The most profound presence at last week’s memorial service for Yitzhak Rabin was the slain prime minister himself.
His framed countenance, mounted on the stage and surrounded by candelabras, cast a steady stare over those seated in the sanctuary at San Francisco’s Congregation Emanu-El on Wednesday of last week.
It was his image to which speakers paid homage: from the young leader of the pre-state Palmach with the tousled hair and cavalier grin, to the grizzled statesman with the steely glint of history in his eyes.
“I feel like Yitzhak Rabin has been staring at me the entire service,” said Rabbi Peretz Wolf-Prusan, Emanu-El’s director of education. He led congregants in the Mourner’s Kaddish not only for Rabin, gunned down four years ago, but also for his own father, who died around this time last year.
The rabbi eulogized Rabin and his father as “deeply troubled Palmach veterans, who looked very uncomfortable in suits and had a dislike for ceremonies.
“They were men of the earth and veterans of war with the scars to prove it,” Wolf-Prusan added. “And yet both men became fervent believers in peace.”
As Rabin was mourned, he was honored as a man with the courage to change his convictions. “Who is a hero?” asked Mark Schickman, the evening’s moderator. “A hero is one who conquers their own nature. And Yitzhak Rabin was such a man.
“He was a private man who learned to endure the spotlight,” added Schickman, a former president of the Jewish Community Relations Council. “He was a man with a legendary dislike of Yasser Arafat who took his hand at Oslo. And he was a warrior who prayed for peace.”
As Schickman left the stage, the only sound that followed him was one repeated throughout the evening: the hollow thud of footsteps. The audience held their applause, even as the group Massa U’Mattan provided a haunting, evocative musical tribute.
When the thin, lilting tones of Mattan Klein’s flute finally subsided, Israeli Brig. Gen. Eival Gilady honored Rabin, saying that only a man so familiar with war could make such a difficult peace.
“Rabin understood peace. He understood that peace comes with consequences. He always calculated every risk, and every detail. So when he decided that the risk of not having peace was too great, he moved forward.”
Daniel Shek, Israel’s consul general in San Francisco, echoed Gilady’s comments, calling Rabin “a guardian of security and a chancellor of reconciliation.” Shek also noted that the lifelong soldier’s desire for peace was tempered by tremors of doubt. But, according to Shek, when Rabin was finally convinced of the necessity for peace, the prime minister “became a true force of nature. Nothing could deter him.”
Shek condemned Yigal Amir, the Israeli Jew who assassinated Rabin, as a man who failed miserably in thwarting the peace process.
“Yigal Amir didn’t want to kill Yitzhak Rabin the man,” Shek said. “He wanted to kill the ideas of Yitzhak Rabin. But as we can see here tonight, he was unable to do that.
“I know that the legacy of Yitzhak Rabin will live on for years to come, because there are too many people around the world who won’t rest until his vision becomes a reality.”