JERUSALEM (VINnews) — Rachel Rabin-Yaakov, the younger sister of slain Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and a founding member of Kibbutz Manara on Israel’s northern border, died Friday. She was 101.
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Born in Tel Aviv in 1925 to Nehemiah and Rosa Rabin, she was three years younger than her brother Yitzhak. Their mother, known as “Red Rosa,” was a Labor movement activist, Haganah member and Tel Aviv city councilwoman.
At 17, Rabin-Yaakov joined a pioneering group that established Kibbutz Manara in 1943 on a rocky hilltop near the Lebanese border. She taught the kibbutz’s first class of children and later helped found and lead the Emek HaHula regional school. She remained a leading educator and public figure in the Upper Galilee kibbutz movement for decades.
During Israel’s 1948 War of Independence she took up arms to defend the community she had helped build. She lived at Manara for 80 years until she was evacuated with other residents after Hezbollah attacks following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas assault. She did not return because of her health.
President Isaac Herzog called her life “a model of educational and public service.” He said she was among the pioneers who “clung to the rocky soil on an isolated mountain and founded Kibbutz Manara” and that she herself fought to protect it. Herzog noted he had spoken with her on her 101st birthday and that she continued to mourn her brother’s 1995 assassination.
Funeral services are scheduled for Monday at the cemetery on Kibbutz Manara.
Her husband, Rafi Yaakov, died in 2012. She is survived by children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
terrible that she was robbed of a Jewish education