Oren (Horenstein), Rafael (Bobby)
Son of Blanche and Moshe. He was born on 20.11.1928 in Haifa, where he spent his early childhood. During the Second World War, his father died and his mother enlisted in A.TS. With his brother and sister to study at the son of Shemen Youth Village, and later wrote that this period of study was the happiest period in his life, and he joined the Hashomer Hatzair youth movement, and his connections with his movement members continued when he moved to Kibbutz Yagur to study at the vocational school. After completing his studies, Raphael went to Kibbutz Eilon for training and then became a member of the kibbutz In a temporary camp in Kiryat Haim, and then set out to realize the dream of their lives – the dream of settlement – and set up an independent kibbutz on the rocky terrain of the Jidin Fortress, where they named Yehiam, Bobby as he was called by his family, Most of his time, spent all his energy on the establishment of the new kibbutz, but he spent his few hours of leisure in an endless effort to read and write, and for good reason: the days were the War of Independence; the attacks on the Galilee settlements were repeated; Raphael took part in the effort and in his few spare hours he wrote in his diaries and documented the period. The writing was done with insatiable feeling, a strong sense of inner self, recorded in his personal diary, that his days were numbered and that he had to achieve his full self-expression as soon as possible. “If we look at Raphael’s diary, from the very beginning of his writing, as a 15-year-old boy, he seems to have been serious and the most important of his writings,” says one of his friends: “His literary desires, the desire to give literary expression to kibbutz life as a collective.” The penetrating insight into every literary and political problem. ” Rafael’s friendship with the kibbutz was accompanied by a difficult internal war. His departure for the kibbutz caused a dispute between him and his family, as he was expected to be great because of his great success in his studies, which would pave his way in a future career. The decision was not easy for him and when he decided to choose the kibbutz way he wanted to prove to everyone, and especially to himself, that he could live a simple working life – an agricultural life, realizing his talents as a writer. All this was accompanied by the terrible fear, as he himself wrote: “I look upon the future with confidence and faith that I will attain the fulfillment of my desire, even if everything is in a fog, unless it is placed in the middle of my life. On the afternoon of March 27, 1948, a convoy of seven vehicles and 90 people left Nahariya to deliver supplies, reinforcements to Yiham, and the caravan encountered an ambush by the Arabs. The convoy was ambushed until the evening, and some of them managed to escape, but about half of them fell in battle.Rafael was among the fallen, brought to rest in the military cemetery in Nahariya and left behind a mother, brother and sister. and years later his sister published a memorial booklet, from his diary he left in a “Ttnuva” box
