Today, Nov. 4, 2025, marks the 30th anniversary of a truly tragic event in Jewish history: the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
A key figure in Israel’s War of Independence, Rabin later became a statesman and eventually worked toward peace with the Palestinians. He was instrumental in negotiating the monumental Oslo Accords in secret and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 alongside PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres.
Rabin died on Nov. 4, 1995, when a right-wing fanatic who opposed the Oslo Accords shot him at the end of a massive peace rally in Tel Aviv.
Something else happened on Nov. 4, 1995. It wasn’t known to the world at large. It was much more personal. I was born on the same day that Rabin was murdered. Today is my 30th birthday.
I come from an Israeli family on my mother’s side, all of whom immigrated to Northern California before I was born. A close-knit family, we used to have weekly Shabbat gatherings of grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.
It was late on Friday, Nov. 3, 1995, in Oakland when my parents returned home from Shabbat at my grandparents’ house, ready to go to sleep. But then my mom’s water broke and off to the hospital they went.
Mom labored until 5 in the morning on Nov. 4. When at last my tiny self emerged into the world, unimaginable violence was about to occur halfway around the world in her homeland, Israel.
My mom heard the news from Israel in the hospital while my infant self slept beside her. Later, she wrote me a letter describing her mixed emotions that day: her elation and hope at beholding me, her firstborn child, mingled with her grief and hopelessness at the loss of a great leader she had such faith in.
When I got to read the letter in my teens, I was struck by her ability to hold such depths of emotions at once. Her hope for peace, represented by Rabin, still resonates with me as we continue to face conflict three decades later. Her words spoke to the simultaneous fragility and strength of our people. We are able to shoulder such pain while hanging onto happiness too.
I spoke to my mom this morning on the phone. She wished me a happy birthday, and I reminded her of the letter she’d written me all those years ago. I told her I was writing about it for J. and asked if there was anything she wanted to mention.
She told me, “It epitomizes the Jewish experience of grief amidst joy.” While we talked, she became flooded with memories of hearing the news while gazing at my sleeping form, her voice over the phone growing thick with tears. She then reminded me of a custom I embraced at my wedding: stomping on a glass to commemorate the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem even as I celebrated my new marriage.
When I first learned I was born on the day this great man was murdered, I felt that my birthday was forever tarnished. How could I celebrate myself when others in my community, my family, mourned? But really, that is what Jews have learned to do so well. We know how to hold together despair and elation in a fragile embrace.
It’s no accident that my mom’s words echo my own impressions of her letter. I’m grateful to my mom and to all the other strong Jewish women who have shown me how to bear grief and cling to joy in spite of it.
Today, I am celebrating my 30th birthday with hope for a brighter future, not just for myself, but for all of us. L’dor v’dor.