KABRI

KABRI (Heb. כַּבְּרִי), kibbutz bordering on Acre Plain and the hills of Upper Galilee in Israel, affiliated to Ha-Kibbutz ha-Me'uḥad. It was founded in 1949 by settlers from bet arabah who were forced to abandon their settlement north of the Dead Sea in the war of independence (1948). In 1968 Kabri, with 560 inhabitants, engaged in mixed farming. In 2002 its population numbered 728, with the economy based on the manufacture of aluminum and plastic products and a few farming branches such as fruit plantations and cattle. Large-scale excavations in 1986–93 revealed settlement on the site from the Neolithic period and enormous growth in the Middle Bronze II period (2000–1550 B.C.E.). By the end of the Bronze Age (1200 B.C.E.) the site was deserted. In Roman and Byzantine times, Kabri (kabritha ) was a flourishing center (Tos. Shev. 4:11). Numerous ashlars and mosaic floors remain from this era, some of which were reused in the houses of the Arab village which was abandoned in 1948. Porous limestone beneath a stratum of impervious heavy soil resulted in the formation of four copious springs whose fresh waters were led a distance of about 7 mi. (12 km.) to Acre by the aqueduct built in 1800 by the governor Aḥmad al-Jazzār. Under British Mandatory rule, a British-owned plant bottled the "Kabri water." In the spring of 1948, haganah soldiers on their way to reinforce the isolated kibbutz of Yeḥi'am further east were caught at Kabri in an ambush, and 46 men fell; a memorial has been set up there. A government fruit-tree nursery, a Jewish National Fund (JNF) forest-tree nursery, and the JNF regional administration were located at Kabri. -WEBSITE: www.cabri.org.il . (Efram Orni / Shaked Gilboa (2nd ed.)