Kfar Hananya

The village is named after the ancient village of the same name, a little further to its north, which is mentioned in the Mishnah.

Ancient Kfar Hananya was a Jewish village during the period of Roman and Byzantine rule in the Galilee. It was a center of pottery production in the Galilee and most of the cooking ware in the Galilee between the 1st century BCE and the beginning of the 5th century CE was produced there.{{cite book |last1=Negev |first1=Avraham |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=l3JtAAAAMAAJ&q=Kefar+Hananyah |title=Archaeological Encyclopedia of the Holy Land |last2=Gibson |first2=Shimon |publisher=Continuum |year=2001 |isbn=0-8264-1316-1 |location=New York and London |page=279 |chapter=Kefar Hananyah |author-link2=Shimon Gibson |access-date=24 April 2021}}{{cite book |last= Crossan |first= John Dominic |author-link= John Dominic Crossan |title= Birth of Christianity |page= 224 |publisher=T&T Clark |location= Edinburgh |year= 1999 |isbn= 978-0-567-08668-6 |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=GaYKGrqXCwEC&pg=PA224 |access-date= 24 April 2021}} It is mentioned for its pottery production in Rabbinic literature. Archaeological excavations revealed shafts and bases of columns, caves, a pool, and a burial ground.

The village was mentioned in various accounts throughout the following centuries. A 12th century Jewish visitor wrote of the ruins of a synagogue quarried into the hill.[https://www.academia.edu/52578091/The_Ancient_Synagogues_in_Galilee The Ancient Synagogues in Galilee] In 1522, the Jewish traveller Moses ben Mordecai Bassola found about 30 families of Musta'arabi Jews living there, most of them of priestly stock, making it the fifth-largest Jewish community in the country at the time, out of eight places named by him.Braslavski (1933-07-01). "Kefar Hanania / כפר חנניה: על יסוד פרטים שנאספו בשעת סיור". Bulletin of the Jewish Palestine Exploration Society / ידיעות החברה העברית לחקירת ארץ-ישראל ועתיקותיה (in Hebrew). 1 (2). p. 20. ISSN 2312-0096. JSTOR 23718865. A 1525 Ottoman census recorded 14 Jewish families in the village.

After the Ottoman Empire conquered Palestine, the village came to be known as Kafr 'Inan and very soon became an all-Muslim village. In Ottoman tax records from either 1549 or 1596 it was described as a village with an entirely Muslim population estimated at 259.{{Cite web |url=https://www.academia.edu/2026845 |title=The Administration and Population of the Sancak of Safed in the Sixteenth Century | Harold Rhode - Academia.edu |access-date=2020-08-22 |archive-date=2019-04-20 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190420031504/https://www.academia.edu/2026845/The_Administration_and_Population_of_the_Sancak_of_Safed_in_the_Sixteenth_Century |url-status=dead }} In 1881, the PEF Survey of Palestine described it as a Muslim village of 150-200 residents.{{Cite web|url=https://archive.org/stream/surveyofwesternp01conduoft#page/203/mode/1up|title = The survey of western Palestine : Memoirs of the topography, orography, hydrography, and archaeology}}

During the British Mandate era, Kafr 'Inan was recorded as having an all-Muslim population of 360 in the 1945 Village Statistics. During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Kafr 'Inan was captured by the Golani Brigade of the Israel Defense Forces as part of Operation Hiram and the area was subsequently incorporated into the State of Israel. The villagers were expelled.{{cite book |last= Morris |first= Benny |author-link= Benny Morris |title= The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited |page= 517 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |series= Cambridge Middle East Studies |volume= 18 |issn= 1365-5698 |year= 2004 |isbn= 9780521009676 |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=uM_kFX6edX8C&pg=PA517 |access-date= 24 April 2021}}

Modern Kfar Hananya was founded in 1977 as a moshav of the movement Hapoel HaMizrachi for members of nearby moshavim on land that belonged to Kafr 'Inan, about 1 km south of the village site. In 1992 it became a community settlement. A new neighborhood built in the 2000s is called "Maale Hen" (מעלה חן).

Near the community is a burial place attributed to Rabbi Hananya ben Akashya, a sage of the Tannaim period.{{cite book |last=Ḥadad |first=David |title=Sefer Ma'asei Avoth |year=2005 |location=Beer-Sheva |page=(Appendix) |language=he |oclc=74311775}}[http://www.zissil.com/topics/Rabbi-Chananyah-ben-Akashya Encyclopedia of Kivrei Tzadikim]

The ruins of ancient Kefar Hanania are situated about one kilometre north of the modern village.David Adan-Bayewitz, Kefar Hananya, Israel Exploration Journal 37 (1987), pp 178-179; Adan-Bayewitz, D., "Kefar Hananya", New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land, (ed. E. Stern), 2008, pp. 1909-1911 Kefar Hanania is mentioned in the Mishnah as a community on the border between the Lower Galilee and Upper Galilee (Mishnah Shevi'it [https://archive.org/details/DanbyMishnah/page/n78 9:2]).{{cite book |surname1=Aviam |first1=Mordechai |url={{Google books |id= e3jnUBqapi0C |page=179 |plainurl=yes}} |title=Josephus' Galilee in Archaeological Perspective |surname2=Richardson |first2=Peter |publisher=Brill |year=2003 |isbn=9780391042056 |chapter=Flavius Josephus: Life of Josephus, translated and commented by Steve Mason, Appendix A |quote=The border between Upper and Lower Galilee mentioned by the Mishnah is at Kefar Hananiah, but Josephus locates the border at Bersabe, which he uses as a reference point for his list of border towns (Life 188). The two sites are located side by side within a distance of less than a kilometer, at the eastern end of the Beth Kerem valley. |access-date=25 May 2018}}The Mishnah (ed. Herbert Danby), Oxford University Press: Oxford 1933, s.v. Tractate Shebiit [https://archive.org/stream/DanbyMishnah#page/n77/mode/2up 9:2]

Kfar Ḥananya ware, produced in Kfar Hananya from the mid-first century BCE to the mid-fifth century CE, is the ceramic marker of Roman Galilee. Kfar Ḥananya potters manufactured vessels for cooking and household use in seven general forms: shallow pans, bowls, casseroles, cooking pots, jugs and small storage jars.[https://www.levantineceramics.org/wares/136-kefar-hananya-ware Kefar Hananya ware] In the Babylonian Talmud, Rabbi Jose ben Halafta praises the vessels produced in Kfar Hananya, describing them as “not likely to burst.” [https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/2014-01-31/ty-article/.premium/israeli-tech-puts-the-pottery-together/0000017f-e261-d568-ad7f-f36b360d0000 New Israeli Computer Tech Puts the Pieces Together for Pottery Archaeologists, Haaretz]

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Category:Community settlements

Category:Populated places in Northern District (Israel)

Category:Populated places established in 1977

Category:1977 establishments in Israel

Category:Merom HaGalil Regional Council