Tiberias
TIBERIAS
Town located on the eastern shore of Lake Tiberias (also referred to as the Sea of Galilee or Kinneret) in northern Israel.
The town of Tiberias was founded by Herod Antipas (c. 20 c.e.) and named for the Roman emperor Tiberius. It was an important center of Jewish learning, law, and religion from the second through fifth centuries. Over the course of its history, Tiberias was controlled by Arabs, Crusaders, and Ottoman Turks. Early Zionist pioneers set up kibbutzim in this area around the turn of the twentieth century. The city's population quadrupled after the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. In the 1948 Arab-Israel War, fighting broke out with an Arab attack on Jews in the older sections of the town. Jewish fighters were able to push out their Arab adversaries, and eventually the Arab inhabitants fled.
Tiberias, which has a relatively warm climate in winter, is a favorite tourist site, featuring boating, lakefront hotels, and a hot springs spa. Its 2004 population was about 43,000, the majority of them immigrants from North African and Eastern European countries.
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