Tiberias

Since the Israeli troops took the Golan Heights in 1967, ending the constant shelling of the region, the area around the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) has become a popular alternative to a Mediterranean or Red Sea holiday. Although tourism has raised prices, it has also brought an abundance of lodgings and a lively weekend nightlife to northern Israel. Tiberias (Tverya in Hebrew) is the only major city on the Kin-j neret and an ideal touring base for the area and the Golan Heights, though during July and August the city can be hot and soggily humid due to its location 200ffl below sea level.

For a resort, Tiberias has a surprisingly noble history. Built in 18 AD by Herod Antipas, King of Judea and tetrarch of Galilee, the city was named for the Roman emperor Tiberius. According to first-cenlury Jewish historian Josephus, the city also took on its namesake’s most salient trait-hedonism. Although the Romans attempted to bring in settlers, most Jews, including Jesus, refused to enter the towfl’ because it was built upon the site of older Jewish graves. But after Rabbi Shimon Bar-Yohai declared the town ritually pure. Tiberias became a major center of Jewish scholarship. When the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in response to the Bar Kokhba revolt. Tiberias became perhaps the most serious center of Jewish life and scholarship in the Holy Land. It was here that the Misbnah (a collection of Jewish law forming part of the Talmud) was codified, the Talmud edited, and vowels added to thej Hebrew alphabet and sacred texts. The Sanhedrin, the great court of scholars and) rabbis, also met here. Along with Jerusalem, Hebron, and Tzfat, Tiberias was deemed one of Israel’s holy cities.

Under the Byzantines, Jews from Persia and Babylonia came on pilgrimages to Tiberi;is, following the legend that the redemption of Israel would begin here. Throughout the Byzantine and Islamic periods Tiberias served as both a significant Civic center and a health resort. In 1837 Tiberias was devastated by an earthquake ^at rocked all of northern Palestine. At the turn of the century, Jewish immigrants began to resettle the area until they made up half of the 12,000 inhabitants at the [jjne of the founding of the State of Israel in 1948. The city’s population has since more than doubled and is now almost entirely Jewish.