Today, Nov. 4, 2025, marks 30 years since Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was shot and killed by a right-wing extremist while speaking in support of the Oslo Accords at a rally in Tel Aviv. Rabin, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and one of the greatest statesmen of the late 20th Century, represented a hope for peace in the Holy Land and genuine fraternity between Israelis and Palestinians. Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994, along with former and future Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, and Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization and future President of the Palestinian Authority, Yasser Arafat. A former general turned politician, Yitzhak Rabin, embodied the spirit of Israeli politics at the time, seeking to normalize relations not only with the Palestinian people and authorities, but also with Jordan. 

Rabin, who had served as Prime Minister following Golda Meir’s resignation from 1974-1977, was re-elected in 1992 on a platform of peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Immediately, he spearheaded talks between Israel and the PLO that would culminate in the Oslo Accords, a landmark peace deal between the two nations. Rabin was assassinated less than two months after signing the Oslo II Agreement, which was the second step in the peace plan set to grant the Palestinian Authority direct administration of the Palestinian territories: the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

Yitzhak Rabin met his wife, Leah, while still in high school. The two wed in 1948, the year Israel declared its independence. Born in East Prussia in 1927, her family immigrated to British Mandate Palestine shortly after Adolf Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany in 1933. The two worked closely together, both in politics —Leah represented Israel at the 1975 World Conference on Women during Yitzhak’s first term as PM — and privately, as homemakers and as friends, to each other and their community.

Part of this community was my aunt Gila. Gila and I aren’t actually related by blood. She and my Grandmother, Lisette, met in kindergarten and stayed best friends for the rest of their lives. I have always known that Gila is an “old Tel Avivi,” as we put it. Gila’s family, the Fellmans, ran an orchard on the outskirts of the small Arab village where they lived. This orchard, “Pardes Fellman,” was planted in the 1880s in the heart of what would become Tel Aviv by Sarah-Itta Fellman (Gila’s great-great-grandmother). Pardes Fellman would eventually lend its land to the growing city of Tel Aviv, Shlomo Ibn Gvirol Street cutting right through it. In its place lies a small street, “HaPardes,” the Orchard, a memory of her family’s history and their ties to the land they helped cultivate.

Gila also came from a prominent social family, who made connections and friends whenever and wherever they could. One such connection was made with the Rabin family. It’s not clear when or how Leah and Gila met, but by the 1990s, they had become close, running in the same social circles and sharing recipes. In the online age, sharing recipes is an archaic practice. It’s so easy to just hop on the New York Times website or find a video on TikTok, but before the emergence of the internet, it was an intimate ritual that took place between close confidants, a sign of true friendship. 

Through this intimate exchange, my grandmother received Gila’s chocolate cake recipe. For decades, she made it for every birthday, holiday even just for afternoon coffee on a rainy Sunday. The summer after she passed away, my mother and I decided to make it for my birthday, both as a way to feel close to her and to her best friend. It was delicious; it always was. The next day, we phoned Gila to thank her.

“Did you use the recipe in the regular pan or the springform pan?” Gila asked, despite her thick Israeli accent and my push to speak Hebrew. We only had one recipe, copied down over the phone, no doubt, by my grandmother sometime in the 1970s.

“The springform pan,” we responded. Then, after a comically long pause, she proclaimed:

“That’s not my recipe. That’s Leah Rabin’s.”

Gila’s family had been close with the Rabins. When he was shot, one of her grandsons memorably asked, “why did they kill Uncle Yitzhak?” That question, asked sheepishly by a five-year-old, still puzzles me. His assassination devastated not only Israelis but Jews worldwide, who were filled with such admiration and pride for the Prime Minister who had achieved so much in the way of peace. His loss was tragic and was only amplified by the fact that his assassin was a fellow Jew, an individual who hated Rabin specifically because of his desire for peace. It felt like a betrayal on the deepest level. Since his death, that division has only grown wider. The Jewish community, both in Israel and abroad, has never been so divided, and one finds it easy to look back on Rabin’s assassination and point to it as the place where everything went wrong. The Jewish people are no strangers to this kind of melancholy hopelessness. How many times can we look back at the history of the Jews and point to a moment where all hope felt lost?

It is up to us, not because of Rabin’s assassination, but despite it, to work towards achieving the world he envisioned. A view of his country where a Jew and an Arab, where an Israeli and a Palestinian, where two brothers can sit and share a cup of coffee or a glass of tea and a slice of chocolate cake and disagree about some things, but still stay brothers. Being decent people isn’t enough. It’s our job to continue the movement towards peace, to facilitate dialogue, to make friends across national borders and to shake hands. We must do so not merely to ensure that Yitzhak Rabin’s death was not in vain, but to ensure that his life made a difference and continues to do so.

With that, I hope the chocolate cake you share a slice of is this one.

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Directions:

7 oz margarine or butter (1 Tbsp less than two sticks)

1 ½ cups sugar

2 oz bittersweet chocolate

4 Tbsp cocoa

1 tsp instant coffee mixed into ¼ cup water (or ¼ cup strong coffee)

4 large eggs, separated

1 cup flour

1 tsp baking powder

Bring margarine, sugar, chocolate, cocoa, instant coffee, and water (or brewed coffee) to a light boil over moderate heat, stirring constantly. Once everything is dissolved, remove from heat. Pour ½ cup into a bowl and set aside for icing. Transfer the rest to a large mixing bowl and let cool slightly.

To the remaining mixture, add the egg yolks one at a time, stirring vigorously. Slowly add the flour and baking powder. Whip egg whites until stiff and fold into batter. 

Pour into greased 9” spring form. Bake in a preheated 350° oven for 30-40 minutes. The center should stay damp, but the outside should be cooked through (a toothpick should come out slightly wet from the middle).

Once cool (about 20 minutes), remove from the pan and cover with reserved icing.

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As a personal aside, I’d like to give special thanks to Gila. She was my Savta’s best friend from age five, and no matter who wrote the recipe, it’ll always be Gila’s chocolate cake to me.