For the chairman of the San Francisco Israel Center, it is hard to believe that six years have passed since the night Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated.
“I was in Tel Aviv with a group of American legislators,” Mark Schickman recalled Sunday evening, before the start of a candlelight memorial at Congregation Beth Sholom in San Francisco. “As we were leaving the square, a guy on a motorcycle rushed past screaming that Rabin had been shot. We thought he was just drunk until we got back to our hotel and one of the wives said, ‘Sorry about Rabin.'”
It took some time for the shock to set in, said Schickman, who serves on the board of the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation and is past chair of the Jewish Community Relations Council. “Quite literally, we didn’t believe it.”
Schickman was one of several people to address the crowd of about 80. The hourlong program also featured Israel Consul General Yossi Amrani, who spoke about “The Rabin Legacy: A Nation’s Continued Search.” Rabbi Camille Shira Angel of San Francisco Congregation Sha’ar Zahav, delivering the invocation, offered an interpretation of the well-known admonition from Ecclesiastes, “a time to love, a time to hate.” Israeli journalist Avirama Golan gave the keynote address, “Israeli Society Six Years Later: Ruptured or Reunited.”
Now, perhaps more so than at any time since he was killed, Rabin’s legacy is under attack. With the intifada continuing for more than a year, and Israeli soldiers and civilians still under frequent attack from the “partner in peace” Rabin so believed in, those across the political spectrum are concluding that while Rabin was right to sign the 1993 Declaration of Principles with Yasser Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization, the experiment has ended in failure.
Schickman, however, categorically rejects this premise. “The Jewish quest for peace didn’t begin in 1993, not in 1977, and not even in 1948, when Israel tried to accept the U.N. partition plan,” he said. “The drive for peace is a 3,000-year-old story, and will continue until we finally achieve our goal.
“The goal of peace is so central that we repeat it every time a mourner says Kaddish: ‘He who makes peace from On High, He will grant peace to us and the whole House of Israel, and let us say Amen.'”
The sixth yahrzeit of Israel’s late prime minister formally fell on Oct. 28, which corresponded with Heshvan 11, the Hebrew date of the assassination. The San Francisco memorial was organized to coincide with the mass demonstration held in Israel on the secular date.
The brightest spot of the program was delivered by violinist Zina Schiff, who performed a musical tribute to Rabin and an uplifting rendition of Israel’s national anthem, “Hatikvah.” Schiff, who has played with the Israel Philharmonic and San Francisco Symphony, opened with the bittersweet “Nigun from Baal Shem Tov” by Ernest Bloch.
Those at the memorial came for various reasons.
Ira Kaufmann was in Tel Aviv for the second annual Rabin memorial, held in the square now named for its famous martyr. “I didn’t speak Hebrew and was only visiting Israel for a year,” said the 30-year-old San Francisco native, “but it didn’t really matter. I never felt as connected to Israel as I did that night. Coming out tonight is an attempt to refresh that connection.”
Kaufmann compared Rabin to former Prime Minister Menachem Begin, saying that both men were tough negotiators who knew that Israel could take measured risks for peace. “The greatness of Begin was that he fought for Israel when he thought it was necessary but always envisioned a future for Israel without war. When the opportunity arose with Egypt, he jumped at the chance.
“That’s what Rabin did with the Palestinians. He knew the road would be tough, but he was confident that moving forward slowly and carefully was the only way out of the quagmire of violence. Rabin was the consummate realist, but he seemed to bring the country in a direction of hope.”
Karen and Dudi Koenig, native Israelis now living in San Francisco’s Noe Valley neighborhood, said they’d come as a way “to connect” with Israel. The couple said they identified with Rabin’s message that peace from a position of strength was not only desirable but possible.
Another attendee explained that he’d come by happenstance: He’d been playing Frisbee nearby in Golden Gate Park when a friend invited him to come along.
Still, the program was short enough and varied to keep even the most casual observer interested.
And with Rabin’s assassination receding into the past, and his dream of “peace and security” as elusive as ever, the San Francisco memorial can help to keep his memory alive.