Valley Residents Express Shock, Anger at Death

As the sun sank on Saturday and a full moon rose to signal the close of a disturbing Sabbath, Jews and others with ties to the Middle East drew close in the San Fernando Valley, phoning loved ones and talking of the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in the low, intense tones of the grieving.

“I feel empty inside,” said Michael Jotkowitz, a high school senior. “I wanted to visit an Israel that was the most peaceful place on Earth. I’ve lost hope.”

On Monday, Jews will gather here and in Israel to bid Rabin farewell with the words of the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead.

“It’s a real body blow to Jewish morale,” Rabbi Harold Schulweis, senior rabbi at Valley Beth Shalom synagogue, said of Rabin’s death.

At least two memorial services have been scheduled, one at 8 p.m. at the Stephen S. Wise Temple atop the Sepulveda Pass and another at 7:45 p.m. at Shomrei Torah Synagogue in West Hills.

“A Jew,” people said to one another, “killing another Jew.”

“I couldn’t understand how Jewish people can do this to each other,” said Bernard Gales, 74, of Woodland Hills.

Like others, he criticized the fanaticism that led an assassin to gun down the Israeli leader.

“Extremism in every respect is offensive,” Gales said. “It is offensive to any human being of reason.”

Shahrokh Rezai is not Jewish. But news of the assassination of Rabin disturbed the Iranian immigrant so much that he couldn’t bear to stay in his Woodland Hills home.

“I was watering my flowers” when news came of Rabin’s death, said Rezai, a Muslim. He left the house and went to the West Valley Jewish Community Center, where he works as aquatic director in the fitness center.

Saturday night, he said, would be spent on the phone with relatives in Iran and friends in Los Angeles, talking the tragedy through again and again.

“I think people are still absorbing it,” said Bernard Snyder of Encino, who was dining with his family at the Israeli restaurant Tempo, a gathering place in Encino for many with ties to Israel.

At the Wise temple, rabbis in upstairs offices scrambled to organize Monday’s memorial as members of a wedding party on a floor below gathered joyfully. Many were unaware of the day’s events.

“No way! No way! Oh my God,” West Los Angeles attorney John Rachlin burst out as a friend described how Rabin was murdered. A 27-year-old law student, Yigal Amir, has been accused of the crime.

Rabbi Alan Rabishaw said he was told of Rabin’s death just as he was finishing the morning’s service at the Wise temple. When he informed the congregation, “people were shocked,” he said. “A few cried.”

Phil Blazer of Studio City, who publishes the National Jewish News and had interviewed Rabin many times over the years, remembered the slain leader as a man who did not distance himself from ordinary people.

“Rabin was an interesting, sensitive, unassuming companion,” Blazer said. “He liked to talk about people. He had a pain in his soul that more Jews weren’t moving to Israel.”

Once during the 1970s, he said, a car that had been sent to pick up Rabin broke down in front of the Century Plaza Hotel.

“Rabin and I pushed the car for 50 yards in front of the hotel,” Blazer said. “It shows what a man he was. He had a common thread. He was just another guy.”

Rabin will be remembered today through good deeds performed as part of a long-planned “Mitzvah Day”--an effort to paint out graffiti and perform other tasks across the Valley. It has been rededicated in his honor.

“In Rabin’s memory, the Valley Jewish community will not be deflected from the task . . . of helping others,” said Rabbi Donald Goor, of Temple Judea in Tarzana.

Also, in a talk at 7 p.m. today at that temple, Albert Vorspan, the former longtime spokesman for Reform Jews on social action issues, will address the aftermath of the assassination.

Meanwhile, Nicolas Echtekleff, 29, a bartender at Tempo, offered words of hope.

“Look at me,” he said. “I am Lebanese. I work in an Israeli restaurant. Some of my best friends are Jews. And this guy is Persian,” he said, giving a friendly shove to the man next to him. “So you see? This is possible.”

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