Kfar Aziz () was a

Jewish Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...

village from the period of the

Mishnah The Mishnah or the Mishna (; , from the verb ''šānā'', "to study and review", also "secondary") is the first written collection of the Jewish oral traditions that are known as the Oral Torah. Having been collected in the 3rd century CE, it is ...

. It is identified with ''Hurbat al Aziz'', in the southern part of Yatta in the southern

West Bank The West Bank is located on the western bank of the Jordan River and is the larger of the two Palestinian territories (the other being the Gaza Strip) that make up the State of Palestine. A landlocked territory near the coast of the Mediter ...

,Daat: Encyclopedia Yehudit
Kfar Aziz
/ref> lying at an elevation of above sea level.

Identification

The

tells the following story: ::Once

Rabbi Yehoshua Joshua ben Hananiah ( ''Yəhōšūaʿ ben Ḥănanyā''; 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 eighth-most-frequently mentioned sage in th ...

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, “Master of the Outside Teaching”), was a rabbi of ...

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 (, often for short) or Palestinian Talmud, also known as the Talmud of the Land of Israel, is a collection of rabbinic notes on the second-century Jewish oral tradition known as the Mishnah. Naming this version of the Talm ...

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 (, ), are a mountain ridge, geographic region, and geologic formation, constituting the southern part of the Judaean Mountains, Judean Mountains. The Hebron Hills are located in the southern West Ban ...

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

Edom Edom (; Edomite language, Edomite: ; , lit.: "red"; Akkadian language, Akkadian: , ; Egyptian language, Ancient Egyptian: ) was an ancient kingdom that stretched across areas in the south of present-day Jordan and Israel. Edom and the Edomi ...

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 by Royal Engineers of the War Department. The Fund is the oldest known organization i ...

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 th ...

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 Kokhba revolt The Bar Kokhba revolt (132–136 AD) was a major uprising by the Jews of Judaea (Roman province), Judaea against the Roman Empire, marking the final and most devastating of the Jewish–Roman wars. Led by Simon bar Kokhba, the rebels succeeded ...

. 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
1874 archaeological discoveries Jews and Judaism in the Roman Empire Talmud places Former populated places in Israel Ancient Jewish settlements of Judaea Historical regions Geography of Palestine (region) Hebron Hills