Bethlehem, Galilee

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Bethlehem, Galilee is a city of the Zebulun, mentioned first in Joshua 19:15. It is located about ten kilometres west-north-west of Nazareth.

At first it was simply named "Beth Lehem", which confused it with the Bethlehem near Jerusalem, which is much better known today. To solve this problem some scripts refer to the two as "Beth Lehem of the Judea (tribe) territory" and "Beth Lehem of the Zebulun territory".

Evidence shows that it was a Jewish settlement until some time after the fall of the Second Temple (destroyed c. 70 CE by the Romans). In the Jerusalem Talmud it is referred to as "Beth Lehem Zoria", as it was part of the kingdom of Tyre at the time. During the crusades, a small Christian settlement existed on the site, but was later abandoned. Because of the history of the place, and the proximity to Nazareth, some historians claim that it may actually be the true place of birth of Jesus (Aviram Oshri, a senior archaeologist with the Israeli Antiquities Authority). The site featured the ruins of a church and a synagogue until the late 19th century, and was found to have archeological evidence of a prosperous city; many scholars place Beth Lehem of Galilee as one of the birth places of Rabbinical Judaism — it is by all accounts a logical place for a spiritual leader with a small group of followers to develop his doctrines.

Bet Ha'Am of Bethlehem is a fine example of Templer architecture

Beit Lehem Ha-Gelilit is a modern Jewish-Israeli village. The modern settlement was founded in 1906 by the Temple Society. The Templers lived there in a culturally rich community that also ran a Nazi youth movement. In 1939, after the break of World War II, many of the settlers were deported by the British authorities to Australia under charges of aiding the enemy owing to the Templers' open support of the third Reich. On April 17 1947, forces of the Haganah captured the village and deported the last of the Templer settlers to Australia as well. With the evacuation of the German settlers, the place was now occupied by Israeli farmers, who turned it into a popular tourist site in the 1990s, and the village today features many craft shops, village attractions for city folks, holiday accommodation, a museum dedicated to the history of the site, galleries, and cafes. Much of the original Templer architecture still survives at the site, and is reminiscent of the style of other Templer settlements around the country, such as Sarona (pronounced Sharona) in Tel-Aviv, and the German colonies (as they are called today) in Haifa and Jerusalem.

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