Kfar Aziz () was a

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

village from the period of the

Mishna The Mishnah or the Mishna (; he, מִשְׁנָה, "study by repetition", from the verb ''shanah'' , or "to study and review", also "secondary") is the first major written collection of the Jewish oral traditions which is known as the Oral Torah ...

. It is identified with ''Hurbat al Aziz'', in the southern part of Yatta in the southern West Bank,Daat: Encyclopedia Yehudit
Kfar Aziz
/ref> lying at an elevation of above sea level.

Identification

The

Mishnah The Mishnah or the Mishna (; he, מִשְׁנָה, "study by repetition", from the verb ''shanah'' , or "to study and review", also "secondary") is the first major written collection of the Jewish oral traditions which is known as the Oral Torah ...

tells the following story: ::Once

Rabbi Yehoshua Joshua ben Hananiah ( ''Yəhōšuaʿ ben Ḥánanyāh''; d. 131 CE), also known as Rabbi Yehoshua, was a leading tanna of the first half-century following the destruction of the Second Temple. He is the seventh-most-frequently mentioned sage i ...

went to

Rabbi Yishmael Rabbi Yishmael ben Elisha Nachmani (Hebrew: רבי ישמעאל בן אלישע), often known as Rabbi Yishmael and sometimes given the title "Ba'al HaBaraita" (Hebrew: בעל הברייתא), was a rabbi of the 1st and 2nd centuries (third gener ...

in Kfar Aziz... and brought him up from there to Beit Hamaganiah... Elsewhere in the Mishnah, it is stated that Rabbi Yishmael lived "near Edom". The

Jerusalem Talmud The Jerusalem Talmud ( he, תַּלְמוּד יְרוּשַׁלְמִי, translit=Talmud Yerushalmi, often for short), also known as the Palestinian Talmud or Talmud of the Land of Israel, is a collection of rabbinic notes on the second-century ...

explains as follows: "What does 'near Edom' mean? – To the south." These descriptions fit the southern

Hebron hills The Hebron Hills, also known as Mount Hebron ( ar, جبل الخليل, translit=Jabal al-Khalīl, he, הר חברון, translit=Har Hevron), are a mountain ridge, geographic region, and geologic formation, comprising the southern part of the J ...

region, which is the southernmost part of the Holy Land before the desert, and the closest inhabited place to

Edom Edom (; Edomite: ; he, אֱדוֹם , lit.: "red"; Akkadian: , ; Ancient Egyptian: ) was an ancient kingdom in Transjordan, located between Moab to the northeast, the Arabah to the west, and the Arabian Desert to the south and east.N ...

Archaeology

Lieut. H. H. Kitchener of the

Palestine Exploration Fund The Palestine Exploration Fund is a British society based in London. It was founded in 1865, shortly after the completion of the Ordnance Survey of Jerusalem, and is the oldest known organization in the world created specifically for the study ...

visited the site in 1874 and gave a thorough description of its ruin and cave-like dwellings. Kitchener made note of the fact that the local people of Yatta village would go into the ruin and retrieve masonry from the old buildings on the site to be used in their own village construction. At the start of the 20th-century, a large public building with pillars was found, apparently a church, indicating the presence of a Christian settlement in the region in the late Byzantine period. Olive and wine presses and

ossuary An ossuary is a chest, box, building, well, or site made to serve as the final resting place of human skeletal remains. They are frequently used where burial space is scarce. A body is first buried in a temporary grave, then after some years the ...

fragments were found. Burial caves in the region indicated the presence of a Jewish settlement in the 2nd–3rd century, indicating a revival of Jewish life in the region after the

Bar Kochba revolt The Bar Kokhba revolt ( he, , links=yes, ''Mereḏ Bar Kōḵḇāʾ‎''), or the 'Jewish Expedition' as the Romans named it ( la, Expeditio Judaica), was a rebellion by the Jews of the Roman province of Judea, led by Simon bar Kokhba, aga ...

. An archaeological survey at Hurbat al Aziz, conducted in 1968, revealed remains (mostly potsherds) from the Roman/Byzantine period, the era of the

. A reexamination of the public building replete with pillars led to the suggestion that it may have originally been a synagogue., s.v. No archaeological dig was performed (only a survey), and the exact period of the building is unknown. Today, a modern Arab neighborhood has been built on the site, causing extensive damage to the ruins.

References

Bibliography

* {{refend

External links

*Survey of Western Palestine, Map 21:
IAAWikimedia commons
Jews and Judaism in the Roman Empire Talmud places Former populated places in Israel Ancient Jewish settlements of Judaea Historical geography Geography of Palestine (region)