Kfar Kama

I had never heard of the Circassians before a friend in Tiberias mentioned, almost as an aside, that there was a village of them a short drive south, and that I should go if I wanted to see something in the Galilee that had nothing to do with the biblical circuit. Kfar Kama was founded in 1876 by Circassians, Muslim refugees from the northwest Caucasus who fled or were expelled during the Russian Empire’s brutal conquest of their homeland in the 1860s, scattering across the Ottoman world in a diaspora that landed some communities in Jordan, some in Turkey, and this one small settlement in what was then Ottoman Palestine. A century and a half later, the village of roughly three thousand people still speaks Adyghe, still marks Circassian holidays, and still maintains an identity distinct from both its Jewish and Arab neighbors — a genuinely rare thing in a region where most minority communities eventually blend into one larger category or another.

The heritage museum in the village center, housed in a restored traditional house, is small but run with real care — a guide walked me through displays of Circassian dress, weaponry, and craftwork, explaining the community’s history with a directness that felt personal rather than rehearsed, since her own grandparents were part of the story she was telling. She mentioned, almost in passing, that young Circassian men in Israel serve in the military at unusually high rates, a detail that speaks to a complicated, still-evolving relationship between a small diaspora community and the state around it. Afterward I ate at one of the village’s few restaurants, where a woman made me a Circassian cheese pie called halyuzhey to order, thin pastry folded around a salty local cheese and fried until the outside crackled, served with a garlic and butter sauce that I have thought about since.

The village itself is modest and residential, without much in the way of a formal tourist infrastructure beyond the museum and a couple of restaurants, and that is precisely what made it feel worth the detour — nobody was performing anything for me. I was simply a guest in a place with its own long, specific, mostly untold story.

When to go: Any time of year, though calling ahead to the museum to confirm opening hours is worthwhile since it operates on a smaller schedule than the region’s larger sites. Combine it with a visit to nearby Mount Tabor for an easy half-day loop.