Nabratein Synagogue

The Jewish community

Nabratein was a Jewish village in the Galilee in the Roman and Byzantine periods, and it appears in rabbinic literature as Kefar Neburaya. Tradition holds that the Mishnaic sage Rabbi Eleazar ha-Moda'i and Jacob of Kefar Neburaya, a figure known from rabbinic literature, are buried there; these are traditions, not findings tied to the synagogue. Archaeology shows a settlement with a synagogue from about the second century CE, a cistern with an underground hideaway that has been linked to the Bar Kokhba revolt or the Gallus revolt, and an olive crushing stone of the Byzantine period beside the synagogue. According to the excavators the village was virtually abandoned after the 360s and resettled when the synagogue was rebuilt in 564. The size of the population, its leaders and its later history are unknown. Only two members of the sixth-century congregation are known by name, from the dedicatory lintel inscription.

Architecture and design

The excavators and BibleWalks give three plans. The first hall measured about 9.35 by 11.20 metres, a broadhouse according to the Meyers. It was enlarged to about 13.85 by 11.20 metres, with a stylobate added at the entrance at the end of the third century. The last building, of 564, was a basilica of about 16.90 by 11.60 metres with two rows of four columns, benches along three sides and entrances on the south and north. It faced south towards Jerusalem. The Survey of Western Palestine instead counted ten columns, five on each side, which had lost their Corinthian capitals, and a hare was roughly carved on one column base. The main lintel, about nine feet long, has mouldings, a leaf wreath along the top and a seven-branched menorah in high relief at the centre that divides a single-line Hebrew inscription. The excavated stone pediment of a Torah ark shows two lions flanking a gabled roof with a scallop shell. The architect and seating capacity are unknown.

Life inside the synagogue

Little is recorded about worship in the building beyond what the remains show. The halls had stone benches along their walls, and in the later phases a raised platform (bema) carried the Torah shrine. The pale limestone pediment found in 1981 buried in this platform weighs about half a ton and shows two lions on either side of a gabled roof with a scallop shell; Duke University has dated it to between 250 and 360 CE, and the excavators reported it as the oldest remnant of a Torah ark found in the region. The lintel over the main door names two donors, Hanina son of Lizar and Luliana son of Yudan, and dates the building to 494 years after the destruction of the Temple, that is 564 CE. The seven-branched menorah carved at its centre was later copied over the door of the Henry S. Frank Memorial Synagogue in Philadelphia. The names of rabbis or office-holders are unknown.

Destruction

The sources read describe the ruin of the building in stages, all attributed to natural and political causes rather than to any named people. Meyers and colleagues linked the end of the first enlarged hall to an earthquake around 306 CE, after which it was rebuilt. They attribute the end of that second hall to a combination of factors: the Jewish revolt against Caesar Gallus in 350-352, economic hardship and the great earthquake of 363. The site was then virtually abandoned for two centuries. Magness disputes this reading and argues that there was only one synagogue, built no earlier than the second half of the fourth century. The basilica of 564 is said to have remained in use into the seventh and possibly the eighth century, but no source read records how or when it was destroyed. An earlier lead attributed its end to the earthquake of 749, but no source read supports this. By 1877 the building had collapsed, its columns and lintel lying on the ground.

The community’s fate

No historical record describes the end of the Jewish community of Nabratein. According to the excavators, the village was largely deserted after the troubles and earthquake of the 350s and 360s, and was resettled when the synagogue was rebuilt in 564 CE. Pottery and coins from the site led them to place the last phase of occupation in the Byzantine and early Arab periods, ending around 700 CE according to a summary of their phasing, or in the seventh or possibly eighth century according to another summary of their work. Why the inhabitants left is unknown. Neither invasion nor persecution is recorded for the site, and the sources read do not say whether the later Jewish settlement at Safed had any connection with the people of Nabratein. When the Palestine Exploration Fund surveyed the area in the 1870s, the site was a deserted ruin known in Arabic as Khirbet en-Nabratein.

The site today

The excavated synagogue lies in a pine forest of the Jewish National Fund on a hill north of Safed and is open to the public, reached by a forest road from Highway 89 or Highway 90. The Jewish National Fund and the Israel Antiquities Authority have partly reconstructed the southern façade in reassembled ashlar masonry, and several columns have been set back up on their bases. The benches, the entrance stylobate, paving and low walls of the excavated phases are visible, together with a cistern and an olive crushing stone nearby. The height of the original walls still standing is not given in the sources read. The inscribed lintel is in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem; where the ark pediment is now kept is unknown.

Notable names