The boy with the half-shy smile who stuck to his goal: Yakier Yedidya Schenkolewski was born for the armor corps
Yakier Yedidya Schenkolewski was the child everyone had been waiting for. The fourth of five children in the Schenkolewski family, he brought a special light with him from the moment he was born. “He was the wonderful child we had waited for so much,” his mother, Tova, recalled. “We were so happy when he arrived, and his siblings enjoyed him very much as well.”
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He grew into a young man who combined rare innocence with deep intellectual curiosity, someone who always wanted to know “that little bit more,” as his sister Renana describes it.
Yakier was the son of Gitel Tova Malka and Ariel Shalom. He was born on September 16, 2002, in Kibbutz Migdal Oz in the Gush Etzion region. He is survived by his siblings Yehuda, Aviraz, Ofer and Renana.
He never feared hard work
The bond between Yakier and Renana reflected their shared place as the younger children in the family. “It was always ‘us,’” she recalls with a smile. “We were each other’s partners in games. We both loved movies and going to see films together. ‘The Lord of the Rings’ was his. He loved it. He was a real nerd.”
Alongside his love for fantasy books and films, Yakier never shied away from hard or dirty work. His mother recalls how even as a young boy he would join her during shifts feeding calves. “He would go help the woman in charge of the calf nursery every Friday,” Tova said. “He didn’t shy away from dirty work. If you do that kind of job in the cowshed, it really didn’t bother him. That stayed with him later in life.”
A “serial volunteer” without masks
As he grew older, Yakier joined the hesder yeshiva in Yeroham, where he quickly became one of the most prominent figures in Class 28. “He had so much vitality, so much constant joy burning inside him,” said his yeshiva friend Ari Birenberg.
Yakier was known as someone who volunteered first for every task, from helping with food arrangements to taking on any duty that was needed. Beyond his willingness to help, what drew people to him most was his honesty. “He was without masks,” Renana said. “He didn’t play those games of pretending.” His friends admired his integrity and strong presence, the kind that could be felt in any room he entered.
The fight to reach the armored corps
Armor ran in Yakier’s blood. With a father who served in the armored corps and an older brother who did the same, the path seemed obvious. Even before his enlistment, he was already leading morale chants for the corps. But two months before the long-awaited draft date, an orthopedic issue in his leg threatened to prevent him from serving in a combat role. Yakier refused to give up. He decided to postpone his enlistment by six months, enlist on his own and fight for his place in a tank. “When he had a goal in front of his eyes, he stuck to it,” Ari said. His struggle paid off, and Yakier joined the 188th Brigade. His comrades describe a soldier who seemed born for the steel of the tanks. “He loved tanks so much. It was his dream,” one friend said.
The void he left is felt in every moment
During the war, Yakier was initially assigned to an evacuation company, but his heart was on the front lines. “It was very hard for him that he wasn’t fighting in the center of the battle,” one friend recalled. In their last conversation, Yakier was still asking for tips on how to become a better loader, waiting for the moment he would enter Gaza with his tank. He did enter Gaza. A few days later, the bitter news reached the yeshiva’s WhatsApp group.
Since his death, the void Yakier left has been felt at every moment of joy. “You feel it most during moments of excitement, when his shining face and his voice are missing,” Ari said. Another friend added, “I miss him most in the laughter. It was fun to be with him. He was funny.”
His sister Renana speaks of missing his hugs and his “half-shy” smile. “He saw the world in a different light. He could feel someone else’s pain,” she said. “I still think he’s here in some sense, just not present the way I would want him to be. You learn to breathe with that absence.”
His mother, Tova, summed up his essence in simple words. “This isn’t a will or a final message. It’s simply who he was,” she said. “Knowing that he did it with all his heart gives a certain sense of peace.” Renana adds a small, deeply personal line that tells the whole story: “I would give anything to shout at him one more time to close the door when he leaves my room.”
May his memory be a blessing.
Sergeant
Yakier Yedidya Schenkolewski