THE JEWISH NEWS
Special Report:

A Da Interrupted,
Lives Were Changed

PHIL JACOBS E DIiOA

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aturday was supposed to be a regular day.
Larry Wolfe attended services at Adat
Shalom. Then he ran some errands and head-
ed home to Bloomfield Hills.
Annie Friedman, educational director at
Temple Beth El, was on her way to a wedding
in Ann Arbor that afternoon.
Julie Galazan, a Wayne State University student and
member of Hillel of Metro Detroit, was watching a movie
on television.
Then everything changed.
When he got home, Mr. Wolfe first went to check the
score of the Michigan-MSU football game. He channel-
surfed. When he got to CNN, he saw the images of some-
thing in Israel. On the bottom of the screen the words "Rabin
Assassination" seemed like a blur. He flicked the remote
to the next station.
Then what he had just seen came to him. He returned
in disbelief to CNN.
For Ms. Friedman, the announcement came via a news
bulletin over the radio. The wedding she would attend would
have an unmistakable undertone. People, she said, were
asking one another, "Tell me, what have you heard?"
Like Mr. Wolfe, Ms. Galazan felt it was like a dream.
"I thought after the initial shock of the news broadcast
that this was some sort of sick joke. But then I started think-
ing, who needed Hitler if we're going to be killing one an-
other? You can blame the man. You can hate the man. But
killing the man isn't going to help."
David Hermelin was part of the U.S. delegation to Mon-
day's funeral of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. After 80
visits to Israel, during times of lows
and highs, he found the entire na-
Moshe and Haesa with
tion walking around in a dream-like
granddaughter Leey
Grinberg, 3 1/2, of West
state. He had never seen anything
Bloomfield light a candle
like it.
in memory of Yitzhak
"You go over to Israel and you are
Rab in. They were a
thinking about the large-scale issues,
4,5 00 peopl e who came
the peace process, Syria, the econo-
to Adat Shalom to
my," Mr. Hermelin said. "Then Ra- participate in a memorial
bin's granddaughter (Noa Ben-Artzi
service for the fallen
Israeli leader.
Philosof) gets up there and speaks.
We didn't cry the same way then.
The country will go on; peace will go on. But that grand-
daughter isn't going to have a grandfather. And everyone
of us has been there, has lost someone.
"And so, if there was one moment in time when every-
thing changed for everybody, it was when she spoke. It was
a human being who passed away. That was the most pow-
erful reality check for everyone."
Mr. Hermelin was seated next to U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy
at the funeral.
"He sat there stunned," Mr. Hermelin said. "Can you
imagine, he's been there twice with his brothers and now
this."
Outside the Jewish community, other leaders reacted
with grief. Dr. Richard Cheatham, minister at Franklin
Community Church, said, "Mr. Rabin seemed to me the

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