Neve Yarak

Neve Yarak combines a moshav’s agricultural economy with vineyards and a locally established winery; its farming includes field crops, orchards, and vineyards.[5][6] It is affiliated with the Moshavim Movement and administered by the Drom Hasharon Regional Council.[2] Its statistical administrative classification places it in the Central District and Petah Tikva subdistrict.[4]

The moshav lies between Petah Tikva and Hod Hasharon, east of Hod Hasharon, north of Highway 5, and east of Highway 40.[5][7] Its fertile clay soils lie between the Sharon’s red kurkar hills to the west and the Samaria foothills to the east.[5]

Neve Yarak was founded in 1951, in the period after the War of Independence.[2][8] Along with Adanim, it was established in the neighborhood of the older moshav Yarkonah in the southern Sharon.[8] Its former or provisional name was “כפר ירקנים ב”; the name Neve Yarak derives from vegetable cultivation, identified as the settlement’s principal economic branch.[2]

A historical community listing places Neveh Yarak in the Southern Sharon’s Herzliyyah region and records it as represented in the Ha-Yarkon Regional Council.[1] The 2022 locality data place it under the Drom Hasharon Regional Council.[4]

Neve Yarak had 938 inhabitants on December 31, 2004.[1] The 2015 socioeconomic classification recorded a population of 1,353, while a December 2020 government appraisal gave an approximate population of 1,400.[9][5] The 2022 locality file recorded 1,284 residents, including 1,282 classified as “Jews and others,” of whom 1,271 were Jewish, and two classified as Arabs.[4]

In the 2015 socioeconomic classification, Neve Yarak received an index value of 1.684, rank 1,106, and placement in cluster 9 on a scale running from 1, the lowest socioeconomic level, to 10, the highest.[9] Its recorded cluster in 2013 was also 9.[9]

Vegetable cultivation gave Neve Yarak its name, while its documented agricultural activities also include field crops, orchards, and vineyards.[2][5] During the COVID-19 period, a 2020 real-estate report recorded a nearly 350 percent increase in interest in the settlement, although the underlying measurement method was not specified.[7]

Neve Yarak Winery was established in early 2015 by Momo Shmilovitz, a third-generation member of a farming family among the settlement’s founders.[6] Before entering winemaking, he spent about 15 years running a product-design office and subsequently trained at Margalit Winery.[10] He had also helped his father in the fields and worked several harvests at Margalit before taking over a vineyard planted in 1981 that was due to be uprooted.[3] He restored an old Carignan vineyard and produced the winery’s first vintage in 2015.[10]

The winery’s two local Carignan vineyards, Neta and Hagar, are named after Shmilovitz’s daughters.[10] Their different orientations toward the sun give their grapes distinct characteristics; neither vineyard is irrigated, and both produce low yields under a dry-farming approach intended to express the local microclimate and terroir.[10] Shmilovitz experimented with six different ways of making small-production Carignan wine.[3] The winery also makes wines from Grenache, Syrah, Chardonnay, Sémillon, and Sauvignon Blanc grown in the family’s mature vineyards in Neve Yarak.[6]

The winery’s first harvest yielded 850 bottles; by a 2022 profile, production had reached at least 40,000 bottles across ten wines.[11] Its premises were a functional hangar in the moshav.[11] Shmilovitz also produced olive oil and began hosting weekend gourmet meals after restaurants closed during the COVID-19 crisis.[11]

Neve Yarak also appears as a place of publication: a 2023 Hebrew edition of Tahereh Mafi’s Shatter Me 2 lists the locality as its publication place and Dialog Marketing and Distribution as its publisher.[12]

Beit Le’ah, a 19th-century pumping structure beside the Yarkon River, lies between Hod Hasharon and Neve Yarak.[13] Its pumps drew river water to irrigate citrus groves.[13]

A regulation station near the Rosh HaAyin pumping facilities on the National Water Carrier route also bore the name “Neve Yarak.”[14] It formed the endpoint of a line running from the Menashe Tunnel; the record does not establish that the station and the locality were the same entity.[14]