In a tiny Formica kitchen with a rectangular window that frames the
view, a wooden table is set for breakfast - herbal tea from the
garden, homemade jam, butter and a basket of bread. Rafi is back from
his morning swim and the couple has just sat down to eat. It's Rafi's
86th birthday today.

More than 66 years ago, in March 1943, Rachel arrived with a group
from the Noar Haoved Vehalomed (Working and Studying Youth) movement
and graduates of the regional school in Kibbutz Givat Hashlosha at
this hilltop site of boulder-strewn land that the Jewish National Fund
had purchased. And she has been here ever since, viewing events from
high on the hill and from the elevation of her years, always suffused
with boundless optimism and vitality. She will soon turn 85. For
decades she was engaged in teaching and education. Every year, as the
anniversary of the assassination of her brother, Yitzhak Rabin,
approaches, she visits two or three schools to talk about him. This
week she spoke to a fifth-grade class in Binyamina, in the center of
the country. The pupils sent her the questions in advance.
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She sat with the children and in a quiet voice told them about their
childhood, hers and her brother's, in 1920s and 1930s Tel Aviv; about
their parents who were busy with public activity in the city; about
the school for the children of workers, where there were no bells and
no homework; and about the stamp collection that ignited many fights
between her and Yitzhak. And they, the generation that collects
Pokemon, sat with mouths agape and drank in every word.

"They really took to the story about the stamps," she smiles. "I told
them that Yitzhak and I collected stamps. At first we quarreled, so we
split the collection. After that, we decided that it was no good being
alone, so we reunited the collection, but each of us wrote his name on
the back of every stamp so we would know, if we split it again, who
had brought what to the collection. That so much spoke to them. A
dialogue developed and each of them told how his grandmother or his
father also collected stamps. And I asked them what they collect.

"I told them that we also collected the gold and paper wrappings from
chocolates. Yitzhak loved chocolate. Back then there were chocolate
tablets made by the Fishinger company, which were wrapped in
illustrated paper. Yitzhak would eat the chocolate and I would get the
paper for my collection. One time, a friend of the family brought us a
pile of chocolates like that, and we opened them all straightaway and
took the wrappings. We put the chocolates in the cupboard. When my
mother opened the cupboard and saw the stacks of chocolate she got
angry and scolded us and said we were being pampered too much."

Feeling secure

Rosa, Yitzhak and Rachel's mother, who was known as "Red Rosa," was a
tempestuous revolutionary who died at 47, when Rachel was 12 and
Yitzhak 15. "The cloud of orphanhood accompanied me and Yitzhak for
many years," Rachel said this week. In a new biography, "Rabin: The
Growth of a Leader" (edited by Daniel Dor; Hebrew), the historian
Shaul Weber writes that for him, Rabin was a riddle; a man who
projected integrity and innocence but could resort to brute force, who
was surrounded by people but stood out as an emotionally alienated
loner, and who was able to externalize his feelings only in the last
years of his life. By poring over documents and interviewing childhood
friends, Weber looked for the answers in Rabin's boyhood, his youth
and his harsh test as the commander of the Harel Brigade in the War of
Independence.

The Tel Aviv of Rabin's childhood, in the 1920s and 1930s, was a
vibrant city economically and culturally and an arena of workers'
struggles. His parents, Rosa and Nehemiah, were leading activists in
the Labor movement. Nehemiah worked for the Israel Electric
Corporation and was a member of the trade union, while Rosa managed a
branch of the Loan and Savings Bank and devoted herself to extensive
public activity, which left little time for her small children.

Nehemiah Rabin seemed to be a family man. Childhood friends of his
son, now elderly women but then girls in his class, remember Nehemiah
sitting in a corner of the courtyard of their home and doing the
laundry on the washboard. The Rabin family lived in Spartan
conditions, with very modest furnishings in their home. But guests who
turned up unexpectedly knew they would have a place to stay. Many
meetings took place in the house, and the children sometimes fell
asleep in the beds of others. Loneliness was an integral part of
Yitzhak Rabin's childhood. His mother was often absent, particularly
during the nationalist disturbances of 1929. In such cases, Weber
writes, 7-year-old Yitzhak stayed in the house with his 4-year-old
sister. During summer vacations the children were sent to uncles and
aunts in Jerusalem. The most meaningful family experience was probably
the Friday evening ritual when the desk was pushed into the center of
the room and the four sat around it to partake of the Sabbath meal.

And the children?

"At first we lived on Shadal Street. When we were little there was a
nanny. When I started school, our parents made an agreement with the
neighbors, the Dissler family. He was a contractor and was about to
build on Hamagid Street. The idea was for him to build an apartment
with a shared passage and a shared kitchen. So we moved in next to
them, and this way the house was never empty. The Disslers were an
elderly couple, very nice, and they were always home."

Weber quotes your brother as saying on the radio program "My Father's
House" that he was a very lonely child.

"There was one thing that surprised me in that interview, that Yitzhak
spoke about feeling lonely when mother was still alive. I spoke to
Yitzhak about that. I told him it was very strange: 'You emphasize the
feeling of loneliness, but I never felt lonely.' We tried to
understand why this was so and very quickly realized that I had him
but that I apparently could not provide him with the same degree of
security as he provided me. And then the penny dropped and I
understood how much security he had given me over the years."

At what stage did you find yourself getting angry at your parents for
being so involved in their public activity and perhaps neglecting you
and Yitzhak?

"No, there was never anger. My parents never spoke in lofty terms
about values, but they lived according to a very clear scale of
values. They contributed to their fellow citizens and to the society.
There are things that are worth doing and worthy of investing your
time. Today we call it 'self-fulfillment,' but back then they just
said, 'Don't wait - do.'"

Basic and simple

Rachel was always the little sister who tagged along behind her big
brother. "I loved Yitzhak very much," she says. "I don't remember
myself without him. Our parents were always busy and he felt
responsible for me. I don't think mother and father asked him to do
that, but inwardly he always watched over me. I followed him
everywhere, to friends, and he never shooed me away. Hanna Rivlin, the
elder sister of [the poet] Haim Gouri, was in Yitzhak's class, and
when I tagged after Yitzhak, Hanna and another girl took me under
their wing. We are friends to this day. It was only at a later time,
when I myself was a mother, that I came to appreciate the patience he
showed toward me. How did he put up with me? The little sister who
trailed him everywhere.

"To the last day I felt that he was watching over me. He watched over
me from afar. For a person who lives in a place like Manara, political
and security decisions have practical translations in everyday life.
As long as Yitzhak was one of the decision-makers, for years, I was
calm. I knew that he was judicious, that he knew what he was doing. I
believed in his ability to decide things, from childhood until his
last day."

Weber describes a very modest home, even though your parents made a
good living. Did that bother you? Did it affect you?

"We had a table, chairs, beds. There were no carpets and I don't
remember any pictures. But there was everything we needed. We were one
of the first homes with an electric refrigerator, because Dad worked
for the electric corporation. From my point of view, we lacked for
nothing. Other children liked to play at our place, because there was
nothing that could be broken. There was also no key to the door and
all our friends knew where the candy jar was.

"Adaleh took a more critical view of our way of life. There were never
any luxuries. But really, what does a child need? There were table
games, like dominoes and chess, and most of the time we played
outside. Twice a year, ahead of Passover and Rosh Hashanah, we got new
clothes. The other children were envious of us, really, because our
mother didn't cook, so on school holidays, when there was no lunch,
Mom and Dad would leave Yitzhak and me money and we would eat at the
workers' restaurant on Brenner Street. Many times we were too lazy to
go that far, so we bought sour cream and bananas and a bowl of soup
nearby. Food was never a big deal."

The day before, Rachel relates, the children had asked her what
Yitzhak liked to eat. "I told them that we both liked basic, simple
food: bread, salad, an omelet. Yitzhak was very fond of apples and
olives. Yitzhak's secretary in the bureau told me that when he became
prime minister, the staff noticed that he didn't go out to eat. One
day the secretary asked him if she should make him something to eat.
He said, 'If you can make me the same thing they made in the Defense
Ministry, I will be pleased.' 'And what did they make for you?' she
asked. 'Sour cream with cucumbers,' he said."

For decades, Rachel Rabin was involved in education. She taught the
first class in Manara. Afterward she was a teacher in the elementary
school that was established in the kibbutz and one of the founders of
the regional school in Kibbutz Dafna, where she taught biology. In
recent years she has coordinated the graduation projects in grades 11
and 12. Education and children are her abiding loves.

Like her brother, she attended Beit Hinuch, a school for workers'
children in Tel Aviv. The school day lasted until the afternoon and
the children ate lunch there, which they cooked for themselves. The
goal was to provide a labor-socialist education: responsibility and
self-discipline within a democratic framework. In practice, the
framework was quite loose. There was no regular schedule and classes
began and ended as the teachers saw fit. There was no homework and no
grades were given. The children took part in managing the school; many
issues were decided in pupils' assemblies.

The school consisted of four meager cabins, but for the children it
was paradise. The anarchy came to an end when the admired teacher and
pedagogue Eliezer Smoli entered the classroom in fourth grade.
Appalled by the ignorance he encountered, he sent the children home to
study the multiplication tables in the company of their parents. This,
he hoped, would induce the busy parents to take some responsibility
for their children's education. Yitzhak Rabin, by the way, did not
start to read and write until fourth grade.

"Yesterday," his sister relates, "I told the children in Binyamina
that there was no school bell and that when the lesson ended we went
quietly for recess. There were no tests, either. They were astonished.
The values we received in Beit Hinuch accompanied us throughout life:
Zionism, social justice, caring for others and love of the country.
You know, we were small children and there were no buses like today,
but we were taken on outings all over the country. We learned about
relating to nature and relating to work. The slogan in the school was
'Work and learn.' And we worked: There was a garden where we grew
vegetables, and we cooked our own meals. We worked in rotation in the
kitchen and we washed dishes and laundered the aprons. We worked in
the carpentry shop. There was a bookshelf at home that I built in the
carpentry shop. There was a sheep, beehives, even a mule. Yitzhak was
in charge of the mule."

Eliezer Smoli had a formative influence on Yitzhak Rabin's
personality. In his autobiography, Rabin thanked the iconic teacher
who had pulled him out of his loneliness and taught him how to
experience the feeling of "being together." A thread that runs through
Weber's book is the social hardships of the young Rabin. In this
period he did not stand out and was quite reticent, but he excelled at
sports and won acclaim on the soccer field. The girls called him
"burik" - beet - because he would blush when they tried to befriend
him. In circle dances there was no one who could make him join in.

As an educator, and as the recipient of a socialist-democratic
education, what do you think of today's youth?

"Last week I received the 'Rabin pre-army course' group in the
kibbutz: 70 young people doing a year of national service before the
army. I showed them around and told them how we had established the
kibbutz. Wonderful youth. But who knows about them? Who hears about
them? We put on the television and hear about murder and rape and
robbery and corruption and fraud. Like Rafi says, you open the paper
and all you see is black on white. I think people should see the good
and beautiful things we have in this country, that people should have
hope. They are also my hope."

Still, it's hard to ignore what's happening in the education system:
the violence in the schools, the deteriorating status of teachers.

"There are schools that have overcome the violence. If there is
consciousness of it, it can be overcome. It's not easy, because our
surroundings are violent. Speech is violent. Speech on television is
violent. The violence begins from above, and the basic values of
tolerance, accepting those who are different and mutual respect no
longer remain. An officer to whose unit I gave a talk told me that it
was easier for our generation, because we had educational models. That
is true. We had teachers of stature, we had youth movement leaders
with an ideology. That is lacking.

What is your opinion of government corruption and the wastefulness at
the top? Just last week, we read about [Labor Party leader Ehud]
Barak's luxury hotel suite in Paris.

'It is terrible. It makes me feel terrible. I think there is no shame
left today. In the affair of the bank account held by Yitzhak and [his
wife] Leah abroad, Yitzhak resigned. On the one hand, I held him in
very high regard for that. But on the other hand, I thought it wasn't
right. Why did he resign? And I am not making comparisons with today.
It was their money, which they had earned. True, under the law they
were supposed to transfer all the money to Israel. But Yitzhak took
responsibility. He did not blame it on Leah. And rightly so. He said
that if she were placed on trial, he would resign. Today, though, I
see that there is no shame and no responsibility."

His own person

In her extensive public activity, Rosa Rabin ignored her poor health.
She had a heart ailment and a few years before her death also fell ill
with cancer. Her illness heightened young Yitzhak's sense of
responsibility and injected a feeling of anxiety into his life. "There
was a great deal of concern," Rachel says. "Yitzhak worried more about
mother than I did. Many times he ran to call the doctor."

In the summer of 1934, when Rachel's parents went to a spa in
Marienbad, in Czechoslovakia, Rachel was left with a friend at Kibbutz
Yagur. Weber notes that Yitzhak, a boy of 12, was left alone at home.
(Rachel said this week that he also visited relatives in Jerusalem.)
It was also in 1934 that he completed elementary school, which led to
a serious dilemma at home.

Nehemiah wanted his son to attend the Gymnasia Herzliya school in Tel
Aviv, which was considered an elitist institution; Rosa wanted him to
continue on the track of schooling for workers of the land in a
socialist spirit - and because no such school existed in the area, she
decided to found one.

Rachel, who was by then attending the school in Givat Hashlosha,
continued her studies after her mother's death, but now as a live-in
student, and afterward went to Kibbutz Tel-Hai in Upper Galilee for
land-settlement training.

"In 1942, the JNF bought the lands at Manara and we arrived in January
1943. There was nothing here. Not even trees. The trees had been cut
down many years before and nothing grew, because the Arabs came with
their flocks for grazing, which decimated anything that tried to grow
anew. We proceeded very slowly. It was very hard. We had great belief.
This was our dream. And many left along the way."

Two years later, she relates, Rafi arrived. "He immigrated from
Germany - he managed to escape in 1939. Yitzhak and I were married
three days apart: first Rafi and me, then Yitzhak and Leah. We took
advantage of a truce in the War of Independence. Both weddings were
modest. The guests at my wedding were Rafi's parents and my father.
Yitzhak couldn't get there. But the group from the Palmach [commandos]
wouldn't let Yitzhak and Leah - who served at Palmach headquarters -
off so easily. They weren't going to pass up the opportunity for a
party after all the pain and losses in the war. They held the wedding
in a small hall in a hotel."

Powerful longings

The telephone rings nonstop, as the children, the daughters-in-law and
the grandchildren call to congratulate Rafi on his birthday. The
Yaakovs have three children - Tirza, the eldest, born in 1950, and two
sons, Yiftah and Gadi. Rachel and Rafi also adopted Binya (Binyamin)
Jedidi as another son. He was killed in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. They
consider his children full-fledged grandchildren. Most of the
grandchildren, who number 11, have already completed their army
service. "We are all very much attached," Rachel says. On Friday they
will all meet for a festive meal to celebrate Rafi's birthday.

Yiftah, she says, was seriously wounded in the battle of the "Chinese
Farm" in the Yom Kippur War. "He was a tank commander, and they barely
got him out of that hell. He was very badly hurt - broken and burned
and torn. He spent four and a half months in hospital. He was wounded
while rescuing another tank crew. He was in the turret and took a
direct hit and was thrown from the tank. His replacement was Bertie
Ohayon, who today retired as the police operations commander. The
bodies and wounded of the Egyptians and of our boys were strewn there.
Bertie went from one to the next and asked, 'Are you a Jew? A Jew?'
When he got to Yiftah, he replied, 'I am a Jew, but it's hard to be a
Jew.' Bertie pulled him out of there. One hundred and twenty of our
boys were killed there that night."

Were you worried about Yitzhak?

"I was worried about him all my life. There was some sort of telepathy
between us. It's a strange story. Yitzhak was injured in a motorcycle
accident. [The accident occurred in December 1945, when Rabin was on
the way to prepare a demolition operation at the Jenin police
station.] I was already in Manara. The mail came to Kfar Giladi and
someone rode a donkey down to the village to pick it up. That morning,
I told a girlfriend that I had a feeling something had happened to
Yitzhak. She said, 'Stop it. Why are you putting things into your
head?' Around the middle of the day I was told that the fellow who
brought the mail was looking for me. I went to him and straight off
said, 'What happened to Yitzhak?' I already knew.

"During the battles in the War of Independence, my father was very
worried. Yitzhak was in Jerusalem and I was under siege in Manara. One
day he told Yitzhak how concerned he was, and Yitzhak said, 'Why are
you worried? You know that I am in Jerusalem. You also know that
Rachel is in Manara. What will the parents who don't know where there
children are say?'"

Were you also worried before the assassination?

"I was terribly afraid. Terribly afraid. I thought he was not being
guarded well enough."

Did you tell him?

Where were you when it happened?

"I was here. We watched the rally on television. Then we heard that
there had been shots and that the prime minister had been hit. I
called all the numbers I had. No one answered any of them. I called
Ichilov [Hospital] and asked for Eitan [Haber, Rabin's close aide].
'Eitan, what happened?' I asked him. He said, 'I'm not going to
pretend, get here as fast as you can.' We left immediately. On the way
we heard that he had died."

Do you miss him?

"Very much. The strongest feeling is the longings."

"I sat next to him during the whole flight," she says. "In his speech
upon receiving the prize, he spoke quite a bit about the cemeteries
and about the fallen he had left behind. That spoke to me very
powerfully. The next morning, Amos Horev [a retired major general],
who had also been invited, asked me, 'Why did Yitzhak have to talk so
much about cemeteries?' I did not reply.

"A harrowing conversation developed between us. Lucy opened up and
told me about her younger son who was killed. I told her that I knew
the details but hadn't made the connection. At home, I told my son
about Marnin, and he said that her son had been a soldier under his
command and that of course he had known him personally.

"In Oslo, while I looked at Yitzhak, I thought to myself about what
our parents would have said if they could have seen him on this
occasion. I went over to him and said, 'You know, I want to thank you
very much for inviting me.' He brushed it off with a gesture of his
hand, as usual, and said, 'Forget it, it goes without saying.'" W