Lev, Raphael

Raphael (Rafi), son of Chava and Yaakov z “l, was born on April 18, 1941 in Afula, where he studied at the elementary school in Kibbutz Yagur and graduated from the kibbutz high school. He was a master of art and his work with a brush was very sensitive and gentle, and he carved wood and worked in various types. Rafi was quiet and modest and gave him a quiet and cultured atmosphere, and he did not say much more, said only what was really important and yet He was always in the depth of problems: he asked, interrogated, examined, debated – and could also accept the opinion of a friend, if he was more knowledgeable than he was in a particular field. Although he did not excel in sports, he tried hard to achieve achievements in this field, and before he was drafted into the army, he successfully passed a pilot’s exam, first hesitating to volunteer for the job, since his father had died shortly before, To serve as a pilot. Raphael was drafted into the IDF in early November 1959 and volunteered to serve in the Israel Air Force, where he completed a pilot training course and was appointed to the pilot’s service, where he served in the regular army until the beginning of January 1965. After completing his military service, In the “Legin” factory for tin products in his kibbutz, during the Six-Day War he participated in the battles as a fighter pilot and his plane was shot down by anti-aircraft fire, but he managed to drop from the plane before it crashed into an Egyptian army formation. And in exchanges of fire with them, more wounds were inflicted on those who were injured when his plane exploded in the air, and finally managed to contact our forces and rescue them. After the Six-Day War, he received a permit from his kibbutz for three years to study at the Technion’s Faculty of Physics, where he completed his BA in 1971 and began studying for a master’s degree in the same year. In one of the fields of nuclear physics, which was carried out at the Nuclear Research Center in Strasbourg, France, where Rafi began to work as a spray-pilot in a field crop spraying company, maintaining his capacity as a pilot.As he was on the verge of completing the ” The Yom Kippur War broke out. When the war broke out, Rafi was immediately recruited and participated as a Skyhawk pilot in the bitter battles in the Golan Heights. He and his colleagues worked hard to stop the Syrian advance and to print it out by gaining air superiority. On October 7, 1973, he was hit and killed when his plane was shot down by a ground-to-air missile. At first he was declared missing and after his body was identified, he was brought to eternal rest in the cemetery in Yagur. He left behind a wife, two daughters and a son (born eight months after his death), a mother and two brothers. After his fall, he was promoted to the rank of Major. Rafi’s advisor at the Technion, Dr. Yaakov Dar, conducted the master’s thesis that Rafi prepared and submitted it to the Technion At the Technion graduation ceremony held in the summer of 1974, Rafi was awarded a Master’s degree in nuclear physics with honors. To his family.