The Israeli dream for young couples and families has always been a private house with a garden, and if you add to that a pastoral view and a meaningful, value-filled community life — you get the perfect living environment. In Tene Omarim, every family can find its place and join a diverse community of both secular and religious residents in an amazing form of cooperation not seen elsewhere. Tene has a community pool with operating hours suited for both mixed-gender and separate swimming. Alongside it, there are parks, green open spaces, and some of the most advanced and high-quality educational institutions in the region.
Now you too can make that dream come true within driving distance and at an affordable price. All of this is happening in the community of Tene Omarim, which offers on one hand a very high and quality standard of living — and on the other hand, proximity to a main route, Highway 6, and to the Negev capital Beersheba, and thus also to various employment centers in the area. These days, the company Harey Zahav is marketing a project of 135 semi-detached and private ground-level homes built to a high and meticulous standard, including an attractive model of a 148 sq.m. private house. The project was designed by leading designers Eyal Silis and Haim Alfasi of Siah Architects, who explain: “Spirit – spirituality, Earth – connection to the Land of Israel and to nature, Community – mutual responsibility, Judean Hills – the view, the space, it all connects to a single design language.”
“This project is mainly geared toward southern residents — of course, everyone is welcome, but the proximity to Beersheba allows people whose lives are centered in the south not to change jobs, but perhaps to change their children’s educational institutions,” says Michael Botir, VP of Marketing at Harey Zahav. According to him, “Beersheba today is already a metropolis that can afford a bit of negative migration, where people still want to work in Beersheba but upgrade their quality of life. One can enjoy rural life in a mixed community in a private house with a garden — and still be in the city’s area. Get out of the experience of living in a building where you maybe don’t really know your neighbors — and if you do, it might not always be a positive relationship — into something more old-school, nostalgic, pleasant, which is called community life.”
Botir emphasizes that “this story isn’t about luxury, the story is about high standards. Architecture that communicates with nature, but alongside all the talk about community, it also gives you privacy. In the end, the houses are built at a slight diagonal, like a fan, and each house with its own garden is tilted just a bit away from the neighboring house. That precisely illustrates our thinking.”
“There’s this Israeli story — after what happened in October, this is a project that brings people closer,” explains Botir the thought behind the project. “The slogan is ‘Am Yisrael Chai in Tene Omarim,’ taking the situation and leveraging it into a community-building and unifying aspect where religious and secular people live together successfully despite their differences. There is a response — people are coming who are looking for exactly this: to live with people who are a bit different from them. It creates a lot of optimism, not just in real estate but in our shared future here.”
“We came and fell in love — here you can live at a high level and quality of life,” say Ela and Tamir Angel, who live in Tene Omarim with their three sons Roy, Leo, and Ben. Ela works as a nurse 20 minutes from home, and Tamir was in the restaurant business — before being called up for reserve duty in the Yehuda Brigade about a year ago.
“We decided to move to Tene because we were looking for a mixed community settlement, not far from Beersheba, and the settlement met all our criteria,” Ela says. About the welcome they received in the community, she says, she didn’t expect it: “Warmth, love, cakes and signs, an adoptive family, answers to every question and concern. And that’s how it’s been ever since — during births, celebrations, and also during difficult times — a truly unique kind of community support. A warm and loving envelope that really doesn’t leave you alone. Even during reserve duty periods, help for the wives of reservists — truly wonderful projects.”
She says she would recommend that couples who are hesitant should come visit the community. “Come visit, enjoy the breathtaking view, the unique and caring human capital. The friendships that are formed here are more than family — for every need you’ll get a response. What more could you ask for than a stunning view, good friends, a quality community, freedom in open space, independence, and a sense of security for your children that doesn’t exist anywhere else?”
Ela’s words are echoed by Lidor Bassa, 28, a third-generation resident of Tene Omarim. She works as a safety supervisor at the Osem factory in Sderot, and her husband, Shaked, 30, is completing his studies in communication systems engineering at Ben-Gurion University — a short drive from home. “I was born in Tene 28 years ago, we lived in the old caravans for five years, returned to Beersheba, and then came back to Tene 18 years ago. I met my husband about 13 years ago, and we got married three years ago. We were unsure where to live, and decided to go with the flow. We took a walk around here and saw that this is our place,” she says.
“The magic of the community, in my eyes, is the togetherness, the sense of family. It’s not about going to ask for a cup of milk because I’m out — I can do that even if I live in an apartment building — it’s the moment when, if there’s a quiet period in my home, the neighbors ask, ‘Is everything okay with you?’ It’s a woman giving birth here — almost a whole week everyone is around her and helps, with meals, and if there are other children then someone picks them up from kindergarten. It’s amazing — you won’t see that in Beersheba, not in Omer, not in Meitar, nowhere else. It’s togetherness, it’s family, but still with privacy — and that’s the magic of this place.”
She says her husband also fell under the community’s spell. “Shaked came from the city, and I always told him he’d fall in love with Tene. He came here, and he really did fall in love. It’s the quiet — you come home after a busy day and you truly disconnect.”
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Sheva Darom, article sponsored by Harey Zahav
