Born and raised in the Negev desert town of Yerucham, Yair Ben Yishai attended Yeshivat AMIT B’Levav Shalem. The yeshiva places a strong emphasis on volunteering and community involvement, something for which Yair has a natural affinity. Starting when he was 13, Yair would spend hours at the local station of Magen David Adom (MDA), Israel’s emergency services, where his older brother worked. When he became a full-fledged volunteer, he was on-call one night and arrived at the home of Maria Schechtman, an elderly Holocaust survivor who had died and had no relatives to pay for her funeral. Yair and a friend decided to raise funds to pay for the funeral and gravestone themselves. In recognition of his efforts, Yair was chosen to light a torch at Yerucham’s Yom Ha’atzmaut celebration. He continues to volunteer with MDA and plans to attend a mechina in Dimona for a year before enlisting in the army—where he hopes to serve as a combat soldier, ideally in the paratroopers’ brigade.
