Tel Aviv’s Newest Cafes Serve Hope and Resilience
Cafe Otef is uplifting Israel’s displaced border communities with delicious coffee and cake.
Israel’s coastal city of Tel Aviv, known for its lively and cosmopolitan 24/7 culture, has two new cafes. But these cafes are very different to its other chic eateries. As The Times of Israel reports, the two branches of Cafe Otef have been created to offer income, employment and support to the displaced members of southern communities bordering Gaza, people who were hardest hit by the horror and destruction of the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023.
What’s more, as the news portal of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews emphasizes, another objective of the cafe is to connect locals with the uprooted community in their midst.
The meaning behind the name
In Hebrew Otef means wrapping, and this “Gaza Envelope” refers to the small communal farming communities (kibbutzim) and towns that are within 4.3 miles (7 kilometers) of the border with Gaza, and so within easy range of the deluge of mortar shells and rockets launched at Israel from the Gaza Strip, as daily newspaper, Haaretz details. These pastoral communities were brutally attacked on October 7.
After the tragic events of last October, scores of people who had lived in the Gaza Envelope, lost their loved ones, their homes, and their whole way of life. They became internal refugees, forced to evacuate to temporary accommodation in other parts of Israel.
The Otef Cafes emerge to bring back hope and focus
Earlier this year, local business people came together to help displaced members of these southern communities launch and run these new cafes by themselves.
Motivated by the motto “We shall thrive again,” this fledgling chain, staffed by mainly next-gen evacuees from Israel’s Gaza border, offers them focus as well as solace. It plans to expand within Tel Aviv before returning to southern Israel, to help kickstart the economic rebirth of that stricken region, Ynet explains.
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In the spring, the first Cafe Otef coffee shop opened to the public. It belongs to the ravaged border moshav cooperative community of Netiv Ha’asara, where the lives of many of its members were extinguished on October 7, as Haaretz reports.
Its location is the central Tel Aviv district of Sarona, as The Times of Israel covered in May. Nestled among the quaint historic buildings of this restored quarter, a stone’s throw away from the modern high rises of the city’s business district, this small cafe welcomes visitors with a sign featuring a red wildflower, the anemone, a symbol of the Gaza border area, as Jewish Insider details.
Since then, a second branch has opened its doors in Tel Aviv’s hipster Florentin neighborhood. It is called Cafe Otef — Re’im, and is named after the southern kibbutz that came under attack in October, losing seven of its members, with most of the survivors currently living locally. Over 364 people were murdered at the Nova Music Festival, held adjacent to the kibbutz.
The sense of purpose these coffee shops give their young staff members is apparent. One of Cafe Otef — Netiv Ha’asara’s managers, Yotam Kidar, was left traumatized by the events of October 7, which saw him cowering in a closet for 10 hours, fearing for his life. He lost close relatives in the attacks, but is benefiting from the opportunity to give back. “I didn’t want to leave the house, but this gave me a reason to get up in the morning,” Kidar shared with Jewish Insider. “The cafe gives [young evacuees from Netiv Ha’asara] a routine and a good cause, to raise money for the moshav…It gives you solid ground to stand on.”
A pooling of compassion and skill sets
While Each Cafe Otef is owned by the community after which it is named and the profits go to boost that community’s rehabilitation, many compassionate individuals and groups have donated their skills to get them up and running. These include the Sarona areas’s management, which provided the lower floor of one of the historic buildings for six months at no cost, and art students from the city’s Shenkar College, who painted the cafe with murals featuring red flowers.
Tamir Barelko, founder of Israel’s established Arcaffe coffee shop chain, found a way to harness his skills to help these evacuees. He trained young adults uprooted with their families to be coffee shop managers and baristas.
“The idea for ‘Cafe Otef’ was born out of a basic need we identified among the displaced communities, which is the need to remain a united community while starting to build a new routine in their new, temporary, or permanent homes,” Jewish Insider reports him saying.
What’s on the menu?
Entrepreneur Barelko brought in celebrity chef Ruthie Russo to plan the cafe menus, which offer delicious beverages, pastries and sandwich treats. Both cafes also offer delis and gift shops.
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An extra special touch is their ongoing tribute to the memory of chocolatier, Dvir Karp. Indeed, NPR sees them as a shrine to this professional from Kibbutz Reim, who perished in the October 7 Hames attack, but whose recipes have been resurrected by his former wife, Reut Karp.
She describes her interactions with caring customers as mutually empowering. She tells all who listen the moving story of how Dvir helped save their children, and says that visitors, including those who don’t buy anything, end up taking a story away with them.
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