Yagel: Honoring The Fallen

Meet Yagel.

At the age of 24, he has already seen an artistic vision of his come to life. He has learned that he can harness the power of community and collaboration to allow a nation to share in his vision. The man who dreamed up LeZichram, art that unites physical and digital realities; connecting the memory of those that who made the ultimate sacrifice with the reality that their sacrifice enabled.

Yagel has always been a dreamer. As a child he kept a binder that was bursting, filled with stories, ideas big and small for apps and websites, “all kinds of things that I hoped could change and improve the world.” Yagel had always wanted to do things that would affect people, he studied behavioural psychology and marketing. “I watched dozens of Ted lectures, I’ve always been interested in people who made a big impact. I’ve always been fascinated by how people think, and how they act.”

Yagel works in marketing. “I help businesses market digitally, convey their messages, create customer experiences. I develop content and strategy creation on social networks. The world of media has always been very interesting to me, these digital tools are simple, yet connect millions of people, without spending a lot of money on expenses. I see this as a tool that can help me make the impact on the world that I want.” It was the intersection of marketing, content creation, and entrepreneurship that led Yagel to bring this project, one that is so important to him and close to his heart, to life.

LeZichram translates to ‘for their memory,’ and commemorates IDF soldiers who have fallen in battle, as well as civilians taken by terrorism. It is comprised of physical art installations paired with social media tie-ins. It has encouraged countless people to stop, to think, and to remember.

LeZichram consists of two parts, the first being an iron sculpture that depicts the outline of a soldier, the second being a social media account (@lezichram_) that shares details and photographs of security forces and citizens who have fallen in battle or due to terror, during the current war and previous wars, whose sacrifice allows us to keep on living in peace. The general concept allows us to look through the frames of the fallen at the world they protected; at the children running past, the families spending a day at the beach, friends taking in a show at the theatre. It also allows us to think of who the fallen might have been, the space they took up in their family and circle of friends, and the space they left behind now that they are gone, and what was continued in their absence. “A window of memories.”

The dream of LeZichram began on Memorial Day (Yom Hazikaron), 2021. “It was hard for me to see all of these difficult things on television, so I sat on my own and listened to music. I heard a moving song that inspired me.” It was about a mother remembering her son that was lost. She saw a representation of her son’s body and as soon as she reached out to touch it, she began to see all the moments of her son’s life, from his birth to his first steps, from learning to ride a bike to the first day of school, him playing with his siblings and friends, his first relationship, his drafting into the army. All flashbacks in her eyes of his living moments, filling up the frame of his body, until the moment he was in the war and what happened there.

“This moment moved me, it triggered my imagination. I saw it as a movie, and for a full year I asked myself how I could bring this idea to life.”

Yagel began to play with the idea of ‘space.’ What does space mean? Is it empty, or is it full? “We often think of the emptiness of space, we think of it as a nothingness, but in reality it is full. It is a space filled with memories, filled with moments, with people, with brotherhood and family, with love.”

The sculptures created a window of memories and were placed at central locations around Tel Aviv; on the boardwalk at the beach, at Dizengoff Square, at HaBima Square (Tel Aviv’s central theatre), and Azrieli shopping centre. These locations are central to life and culture in Tel Aviv, they capture the heartbeat of the vibrant city.  “These locations were chosen strategically. When you look through the sculptures you can see couples walking hand-in-hand, children playing, people rushing about. We see that life continues, that each person that was lost contributed to the continuation of a vibrant and sovereign Jewish life.”

“It has become a live film, that is put in the middle of a place, that has the ability to touch thousands, maybe even tens of thousands of people, including the bereaved families.” During the first year of the initiative, the mother of a fallen soldier called Yagel to personally reflect on the power of the project. “It brought redemption, she told me.”

Yagel began working on LeZichram when he was only 20 years old. “I had an idea, and I thought a lot about how to implement it. At first I thought about producing a film that would illustrate what was in my imagination. A mother extends her hand to touch the figure of her fallen son; his frame, the borders of the LeZichram sculptures filling in with the memories of his life, from his birth until his death.  I consulted with many people and came to the conclusion that the most effective idea would be to create a frame made of metal in the shape of a body that would represent all of the fallen.”

Everything became clear. “I created mock-ups on what this would look like. I was able to convey to people the idea of how this would look in reality; what the final product could be. It allowed me to go to companies to ask for their help with production, for them to understand what I’d expect.”

Yagel took a photo of a soldier from the internet, sketched a contour of his body set upon a base, He started sending this sketch to companies that specialized in metal production. Eventually, Zambarg Metals agreed to partner to produce six sculptures as a donation. “I sat with their designer and engineer and together we built the prototype for the project.” The metal frame alone weighed around 80 kilograms, so of course it needed to sit on something to support its weight. Unable to drill holes into the ground, Yagel turned to a stone company, Ackerstein, to help create a solid base for each sculpture, who in turn donated the concrete foundations for each sculpture. Another company, Ravinsky Marble, allows Yagel to use their warehouses for storage when the sculptures are not on display. It was through coordination and collaboration that has allowed the LeZichram sculptures to be exhibited year after year.

He understood that this project had both a static and a mobile element to it, “a connection between the real world and the online world.” The sculptures were in production, and now it was time to create the digital aspect of LeZichram. It was something that had not been done yet, connecting Instagram, a digital gathering place, to something concrete.

“I had my purpose. There was meaning in what I was creating. Once you have meaning, once you know what you want to achieve, you can endure any challenge that you meet along the way. I knew what the end result was that I wanted to achieve, so when I was met with any problem I had the drive to find the solution.”

The power of a project like this rests in the exposure it receives. Yagel approached several municipalities within Israel to explain what he was trying to achieve, and eventually Tel Aviv granted him the permission to display his sculptures around the city. With thousands of people on the move every day, the impact had the potential to be quite large. Yagel has hopes that these sculptures can travel around the Israel and even be displayed in the Diaspora, especially after the tragedy of October 7th.

Each sculpture is outfitted with a QR code. When scanned, it leads to the @lezichram_ Instagram page, which details fallen soldiers and victims of terror, how they fell and when, and their photos. The idea is for their details to be shared in the stories of other Instagram users, introducing new people to these national heroes. The project has garnered tens of thousands of shares across social media. Generally, the sculptures are on display for two weeks, around the time of Memorial Day and Independence Day.

Currently there are hundreds of profiles uploaded on Instagram but the goal is to upload each and every soldier and victim of terror- from the earliest wars up until today. Profiles aren’t uploaded manually.

Templates were created to help upload relevant data points about each fallen hero. "Programmers volunteered to help me extract data from the internet and insert it with specially written code into the templates. My brother, Koren, developed the technical logic, the retrieval of data,  For LeZichram to reach its full potential, it will require more people to help code and input the details of each soldier.  As the project progressed, programmers Nir Goff and Hannah Oliver joined to increase the amount of people that LeZichram can honor.

For Yagel it’s important to note that LeZichram is a community project; none of it would have been possible without the involvement of many talented and generous people and companies. “Dozens of people have been involved to make this happen, they all participated voluntarily. It’s a project in which a lot of community members got involved. They deserve the credit, too.”

Of course, it’s a reality in Israel that people are also lost to terrorist attacks, kidnapping, etc., and these people also leave behind space. This also greatly influenced Yagel, since his friend’s brother was kidnapped and murdered. Yagel is constantly trying to find a way to honour the space left behind.

While initially the LeZichram project was not about October 7th, October 7th changed the project.

For Yagel, the attacks of October 7th and subsequent war were a shock. “Suddenly my generation is involved in a serious war. People came into our country and murdered people in their homes. It’s still shocking. It took me a while to recover from the shock. It took me a few months to return to a new normal, even though every day is painful when I think of the hostages still being held captive, and the soldiers that keep falling in battle.”

“About two weeks after October 7th, we started adding more posts to LeZichram. We uploaded about 300 people murdered on October 7th, in their memory, LeZichram.” They know they have a challenge ahead of them, to not only input every soldier ever lost, but of course those lost during this war, and those taken on that horrible Saturday.

To bring everything into consciousness the project must exist in its entirety both online and offline. We need to give each person a place to be remembered and a place to share hope in the fact that through the absence they left we can see the life that continues thanks to their sacrifice.

“I hope that one day in the future I can transform this concept into a different medium, like a film similar to the one I originally saw in my mind that day when this all first came to me.

Yagel’s largest goal is to redefine what ‘space’ means. It’s an inherited word. It’s empty. But there is still so much life there. Why are people sad? Because memories remain. Moments remain and when you remember them, you fill the space with the memories.

His project is a testament to the optimism he sees in the world and the beauty that exists. It is important that with each view of one of his sculptures, or each share on social media, that people are reminded of the strength of love and unity, and the destruction that comes with hatred and division.

“The optimism that you can see is that people love each other, that they care about each other. How much they help one another, how much they give to the soldiers, to the families that have been evacuated. Everyone came and helped, entertainers went and sang, cities helped where they could. The whole country was on its feet to help with what was need. It gives you hope that when we are here for each other and leave politics aside, we can achieve greatness. There is unity in the people of Israel, and when there is unity, we are the strongest there is.”

His hope for the future: “even when we are busy, may we have a life that seems beautiful, that the sun shines and that there are no wars. May we all love each other and be good to each other, no matter your politics, religion, color, or race. And may we, as Jews, rembember to stay united and strong as one.”

Please follow Lezichram on Instagram and learn about our nation's heroes.