Yitzhak Rabin — prime minister (nobel) with roots in the Russian Empire
Yitzhak Rabin was born on 1 March 1922 at the Shaare Zedek hospital in Jerusalem, in Mandatory Palestine. Both his parents had been born in the Russian Empire and came to Palestine with the Third Aliyah.
His father, Nehemiah, was born Nehemiah Rubitzov in 1886 in Sydorovychi, a shtetl near Ivankiv in the Kiev Governorate, within the Pale of Settlement. His own father, Menachem, died when he was a boy, and he worked from an early age to support the family. At eighteen he emigrated to the United States, where he joined the Poale Zion party and changed his surname to Rabin, and in 1917 he went to Palestine with volunteers of the Jewish Legion. His mother, Rosa Cohen, was born in Mogilev in 1890 and arrived in Palestine in 1919; she was among the first members of the Haganah. She died in 1937, Nehemiah in 1971.
Rabin graduated with distinction in 1940 from an agricultural high school, intending to become an irrigation engineer, and in 1941 joined the Palmach, becoming its chief of operations in 1947. He remained in the army after independence, headed Northern Command from 1956, was deputy chief of staff from 1959 and in 1964 was appointed chief of the general staff, a post he held during the war of June 1967 and until 1968. He then served as ambassador to the United States.
Elected to the Knesset for the Labor Party, he was briefly Minister of Labour under Golda Meir and in June 1974 succeeded her as prime minister, the first native-born holder of the office; in 1975 he concluded an interim agreement with Egypt. He left office in 1977, served as Minister of Defence in the unity governments of 1984 to 1990, and in 1992 was re-elected party leader and prime minister.
In his second term he signed the Israeli-Palestinian Declaration of Principles in September 1993 and the peace treaty with Jordan in 1994, and in December 1994 shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat. On 4 November 1995 he was assassinated in Tel Aviv after a rally; the square where it took place now bears his name.
"Father Nehemiah Rubitzov left Sydorovychi near Ivankiv at eighteen for the United States, then went to Palestine with the Jewish Legion in 1917; mother Rosa Cohen, born in Mogilev, arrived in Palestine in 1919."
Migration storyTracing the roots — Sydorovychi, Kiev Governorate (father); Mogilev (mother)
Both his parents were born in the Russian Empire: his father, Nehemiah Rubitzov, in Sydorovychi near Ivankiv, north of Kiev, and his mother, Rosa Cohen, in Mogilev. They met in Palestine after arriving with the Third Aliyah.
Father Nehemiah Rubitzov (1886-1971), born in Sydorovychi near Ivankiv in the Pale of Settlement, changed his name to Rabin in the United States. Mother Rosa Cohen (1890-1937), born in Mogilev, one of the first members of the Haganah.
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Sydorovychi, Kiev Governorate (father); Mogilev (mother). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.