A walk along Tel Aviv’s bustling Kaplan Street means passing a lengthy display of posters of hostages taken by Hamas on Oct. 7.

Between all of the tragically familiar photos on the side of the Sarona shopping and cafe area is a small navy blue sign with a red flower and white lettering stating: Cafe Otef – Netiv Ha’asara. 

The red flower is an anemone, a symbol of the Gaza border area that even hosted an annual festival in its honor. Otef — the envelope — is a term for the western Negev, the part of Israel that envelops Gaza. Netiv Ha’asara is the name of the only moshav, as opposed to kibbutzim, out of the seven communities along the Gaza border where Hamas massacred the most Israelis on Oct. 7. The Gazan terrorists murdered 20 residents of Netiv Ha’asara, the last of whose remains were found this month.

Cafe Otef – Netiv Ha’asara is a small, unassuming coffee and gift shop in one of Sarona’s historic Templar buildings, where young residents of the moshav, who have been evacuated from their homes since Oct. 7, have found jobs, and residents of all ages have found a place to gather once again as a community.

Netiv Ha’asara has been evacuated before. The moshav was originally established in the Yamit region in the Sinai Desert in 1973, and demolished when Israel and Egypt made peace. Seventy families in the original community moved to its current location, which, after Israel’s disengagement from Gaza in 2005, became the closest Israeli town to Gaza, only a quarter-mile from the city of Bet Lahia.

“Gaza was my backyard,” Yoni Shaked, a strategic adviser who grew up in Netiv Ha’asara and is working as the partner relationship manager for the moshav’s foundation, told Jewish Insider.

But last year, when Netiv Ha’asara’s 1,080 residents were evacuated after Oct. 7, it was to hotels. Unlike the kibbutzim in the western Negev, whose residents voted and made decisions for the whole community, moshavniks, like residents of Israeli cities near Gaza, don’t have that level of central decision-making and were not kept in one place. Most were sent to one of two hotels — one in Tel Aviv and the other outside Jerusalem, Shaked said, but about 40% chose not to go where the government put them.

Meanwhile, Tamir Barelko, the founder of the Arcaffe coffee shop chain, found a way to use his skills to help evacuees from the western Negev.

“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,” Barelko said when the cafe opened in May. “Unlike any other employment place, the advantages and capabilities of a coffee house are the connection between employing the displaced individuals and creating a meeting place for them among themselves.”

Working with marketing professional Michal Tzion and others, Barelko brought in celebrity chef Ruthie Russo to plan the menu, which includes sandwiches and salty and savory pastries. He raised funds to establish the coffee shop from the Tech4Israel fund, and other donors, and has since opened a second branch of Cafe Otef in Tel Aviv’s hipster Florentine neighborhood with residents of Re’im.

Each Cafe Otef is owned by the community for which it is named and the profits go to that community’s rehabilitation. Eventually, when Netiv Ha’asara’s residents return home, its members hope to reopen the cafe locally, possibly as a food truck, Shaked said.

The Sarona complex’s management donated the lower floor of one of its Templar buildings for six months at no cost, and students from Shenkar College’s art department painted murals featuring red flowers on the walls. The coffee shop includes a space selling products from the Gaza border region, such as wine, jams, olive oil and crafts, as well as shirts, totes and mugs with anemones on them.

Barelko trained young adults from Netiv Ha’asara who were displaced with their families – it is common in Israel to live with one’s parents in the post-army years – to be coffee shop managers and baristas, and turned the cafe over to them. 

One of Cafe Otef – Netiv Ha’asara’s managers is Yotam Kidar, 25, along with his brother Raz, whose grandparents were among the original founders of the moshav in the Sinai. In between making cappuccinos with pictures of ribbons to advocate for the hostages’ return, Kidar explained how he came to manage the cafe while sitting at one of its outdoor tables on a humid Tel Aviv summer afternoon.

Like everyone else on the moshav, Kidar has a story about the horrors of Oct. 7. That morning, Kidar was working as a civilian security guard at the Erez crossing from Israel into Gaza, a job he had for a year. The Hamas attack began about half an hour before his night shift with a woman and two other armed guards, was supposed to end.

“We’re used to rockets,” Kidar recalled to Jewish Insider, “but when we looked in the cameras to see who is shooting at us and tell the army, we saw 150 armed terrorists. We were in shock, but we pulled ourselves together very quickly to tell the army to send back-up.”

No one responded to him or the tatzpitaniyot, the female IDF lookouts, in the nearby Re’im base who he also heard radioing for help. Most of those lookouts were murdered, and some are still being held captive by Hamas.

Once Kidar and his coworkers realized no back-up was coming, they told the workers on the 7 a.m. shift not to come and they hid in a closet where it was too cramped to sit down and there was intermittent cell phone reception. They could see the terrorists walking around through a crack in the door. 

“We heard booms and explosions. After eight hours, we heard speaking in Arabic right outside the door. They shot at every door but ours,” he said.

Kidar was in that closet for 10 hours, texting IDF officers and his parents, who drove out of the moshav early in the morning, whenever he had reception, and occasionally reading news. He saw a photo of terrorists at his aunt’s house. At about 5 p.m., IDF soldiers rescued them; Kidar could see terrorists’ bodies strewn across the floor on the way out.

Kidar went straight to Tel Aviv, where he learned that two of his relatives had been murdered, along with other members of the tight-knit community. He bought a one-way ticket to the Philippines and on Oct. 10, he was on a plane.

“I didn’t feel safe anywhere in Israel,” he explained.

After a month and a half of backpacking, he returned to Israel and bounced around different people’s houses until he finally settled in Ashkelon, about 9 miles away from Netiv Ha’asara, where he is renting an apartment. 

Kidar said he felt unmoored by the members of the moshav being left to fend for themselves, as opposed to kibbutzim that were evacuated as a group. He recalled that, growing up, when there was an IDF operation in Gaza, the children and youth of the moshav would be kept together “like we’re in camp” and sent to Eilat or resorts in northern Israel.

His brother told him about Cafe Otef in early 2024.

Kidar did not have any experience in the hospitality industry before Barelko trained him, but now he spends his days in the cafe, serving coffee, scheduling other workers’ shifts, catering coffee breaks and meetings for nearby high-tech offices – Sarona advertised Cafe Otef’s services to all of their tenants – and planning menus for events.

“I didn’t want to leave the house, but this gave me a reason to get up in the morning,” Kidar said. “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.”

Kidar said his grandparents feel guilty for exposing their family to threats from Gaza. “I don’t want them to feel that for a minute,” he said. “They built the greatest community. We’re not a kibbutz, but our community is strong like a kibbutz; everyone knows everyone. This is my chance to give something back.”

The moshav’s residents are slated to go home on Oct. 27, but the residents are still concerned about the security situation so close to Gaza and asked for a postponement. They have yet to receive an answer.

Many families are unsure of their plans; Kidar said his parents disagree on whether they should go back or sell their house. Shaked pointed out that the return date is after the start of the school year, Sept. 1 across Israel, and that many families are renting homes in nearby towns to stay within the local school system.

“The uncertainty has created chaos that is hard to handle after all we went through this year, and now we can’t plan moving forward,” Shaked said. 

Until then, the Netiv Ha’asara community has the cafe.

“The first time I saw the moshav reunite was when the cafe opened,” Kidar noted.

Cafe Otef – Netiv Ha’asara hosts a monthly community gathering; one of them was a kabbalat Shabbat with famous Israeli singer Rita. High school students who attended school in Tel Aviv set up a photography exhibit. The residents gathered for their regular Israeli Remembrance Day and Independence Day ceremonies, as well.

“Even when we’re all spread out, everyone wants to keep it going,” Kidar said.