Kfar Kama

Kfar Kama (Hebrew: כְּפַר כַּמָא; Arabic: كفر كما‎; Adyghe: Кфар Кама) is a town located in the lower Galilee, Israel, with a population of 2,900, largely Circassian.

Kfar Kama might be identified with a village Helenoupolis that Constantine established in honor of his mother Helen.

Excavations carried out in 1961 and 1963 revealed 4th century tombs. Two churches dated to the early 6th century, one dedicated to Saint Thecla, were uncovered, with multicolored mosaics of floral, animal and geometric patterns.

In the Crusader period it was known as Kapharchemme or Capharkeme.

In 1596, Kfar Kama appeared in Ottoman tax registers as a village in the Nahiya of Tiberias in the Liwa of Safad. It had a population of 34 Muslim households and paid taxes on wheat, barley, summercrops, cotton, and goats or beehives.

In the 1870s, it was described as having "basaltic stone houses, containing about 200 Moslems, situated in plain of arable soil."

The current village was founded in 1878 by 1150 Circassian immigrants from the Adyghe tribe Shapsugs who were exiled from the Caucasus by the Russians to the Ottoman Empire due to the Russian-Circassian War. Initially they made their living by raising animals, but later became farmers. The first school was established about 1880.

At the time of the 1922 census of Palestine, Kafr Kama had a population of 670 Muslims and 7 Christians.

The school in the village teaches in a mixed environment of classes in Circassian, Hebrew, Arabic and English languages.

Kfar Kama is one of two Circassian villages in Israel. The other one is Rehaniya. The Circassians are Muslims, who unlike the main Israeli Arab Muslim minority, perform military service in the IDF, similar to the Israeli Druze.

A Center for Circassian Heritage is situated in the village.