Betar (Biblical Hebrew: בֵּיתַּר, romanized: Bēttar), also spelled Beitar, Bethar or Bether, was an ancient Jewish town in the Judaean Mountains.

Continuously inhabited since the Iron Age,[1] it was the last standing stronghold of the Bar Kokhba revolt, and was destroyed by the Imperial Roman Army under Hadrian in 135 CE.

[10] It is not mentioned in the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible, but is added in the Septuagint (Codex Sinaiticus) as one of the cities of the Tribe of Judah after Joshua 15:59.

It is believed that early in Hadrian's rule, Jewish institutions relocated there, probably due to the city's proximity to the destroyed Jerusalem.

[12]The Babylonian Talmud (Sanhedrin 95; Gittin 58, et al..) and the Midrash (in Lamentations Rabbah) mention the city Betar, the siege, and the fate of its inhabitants.

According to Eusebius, "The war reached its height in the eighteenth year of the reign of Hadrian in Beththera, which was a strong citadel not very far from Jerusalem; the siege lasted a long time before the rebels were driven to final destruction by famine and thirst and the instigator of their madness paid the penalty he deserved.

The Jerusalem Talmud relates in Ta'anit 4:5 that the number of dead in Betar was enormous and that the Romans "went on killing until their horses were submerged in blood to their nostrils."

According to the Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 48b, Hadrian had prohibited the burial of the dead, and so all the bodies remained above ground; however, they miraculously did not decompose.

Rabbinical literature ascribes the defeat to Bar Kokhba killing his maternal uncle, Rabbi Elazar Hamudaʻi, after suspecting him of collaborating with the enemy, thereby forfeiting Divine protection.

[23] Accounts of the Fall of Betar in Talmudic and Midrashic writings reflect and amplify its importance in the Jewish psyche and oral tradition in the subsequent period.

[25] In 1874, French archeologist Clermont-Ganneau visited Battir and cited a local tradition among the local fellahin according which a hard stone known as Hajr el Manjalik, or "the stone of the mangonel," located on a plateau near Khirbet el-Yehud, was said to have been the location where a ruler named El Melek edh-Dhaher set up his cannon batteries to breach the Khirbet el-Yahud.

[26] J. E. Hanauer cited a similar tale in 1894, although the fellah who showed the explorers the stone claimed that a "Neby" was the one who had "cannonaded" the Jews.

[31] It was founded in the vicinity of the Betar fortress location, around a kilometre from the Green Line, which gave it the character of an exposed border settlement until the Six-Day War.