Kfar Bar'am synagogue

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". ==History==

village on PEF Survey of Palestine map from the 1870s, with the two synagogue ruins labelled. Kafr Bir'im was established in ancient times, during the Roman period, in Talmudic times, most likely by CE. After a period of Muslim inhabitation, by the 19th century the village was entirely Christian, comprising Maronites and Melkites. Along with other such structures in the Galilee, the ruins were first identified as a synagogue in modern times in 1852 by Edward Robinson in his Biblical Researches in Palestine. The village was captured October 31, 1948 by the Israel Defense Forces during operation Hiram and the villagers forced to leave. On June 16, 1949, Kibbutz Bar'am was founded nearby by demobilized Palmach soldiers. ==Archaeology==

, 1857 The Kfar Bar'am synagogue is preserved up to the second story and has been restored. The architecture 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). Archaeologists, however, have concluded that the building was built at least a century later. According to another tradition, the synagogue was built in honor of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, and bore his name. 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 3rd century CE. The synagogue is made of basalt stone, standard for most buildings in the area, and its façade faces south, towards Jerusalem, as the custom of most synagogues. The six-column portico is unusual. A carved frieze features a winged victory and images of animals and, possibly, human figures. 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." A replica of the lintel is exhibited at the Bar-Dor Museum on Kibbutz Bar'am. 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. ==See also==