Yagev was our last living hostage in Gaza

Yagev Buchshtav was the eldest son of Oren and Esther. He has two younger siblings, Nufar and Yuval. He was raised on Kibbutz Nirim, in the fertile fields of the Western Negev. His family lived in the house behind mine.

One often hears shouting and crying coming from one’s neighbors’ houses. Not from theirs. I can’t remember hearing Esther or Oren shouting at their kids as they were growing up; not even once. What I did hear was music. And sawing. Music, because that was what Yagev loved, and he practiced often, experimenting with different sounds and tempos. Sawing, because both the boys loved to work with wood, carving statues and building musical instruments.

Different smells would waft to my window. Nufar loves baking – she learned how and has taken it to an art form. The kids love cooking, especially when it includes homegrown food from the lush garden behind their house, and they often fed friends and neighbors, and of course the intrepid grandma Carmella, Oren’s mom, who is one of Nirim’s veteran members.

From happier days, with family permission

Esther and Oren are both quiet and reserved with a love for life, nature, and people. Esther teaches kids to read and write – those with the most challenges, those for whom you need the most patience. She was also in charge of the collective health committee on Nirim. She was with me when I lost my husband, Laurie. She was with me after my house was hit by shrapnel in 2014. She is a person who is there for others.

Oren is a farmer, with every bone in his body, from his sunburnt lips to his calloused hands and cracked heels, which more often than not, are bare. At the most, he will reluctantly wear sandals. He was one of Laurie’s friends and colleagues and hiking mates. Together they worked in the fields, and when we lost Laurie, Oren and other friends from work would organize kibbutz treks in his memory. He ran them for years, as long as our family wished, through the fields they had both planted and watered and nurtured with such love.

Yagev was married to Rimon Liora Kirsht, whom I taught in high school. I remember her as a nonconventional, brilliant kid. They were high school sweethearts who married just two years ago. Together they lived on Nirim, together they nurtured a bunch of dogs and cats. Together they were both kidnapped on October 7th, 292 days ago.

The house from with Yagev and Rimon were captured, through the window of their neighbors

Together they subsisted in the sadistic tunnel in Gaza, where they would hug and hold and support each other, trying to protect each other. When their terrorist captors told Rimon that she was being released during the ceasefire in late November, she refused to go until she was warned that she had a choice: she could either accompany the terrorists on foot, or she would be dragged on the ground.

Yagev remained, with other hostages, separated from his beloved for the first time in… forever.

Since the 7th of October, his family has been active in doing everything possible to try to bring him and Rimon back home. His mother and sister spent hours every Monday in the halls of the Knesset along with the families of other hostages. They sat in on Knesset committee sessions and addressed lawmakers in formal forums and in private meetings. In her calm, quiet, determined voice, with her perpetually, respectful demeanor, Esther did everything humanly possible to make sure that Yagev and the other hostages were not forgotten – not even for a minute. Hostages Square became their second home. Their loving family and friends, as well as many from our community, did anything humanly possible to help, support, and accompany them on their Sisyphean task of bringing Yagev home.

I would occasionally see Oren on Nirim, where he would come to work when he could. No doubt his soul needed the distraction of his beloved fields. Over the past 292 days, I have watched both parents as they squeezed every drop of determination and tenacity from their lives and hearts to do what they could. I have observed the painful physical and emotional draining of their very essence; both becoming thin and drawn, Esther’s gray roots supplanting her dark curls from lack of time or determination to cover them as she usually did. Life takes on very different priorities when your son has been captured by monsters. I watched as the effort and worry took a physical toll, but never saw their spirits or determination broken. What wouldn’t any of us do to get our children back from hell?

Today, Kibbutz Nirim will join Yagev’s family commemorating his announced death. There cannot be a funeral, of course. His body remains captive in the bowels of Gaza. We will have a ceremony to help his family celebrate his life, begin their period of mourning, and learn to live in a world without the hope of ever seeing Yagev alive again and likely realizing that they might never even have the basic right to give him a proper burial in our cemetery on Nirim. Kibbutz Nirim now has no more live hostages in Gaza.