Once a bargain, Carmei Gat is transforming into Israel’s newest Anglo boomtown
Times of Israel · LC · trust 43/100
Zev Stub is the Times of Israel's Diaspora Affairs correspondent.
When Joel and his family moved to Israel from New York in 2021, they decided to put down roots in a new neighborhood on the outskirts of Kiryat Gat, a working-class former development town on the northern edge of the Negev desert not known for having a large population of English-speaking immigrant.
The neighborhood was Carmei Gat, which was attracting growing attention among young families, including many from the Anglo community, but was still relatively off the radar. Joel, who asked that his last name not be used, and his family found a comfortable penthouse for just NIS 1.9 million (around $590,000 at the time), a bargain compared to similar homes on the market in popular immigrant strongholds like Modiin or Beit Shemesh.
Buying in a neighborhood few of their friends had even heard of involved some risk, Joel recalled. “It was met with a lot of skepticism,” he said. “But we quickly realized we had made the right decision and fell in love with the neighborhood.”
Established in 2017 on former farmland separated from Kiryat Gat’s urban core by Route 35, the neighborhood is now home to more than 30,000 residents, according to municipal data, and has become one of Israel’s fastest-growing destinations for national religious families seeking affordable housing.
The neighborhood has become particularly attractive for English-speakers, with an estimated 300 immigrant families now living there, real estate agents say. According to Nefesh B’Nefesh, more than 100 English-speaking families have moved there in the past year alone, and more are expected to join in the near future as additional residential projects near completion.
“We’re like the ‘Buchman’ of the Negev now,” said Deborah Michael, a real estate agent specializing in Carmei Gat, referring to a high-end Modiin neighborhood that has become a magnet for English-speaking immigrants.
“For less than the price of a place in Beit Shemesh or Modiin, you can buy a much larger apartment in a community that already has Anglo [immigrants], shuls, schools, shopping malls, and English-speaking professionals,” she said. “It feels like a yishuv — a close-knit community — with the amenities of a city.”
For early buyers like Joel and his family, it has also proven to be a wise investment. As the family grew, Joel decided last year to sell the apartment and move into a larger home nearby. Demand had grown so quickly that he was able to sell for nearly double the price he paid just four years earlier, he said.
“There is no beating the value one gets for the money in our neighborhood,” Joel said.
Things didn’t always look this way in Kiryat Gat. When it was founded in 1954, the city was a remote desert outpost that struggled with poverty and high unemployment as it absorbed large numbers of North African Jews. As new roads and factories — including a massive Intel chip plant that employs thousands — were built in the coming decades, and a wave of Russian immigrants arrived in the 1990s, it gradually evolved into a growing working-class city.
But the development of Carmei Gat as an expansion neighborhood north of the city represents a completely new chapter in Kiryat Gat’s story.
In 2013, the neighborhood was the first in the country to be designed using a comprehensive “umbrella agreement” model in which housing, shopping, schools, transportation and parks were all planned together. The model, which is designed to ensure that residential infrastructure is available as soon as residents start moving in, has since been replicated in over 30 municipalities. Government officials have praised the neighborhood as a “great success.”
Because of its distance from Israel’s largest population centers — the neighborhood is about 45 kilometers (28 miles) north of Beersheba and 45 kilometers south of Tel Aviv — land in Carmei Gat was sold cheaply to developers willing to take the risk. But the potential for growth was evident from the beginning, Michael said.
“Early on, there was a core group of savvy young English speakers that saw the opportunity and started to buy homes in the center,” she said. “They met with the mayor and got the city to provide land for an Ashkenazi synagogue that helped center the community.”
That synagogue, Carmei Tzion, soon became an anchor for many immigrant families, following the lead of other communities around the country that have solidified around English-speaking houses of worship . Like many immigrant communities, English-speakers tend to gravitate toward neighbors who share a common language and cultural background, easing their acculturation process.
“You build a community around the shul, and the rest follows,” Michael said, noting that a number of other congregations have since opened nearby. “It’s gotten to the point where people are choosing smaller apartments near Carmei Tzion over bigger apartments further away at the same price.”
Organizations geared toward North American immigrants, like Nefesh B’Nefesh and the Orthodox Union, also offer programming and resources within the community. And there are countless English-language WhatsApp and Facebook groups connecting residents.
“Anglos like it here because they have a strong presence, but they don’t feel like they are just living with other Americans,” said Bracha Miriam Geller, a real estate agent working in the area. “It’s a 20-minute walk from one side of town to the other, and everyone mixes together.”
Today, almost all the residents of Carmei Gat identify as national religious, Michael said, with people from across the spectrum of religious observance. And the neighborhood, once primarily young families, has matured as its original residents have grown and older relatives have followed them.
“When we moved here, it felt like everyone here was in their twenties,” Michael said. “Now, most people are in their late twenties to late thirties, and there is a growing number of parents and…
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