Rafael, son of Erika and Helmut (Uri), members of Kfar Yedidya, was born on February 24, 1941. He attended elementary school in Kfar Yedidya, and then continued to study for two years in the regional high school in Emek Hefer. He graduated from Kadouri High School. The character of Raphael – whose friends at Kaduri called him Rafi – developed and was designed in Kfar Yedidya and was influenced by the special atmosphere that prevailed in the family home. In the village he acquired the intense love for nature and especially for flora and fauna. He toured the country and became acquainted with its unique landscapes, animals and vegetation. Thanks to his knowledge of the country, he was able to serve as a tour guide for youth and as a tour guide, and at the Nof Yam school, where he taught. His intense love for nature influenced his life and guided him in choosing his occupation and place of residence. His father, who died when Raphael was two years old, inherited the love of music, and from the age of nine he played the violin. But since he preferred wind instruments, he chose Bobov and knew how to express strong and warm feelings in his play. Such feelings also existed between him and his teacher, and even more so, between him and his wife. Indeed, a warm relationship is maintained today between his teacher and the family that remained. Rafael continued to play chamber music with his friends even when he was a breadwinner and head of a family. When he studied at the Kadouri agricultural school, he continued his tendency toward sports, which had already begun when he was a sports reporter on the radio, on a youth program and was then twelve years old. He loved popular sport, where he could combine his love for nature and the country’s landscapes with physical fitness activities. He participated in many sports activities, including the Tabor Tour, the four-day marathon and the crossing of the Sea of Galilee. He traveled along the Sea of Galilee along with his best friend, who still maintains contact with the family. Rafi followed the mitzvah of “Love thy neighbor as thyself”. He loved a friend, was a friend of truth to his friends and helped anyone who needed his help. His house was open to the guests, who enjoyed warm and cordial hospitality and escorted with Rafi and his family. Rafi was drafted into the IDF in early 1960 and volunteered for the paratroopers, fulfilling an old dream and a childhood aspiration to be part of an elite IDF unit. After completing basic training, he served in the paratroopers ‘battalion and in the Paratroopers’ patrol unit. He was proud of being a soldier in the Paratroopers Brigade and believed that he was doing his duty to the people and the state. In mid-May 1963, Rafi was released from regular service and assigned to a reserve unit in the position of a mortar of medium mortar. After the liberation he married his girlfriend Gila. They set up their home in Be’er Sheva, and then gave him the opportunity to play as an artist in the city’s young orchestra. The orchestra was established shortly before and he was proud to attend her first concert. All that time he had a strong desire to leave the city, where there was no talk and spat and moved to the village, to be close to nature. He and his wife wanted to be among the founders of Moshav Almagor overlooking the Sea of Galilee, but the many difficulties involved in building the place depressed him greatly, and so he reached Kfar Saba – where his eldest son Uri was born in 1965. Rafi completed his studies and passed the matriculation exams, which he did not complete at the Kaduri agricultural school, both because they were not held there and for reasons that were time-bound. Afterward, he was ordained as a teacher of agriculture – a profession he loved most, and invested in him all his love and energy, as his students testified. In 1967 his daughter Inbal was born and in 1969 his young daughter Yifat was born. They grew up together with his son Uri, their oldest brother, in a warm and loving family nest he founded in Kfar Sava. Next to their home was a greenhouse for growing ornamental plants and home plants, and a flower garden. Rafi continued to engage in his hobbies: playing, sports, and especially the trips to Israel, to which he included BenHis family. In 1969 he moved with his family to Hadassim, where he was an agricultural teacher in the school. After his day’s work, he went to Tel Aviv University, where he studied in the Department of Geography. Gradually, Rafi’s mind began to form the idea of joining the kibbutz, for he knew that there he would be able to work in the land and his children could enjoy the expanses of the fields and the greenery. The family relocated to Kibbutz Haon, and two years later moved to Kibbutz Degania Bet, where Rafi felt he had reached rest and land. Although he was new to the place, everyone believed that Rafi was an inseparable part of Degania. He worked in the agricultural sector, established a hothouse for growing house plants and was about to finish his studies at the university, which he persisted in with his characteristic stubbornness. But he did not get to the finals, which he so desperately wanted. In the kibbutz, Rafi and his family found the place they had dreamed of for so many years. They enjoyed freedom, space and proximity to nature. The fun period in Degania was short, for two months after arriving, Rafi fell in battle. When the Yom Kippur War broke out, Rafi appeared in the unit even before the reading order arrived. He and his comrades participated in the battles of containment and the breakthrough against the Egyptians in the Sinai, as part of the division of Major General Sharon. In the battle for the breakthrough to the Suez Canal, which took place on October 16, 1973, at the “lexicon-tartor” junction near the “Chinese farm,” Rafi was killed and killed and brought to eternal rest in the cemetery in Degania B. He was followed by a wife, a son and two daughters, a mother, a stepfather, a sister and a brother, and after his fall was raised to the rank of First Sergeant, his childhood friends, his teachers in Kfar Yedidya and his friends in Degania Bet, published pamphlets in his memory.
