Orange County Voices : COMMENTARY ON GREATNESS : Legacy of Rabin Was Apparent in O.C. Visit : General spoke in ’92 with a Newport congregation of his hopes for Israel’s future.

During the week that Jews were reading the portion in the Torah that introduces the biblical patriarch Yitzhak, or Isaac, the Jewish people and the world bade farewell to the Yitzhak of our time, a patriarch of modern Israel.

In March of 1992, Gen. Yitzhak Rabin was in the midst of the campaign to regain the leadership of the Jewish state. Amazingly, he accepted my invitation to address my congregation in Newport Beach and flew from Jerusalem for that event.

The slogan of the campaign, “Israel Waits for Rabin,” was in my mind as I waited for his arrival at Los Angeles International Airport. I had been briefed on the elaborate and intensive security arrangements, but could not have expected the phalanx of running men surrounding Rabin that swept me up and out to the waiting car. A security officer had earnestly informed me that “no one could be better protected than Rabin.”

On the ride to Orange County our conversation touched on many matters, political and personal--from future withdrawal on the Golan Heights to his present feelings of withdrawal in making yet another attempt to quit smoking. He poured a Scotch, toasted “L’chaim,” to life, and was relaxed, humorous and expansive--the opposite of his public persona.

The most dramatic moment of the ride was when, his voice rising, he spoke of a private oath he had taken: “I was the last chief of staff who had to defend Israel from the lines that existed prior to the Six-Day War. As long as I will be alive, I will never forget the three weeks preceding that war when we saw how the armed forces of the Arab countries were concentrated all along the borders--mortar positions one mile from the president’s residence in Jerusalem, two miles from the Knesset, their artillery ready to shell Tel Aviv. And I took an oath that I will never give my hand to any solution that will make a future chief of staff of the armed forces of Israel be in a position to defend Israel from the lines that existed prior to the Six-Day War--never, never.”

At the hotel he went on to autograph every one of the scores of books and photos waiting for him. Sitting in my study, he accepted the yarmulke I offered, fitting it securely and wearing it proudly.

He offered an address that was alternately introspective and global in sweep. The evening ended with an informal reception in his honor, at which he sat and good-naturedly fielded questions in an intimate setting. He gave the impression he was willing to give you all the time in the world.

It was significant that he began his speech with a personal note: how he had spent most of his adult life as a soldier, as a Jewish soldier, and had to look all too often into the ugly face of war.

He said: “If there is something I never forget, it is when I had to come to the families that lost their dear ones in the struggles of Israel. To look into the eyes of the mothers, the fathers, and to hope that I could do it with a clear conscience, that there was no choice but to go to the fighting in which they lost their dear ones. And whenever I have had to make a decision in which the lives of Israelis were risked, I asked myself, ‘Are you sure that it is unavoidable, ‘ein b’rera,’ no choice?’ ”

This great humanity came to the fore in a way few expected, when as prime minister he extended his hand in peace.

How poignant it seems now that in the course of his address he returned several times to his pride over Israel’s standing as a strongly democratic nation in which the ballot, not the bullet, determines the course of government.

He concluded his speech by affirming: “People ask me if I am an optimist or pessimist. I say I am a Jewish realist. For me to be a Jewish realist is to never lose hope, to deeply believe in what we are, what we stand for, what we are trying to achieve, and to do what can be done, wherever and whenever it can be done, so that future generals of Israel will not have to look into the faces of grief-stricken mothers and fathers.”

Last week, as we mourned the death of Yitzhak, the leader of Israel, we read of the birth of Isaac, the biblical leader. Next week, we will read of that patriarch, “and Isaac sowed in the land, and he reaped a hundredfold. Thus had God blessed him. The man became great and kept becoming greater until he was very great.”

Yitzhak Rabin sowed in the land and became very great. God blessed him with a vision few attain. But it will be for others to gratefully reap the hundredfold harvest of his planting.