Who we are

History, Organizational Structure & Future

The first twelve families, ten originating from the USSR and two Israeli families, staked their claim in the land in February 1980. Today, Tal-El represents all of Israel's diverse communities. Originally, we were a workers’ moshav, belonging to the moshav movement. Available agricultural land and water quotas being in limited supply, farming could not provide the basis for our community. The land was accordingly rezoned, and we are currently defined a rural community, registered with the “Agricultural Centre” as a cooperative society. Entities belonging to the Agriculture Centre are kibbutzim, cooperative and workers’ moshavim and also villages and rural communities. Tal-El’s supreme authority, numbering all members of the cooperative society, is the General Meeting, which elects the management committee (the secretariat), and the audit committee, by secret ballot. Other committees include Absorption/Admittance, Education & Culture, and Security. These bodies are empowered to adopt resolutions and take action in all matters pertaining to their respective spheres of jurisdiction. Matters of principle are referred for approval to the General Meeting, at which voting rights are restricted to society members only. The community today numbers 240 families, with another ten at various stages of absorption/admittance. Tel-El’s own public services include a kindergarten and nursery school, a general store, a clinic and a swimming pool. The Misgav Regional Council provides other municipal services such as culture, health and education, including regional schools at Misgav and at Har Gilon, to which the council buses the children. The community has local enterprises engaging in architecture, construction,  planning and supervision, as well as control systems. There is also a jewellery factory. Future development trends according to the community’s master plan will be based on individual entrepreneurs setting up consultation and planning firms, the provision of public services, small industry and inland tourism. According to its planning scheme, the community is due to increase to some 700 families.

Tal-El Master Plan

The community has formed a strategic committee representing all cross sections of its population, which, jointly with the management absorption committees, has drafted a Tal-El master plan for the next 20 years. A professional consultant and moderator hired by the community and the Misgav Regional Council is assisting the committee. In outlining the plan, the committee examined a diverse range of options and likely developments, covering all strata of community living, while bearing in mind certain national constraints such as National Outline Schemes. This end result of this process was an optimal plan for the community, relating to the following:

• The organisational structure of the community’s administrative system, and the optimal size thereof;
• Absorption of a population type that understands and is oriented towards rural community living with the social implications of that lifestyle, to ensure that quality of life in the community is maintained.
• Planning for a desirable demographic ratio of adults to children, in order to maintain demographic continuity over the long term.
• Offspring and their absorption into the community.
• Rate of absorption such as to ensure that social, real estate and economic developments in the community are under control, the object being to admit stable families, viewing the community as their home, rather than a springboard for achieving personal gains.
• The community services, public edifices and areas, and the community’s economic capabilities.
• Future development and its effect on quality of life and environment, while minimising injury to natural features and landscape due to development and construction.

Outlining the master plan

With a view to reinforcing the conclusions set forth in the report, the moderator has drawn up a stage-by-stage procedure for eliciting the public’s input in setting community objectives and targets, as follows:

• A workshop took place at which the public, following the moderator’s guidelines, gave expression to its aims, grading them by order of priority.
• Based on the results of the workshop, this material was put together into a survey document in which members of the public awarded grades denoting the degree of importance ascribed by each family to the various goals, assigning a certain weight to each goal. A table attached to the survey document shows all the indices affecting every goal, each with its underlying rationale.
• The moderator processed the survey results and, having reference to the indices and the weights assigned to the various goals, constructed an optimal alternative, representing a synthesis and a compromise between the various wishes expressed by the public. This document relates to the practicalities arising from intra-community and national constraints and systemic considerations, and the work of the strategic committee.
• An essential outline of the optimal alternative forming the basis for the master plan was distributed to the community’s families, for follow-up in the form of perusal, questions and answers, and at the end of the process, the matter was put to the vote at the general meeting. The strategic committee then conferred with professionals in the various fields of construction, architectural development and economics, infusing all the parameters delineated in the master plan with practical content for performance. Tal-El thus has a statutorily valid blueprint, approved by all government institutions, for community development over the next twenty years. This document serves as a contingency plan for stage-by-stage implementation over time, for all future management committees. The essential elements of the plan are anchored in the community’s Articles and its appendices.

Text by Moti Schweitzer, Tal-El.
Kindly translated by Judith Yalon.