Not many people who are neither students of Jewish history nor WH chasers will prioritize seeing Bet She'arim on their visit to Israel, but it has to be said that it is one of just a couple of WH sites in Israel that actually exceeded my expectations (albeit from a relatively low bar). I visited on an early morning in November of 2019 and pretty much "opened the site" for the day; only about half an hour later a few other people started to arrive, followed by a couple of tour buses.

The primary site consists of a few dozen caves that hold multiple Jewish burials from around the 2nd century AD. The two main caves nearest to the visitor center offer 90% of the overall value, while the rest provides one or two additional features and extend the range of the attraction. The Museum Cave, true to its name, offers a number of exhibits in a museum setting, from ancient pottery to fragments of stone decorations to models of the original structures at the site.

The Cave of the Coffins is also aptly, if not exactly creatively, named. This is a vast catacomb filled with all kinds of tombs and sarcophagi. The cave is roughly 75 x 75 meters in dimensions, but it feels larger as you walk inside its passages. Many coffins are decorated with patterns or animal motifs, and in one corner of it stands what is known as “the mother of all menorahs”.

Not all caves are accessible – and those that are more often than not require a touch of contortionist abilities in order to enter. Most of the open doors are barely a meter high; having to bend horizontally to pass through is unavoidable – and the door width will proportionally impede those of larger girth. Nonetheless, I attempted to go inside as many of the caves as I could, even though, as mentioned above, they only offer an occasional detail of note. Among them is the one presumably hosting the tomb of Rabbi Yehuda Hanasi (aka Judah the Patriarch), the spiritual and political leader of the Jewish world at the turn of the 3rd century AD.

Bet She’arim is about an hour away by car from Tel Aviv – or a bit over half an hour from Haifa. I spent under an hour at the site, while a more thorough student of ancient history may find ways to extend their stay; there is a secondary site about a kilometer away called Menorah Caves – I had a thought of taking a look, but the path to it was barred. There are also the remains of the ancient town of Bet She’arim above the necropolis.