Rachel Rabin, sister of slain PM Yitzhak Rabin and prominent kibbutz educator, dies at 101
Rabin, who lived on Kibbutz Manara along Lebanon for decades, was close to her brother before his assassination in 1995; 'Till his last day, I felt he was protecting me, even from afar'
Rachel Rabin Yaakov, the sister of slain prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and founding member and secretary of Kibbutz Manara, on Israel’s northern edge, died on Friday at age 101.
Rabin was among the pioneers of Kibbutz Manara along the border with Lebanon in 1943, where she remained a resident until she was forced to leave following the outbreak of fighting with Lebanon after the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel.
President Isaac Herzog paid tribute to Rabin, saying, “I was saddened to hear of her passing, at the ripe old age; dear Rachel Rabin Yaakov, whose long and impressive life journey was a model of education and public service.”
She was born in Tel Aviv in 1925 to Nehemiah Rabin and Rosa Cohen. Her father worked for the Israel Electric Corporation and her mother, known as “Red Rosa,” worked at a Loan and Savings Bank and was a prominent activist who held senior positions in the Haganah, the paramilitary organization during the British Mandate period, as well as the Histadrut, Labor Federation and in the education system.
In an interview in 2015 with the English-language podcast Israel Story, Rabin recalled her childhood, saying, “Our parents were always very busy, so we were alone a lot of the time. And somehow Yitzhak always felt that he was responsible for me. That he needed to take care of me. To protect me. And that’s how I felt. Till his last day, really, I felt he was protecting me, even from afar.”
Her mother died when Rabin was 12.
She took a very different path from her brother Yitzhak, who would become prime minister twice, from 1974 to 1977 and later in 1992 until his assassination in 1995. While he became a soldier in the Palmach — the pre-state defense force and precursor to the IDF — and fought in the War of Independence in 1948, Rachel Rabin went on to establish a kibbutz with a group from the Noar Haoved Vehalomed youth movement in 1943.
Rabin spoke about being a kibbutz pioneer in an extensive interview in the Davar publication in 2021, saying of Manara: “I’ve been here since day one, January 1943. It was a mountain of ice and rocks, with chill that penetrated to the bone. We lived in tents.”
“My original group in Hanoar HaOved went to found Kibbutz Revivim [in the Negev]. I switched to another group, and we went to the training farm on Kfar Giladi in the north,” she said. “One day, they told us that the Jewish National Fund had acquired lands on Mount Menara and they were looking for people to settle it. We said: ‘Us! We’re already here and already expecting to be sent to settle somewhere.’
However, life in Manara in the beginning was difficult, without paved roads; Rabin said that they would bring water in barrels from neighboring Lebanese villages.
The water that kibbutz members carried was “just enough for cooking. Once a week, we would go shower at Kfar Giladi. Returning took two hours on foot, it was dusty and sweaty. We would return from showering dirtier than when we’d left. It took 10 years for the water pipes to reach us, and only once it arrived were we able to plant proper orchards,” she said in Davar.
Rabin worked in education for decades. She taught the first class of children born on Kibbutz Manara and helped to build the Har Vagai regional school on Kibbutz Dafna in the Upper Galilee. She was a high school biology teacher until she retired and also served as a coordinator in the Education Ministry’s Rural Education Department.
She received the prestigious Samuel Rothberg Prize in Jewish education from the Hebrew University in 2009.
She met her husband, Rafi Yaakov, a German immigrant who was from another youth movement, in 1945. She described marrying three days before her brother Yitzhak.
“First was my wedding with Rafi, attended by Rafi’s parents and my father; Yitzhak couldn’t make it. Three days later was Yitzhak and Leah’s wedding and party,” she told Davar.
Her close relationship with Yitzhak was well documented. On the podcast, she recounted memories of a loving brother.
“One day, I remember, we went to see a movie. That was a big deal in those days. And I cried my eyes out. And Yitzhak, he said to me, “I’m never gonna take you to the movies again. The film’s barely started and you’re already crying. Even if it’s not sad!” So I said, “OK, I promise not to cry at the movies anymore.”
“We had a telepathic connection,” Rabin recalled. “Once he was hurt in a motorcycle accident [in December of 1945]. I was already in Manara. Mail would reach Kfar Giladi and someone would head down every day with a mule to bring the mail.”
Yitzhak Rabin invited his sister to the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo, Norway, after he won the prize, in 1994, with Shimon Peres and Palestinian Authority president Yasser Arafat.
She said of the moment, “I looked at him – embarrassed, proud and blushing – and thought to myself how proud our parents would be if they knew their son would reach this stage. I approached him and thanked him earnestly for inviting me. I told him it wasn’t something to be taken for granted, and he responded: ‘You’re my sister, Rachel. For me it is obvious.’”
Rabin’s older daughter, Tirzah, was born in 1950 and four years later, she and Rafi adopted Binia Jadidi, a six-year-old Persian boy who made aliyah with his family and whose father passed away. They had two more sons, Yiftach and Gadi.
Rabin is survived by her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Her husband, Rafi, died in 2012.