Lavra Netofa, Greek Catholic monastery in Lower Galilee, Israel

Lavra Netofa monastery sits atop Mount Netofa and offers views across the Bet Netofa Valley and surrounding Galilee mountains. The site contains religious buildings and living quarters for the monks set into the hillside landscape.

Lavra Netofa was founded on 17 July 1967 by Melkite monks from Nazareth, among them the Dutch Trappist Father Jacob Willebrands, abbot until his death in 2005, and the American Father Toma Farelly. They came to live among the Palestinian Christian community and to serve as a bridge to their Jewish neighbours. The first monks lived in tents before building wooden huts.

The hermitage was founded in 1967 by the Dutch Trappist Father Jacob Willebrands and the American Father Toma Farelly, who came to live among the Palestinian Christian community and to serve as a bridge between it and its Jewish neighbours. Today a few monks and Sisters of Bethlehem live here, most of them from the Bet Jamal Monastery near Jerusalem, which they left after Willebrands died in 2005. Volunteers from many countries stay for a time, sharing the daily upkeep and prayers in exchange for a bed and three meals.

The chapel lies underground, reached by a spiral staircase cut into the rock, and the air there stays cool even in summer. Most living quarters have no running water or electricity, and rain is collected in cisterns dug for the purpose. Volunteers from abroad stay here in exchange for daily maintenance work and receive a bed and three meals.

The underground chapel was made from a Byzantine-era water cistern that the founders found while clearing the land; they dug further cisterns to collect rainwater, since most living quarters have neither running water nor electricity.