Elazar, son of Yodan.
The interior of the synagogue.
The interior of the 20 x 15 metre building is typical of those found in Galilean synagogues. Its rough interior walls were once smoothly plastered, and there was a U-shaped second storey held up by the columns. The floor was made of stone slabs and the hall lined with benches originally. The synagogue was built facing south, toward Jerusalem and although the ark of the torah was not found, a stone lion was found which may have formed a part of it..
Bar'am is mentioned by travellers. In his book "Voyage to Palestine" of 1210, Samuel bar Shimshon describes the larger synagogue as still standing, and refers to the grave of Rabbi Pinchas ben Ya'ir at the entrance to the by-then Arab village. Rabbi Moses Basola, writing in 1523, told of his visit, and claimed that Obadiah the prophet had preached in Bar'am, and wrote that the synagogue belonged to Simeon bar Yochai, who survived the Second Jewish War in 132-135 CE (the Bar-Kochba revolt), although this does not align with archaeologists' dating to a century later. For centuries, Bar'am and its environs were a place of Jewish pilgrimage. In the 12th century it was said to contain the tombs of Barak, the prophet Obadiah, and Queen Esther, although the more accepted tradition is that the Persian city of Hamadan (ancient Ecbatana) is the burila place of Queen Esther and her cousin, Mordechai, and their graves are extant ther today.
Nevertheless, in the past the Jews of Safed would assemble around the shrines at Bar'am each year on Purim to celebrate and read the scroll of Esther. Such pilgrimages are reported as late as 1868.
By the 13th and 16th centuries, whilst noting the synagogues, travellers refer to an Arab village, and in 1596, Kafr Bir'im had a population of 114 Muslim households. But by the 19th century the village had a population of 160 males, all Maronites and Melkites (ancient Syriac sects of Byzantine Christians). Kafr Bir'im was badly damaged in the Galilee earthquake of 1837, when the church and a row of columns from the ancient synagogue collapsed. During the Lebanese civil war of 1860, Muslims and Druze attacked the village. In the late nineteenth century the village was described as being built of stone, surrounded by gardens, olive trees and vineyards, with a population of between 300 and 500. The church, still extant, was built on the ruins of the older church destroyed in the 1837 earthquake. By 1945, 710 people (10 Muslims and 700 Christians) lived in Kafr Bir'im, most of them Christians.
Kafr Bir'im was captured by the Haganah on October 31, 1948 during Operation Hiram, which drove the forces of the Arab Liberation Army led by Fawzi al-Qawuqji into Lebanon. The villagers offered no resistance. In November 1948 most of the inhabitants were required to leave by the Israel Defence Forces until the military operation was complete and, although apparently promised they could return once security had been established in the area, none were subsequently permitted to do so. Three years later the IDF blew up the houses in both Bir’am and Ikrit, a town of Greek Catholics which suffered the same fate, leaving only the churches standing. They still stand today, a mute reminder of this history, and Bir’im village church is still the spiritual centre of the Maronite community.
Ruins of Bir'im from the Church roof.
Ruins of Bir'im.
Although the Israeli government claims that most of the inhabitants of the village had received compensation for their losses, the villagers state that they were only compensated for small portions of their holdings. Over the years, numerous appeals to the Supreme Court, government inquiry commissions, demonstrations and protests have produced no results, and many people cannot understand the reason, especially since both the Maronit community and the Greek Catholics are considered friendly to Israel, and many of their young men volunteer for service in the IDF. Israel was a close ally with the South Lebanese Army – composed largely of Christians – from 1975 until 2000, and led latterly by a Maronite general. It was SLA which, in coordination with the IDF, secured the area north of Biram and Ikrit until that date. And the withdrawal of the IDF from southern Lebanon, without adequate coordination with the SLA, is said to have added the shame of betrayal of an ally to the broken promise to the villagers of Biram and Ikrit. Some of the officers and soldiers of the SLA, many of them Maronites and Greek Catholics, succeeded in escaping to Israel, leaving their property and sometimes even their families behind. Israel’s subsequent shabby treatment of these fighters, who tied their fate to Israel, does not alleviate the situation. In a Haifa University study on Maronites' identity in Israel, it was found that the large majority reject Arab identity in favour of a distinct Maronite one.
The church at Kafr Bir'im is still the spiritual centre of the Maronite community, although it was closed when we visited.
Lintel of the church door.
Carved cross to the right of the church door.
2013 sculpted protest in Arabic and Hebrew, in effect pouring shame on those who were thrown from their homes yet throw others from their homes - the Hebrew (עקורים לא עוקרים) means literally "displaced persons don't uproot" - a comment representing the resentment felt by the Maronites.
I can find only questions, resentment, and no answers, in my researches as to why this seemingly unjust situation continues to this day. A sad note to end on.
As a postscript, something about the Maronites. The birth of the Maronite Church can be traced back to a monastery of monks in Syria, attached to the Syriac speaking Church. A renowned monk named Maroun (died in the year 410), became the patron of this community. In the sixth century, the monastery grew and became a center of church teaching, faithful to the decisions of Chalcedon, and a community grew up around it. Because of persecution, the Church emigrated from Syria to Lebanon, cutting its ties with Constantinople. In the wake of the Crusades, relations were re-established between the Maronite community and the Church of Rome. Over time, full union was proclaimed between the Maronite Church and the Catholic Church. The Maronite liturgy was brought closer to the Latin rite of the Catholic Church. The Church spread from Lebanon into Upper Galilee, particularly in Kafr Biram (a village destroyed in 1950) and Jish, and is mentioned as being present in other parts of the Holy Land from the nineteenth century onward, establishing communities in Acre, Haifa, Jaffa, Jerusalem and Nazareth. The community is the fourth largest Christian community in the Holy Land, after the Greek Orthodox, the Greek Catholics and the Latins. A patriarchal vicar has been present in Jerusalem since 1895, belonging to the “Diocese of Tyre and the Holy Land”, in Lebanon. In 1996, the Maronite Church created a new diocese, with a seat in Haifa, which includes only the territory of northern Israel. Today there are communities of Maronites in the Galilee (especially in Jish/Gush Halav), Haifa, Nazareth, Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Jaffa. The Church uses Arabic in most of its prayers and religious celebrations, whereas a few formulae are preserved in the original Syriac in memory of the Church’s origins.
The Maronites suffered a bloody history in the last centuries in Lebanon. Troubles began in the last decades of Ottoman rule although the Church recovered its strength in the period of the French mandate in Lebanon, during which the Church was granted full freedom and even important privileges which enabled the Church and the community to become central powerbrokers in Lebanon.
In Israel, a Maronite population numbering some 11,000 mostly concentrated in the long existing community in the Jish (Gush Chalav) area, lives side by side with the other Christian communities, celebrating both their own feasts and those that they share with the Roman Catholic Church.
In 2014, Israel has decided to recognize the Aramean community within its borders as a national minority, allowing some of the Christians in Israel to be registered as "Aramean" instead of "Arab". The Christians who may apply for recognition as Aramean are mostly Galilean Maronites, who trace their culture, ancestry and language to Arameans. In addition adherents of the Syriac Catholic Church in Israel are able to apply for this status, as well as Aramaic-speaking adherents of the Syriac Orthodox Church.