JERUSALEM — Leah Rabin was just 15 when she met her future husband, Yitzhak Rabin, in a Tel Aviv ice cream store. The auburn-haired, blue-eyed 21-year-old officer in an elite Jewish commando squad "looked like King David himself," she later recalled.
He was shy and awkward; she was outspoken and sharp-tongued. Their romance, born at a time of intrigue and danger during the struggle to create an independent Jewish state, lasted more than 50 years.
Through wars, political triumphs and disasters, and historic peacemaking efforts, Leah Rabin, who died Sunday of lung cancer at 72, was at her husband's side. She even titled her first memoir: "Always His Wife."
She was just paces behind him the night a Jewish religious extremist gunned down Yitzhak Rabin at a Tel Aviv peace rally on Nov. 4, 1995.
She heard the bullets fired from Yigal Amir's gun and saw her husband's bodyguards throw themselves on the prime minister before she was whisked from the scene by security guards. By the time they finally got her to Ichilov Hospital, he was dead.
She spent the rest of her life preserving Rabin's memory and defending his vision of trading land for peace with the Palestinians.
"The government of Israel, the people of Israel and the Jewish people as a whole, as well as millions in the world, are mourning today the passing away of Leah Rabin," said Prime Minister Ehud Barak, en route to Washington for a meeting with President Clinton.
"Since [Rabin's] assassination five years ago, Leah held the torch of his legacy and brought his voice loud and clear to us Israelis and to the whole world."
Clinton, who had called Leah Rabin on the anniversary of her husband's death Nov. 4, said, "the Middle East has lost a friend of peace, but the work to which she and Yitzhak dedicated their lives must and will continue."
Shimon Peres, who was her husband's political rival for years and ultimately his partner in making peace with the Palestinians, said Leah Rabin's death was "a great loss for our people."
"Leah started from the point Yitzhak was assassinated to carry on with deep conviction, in total devotion, without fear, in a crystal clear voice, the need for peace, the call for peace, the heritage of her husband," Peres said.
Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, who shared the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize with Yitzhak Rabin and Peres, said: "God, it is so sad to lose this lady, wife of my partner in making the peace of the brave. . . . May God grace her with his mercy."
