LEAH RABIN WORKS TO KEEP SLAIN HUSBAND'S MEMORY ALIVE.

Byline: Mary Otto Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire

She used to make him sandwiches. Now she keeps his flame.

Leah Rabin lives out of a suitcase these days. Streets and squares are renamed in honor of her dead husband, Yitzhak. ``There are endless occasions,'' she says, ``endless ceremonies, endless awards.''

Endless elegies, and now her book ``Rabin: Our Life, His Legacy'' (Putnam).

The book, when it is not burnishing the life story of this man, is all raw grief, like a keening. The book is not about coming to terms with his murder.

``I'm not coming to terms with it,'' she says, evenly.

Sitting in a hotel suite, Rabin wears a black suit, her gray eyes all business.

She speaks of her late husband, the Israeli warrior and peacemaker, twice the prime minister, gunned down in November 1995 as he was leaving a peace rally.

The gunman, Yigal Amir, an ultranationalist Jew, opposed Rabin's land-for-peace arrangement with the Arabs. Rabin had his enemies, she says, not just the ``ideologically motivated'' but the ``political elements.'' Their combined fervor and cynicism was deadly, she says.

``He was not killed by one single person.''

Now that her husband is dead, she keeps careful tabs on the small and large slights against his memory: the places that have done nothing to memorialize him. The people who have not done enough to make amends for his death - his murder, as she always makes a point of calling it.

If she is accused of bitterness, of keeping wounds open, so be it.

``We should never forgive and never forget. He didn't die of a heart attack.''

If she has kinder words for Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat than for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, so be that, too.

Arafat shook Rabin's hand over the peace accord. Arafat paid her and her family a warm and compassionate visit after Rabin died. In fact, she has said, at this point Arafat seems ``almost'' a member of her family.

An interesting thing has happened since her husband was killed. Beyond any other people, the Arabs have gone out of their way to express their sympathy and respect. She has been thoroughly convinced of their hopes for peace.

``I think I have learned something very, very moving and very unique,'' she says.

But Netanyahu she has accused of helping foment the atmosphere of hatred that culminated in her husband's assassination. She also blames the people who wanted peace, but who didn't stand up for Rabin.

``Nobody realized how alone he was.''

Leah Schlossberg was born April 8, 1928, into a well-to-do German Jewish merchant family. When Hitler was elected, they fled to Palestine. She met Rabin when she was 15 and he was a 21-year-old soldier in the Jewish independence movement. ``To me, he looked just like King David himself,'' she writes in her book. She joined him in the resistance. They were married five years later.

She believes in the peace he died for: ``The wheels of history go in one direction. They don't go back.''

Her husband's death left a void in the leadership of Israel's Labor Party. Over and over, she has said she has no political role, and does not desire one. But perhaps her son, she suggests, at a luncheon talk later this day, at the National Press Club, might someday step into politics.

It seems unbelievable to her, but Yuval, who was always so quiet, so shy, was changed by the death of his father.

``If my husband could have come back today, he wouldn't believe his eyes! He wouldn't believe his ears!'' she tells the crowd. ``This guy has emerged, has shaped up to something wonderful to listen to.'' Since his father died, ``he hasn't said one stupid word! ... he cuts a wonderful, beautiful image!''

``He's there to carry his father's name, to look gorgeous and be very sensitive and sensible.'' For once, she bubbles.

In her book, she says that she knows she will never really be happy again. She still writes letters to Yitzhak, a way of continuing their years of conversation.

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Photo

Photo: Leah Rabin, widow of fallen Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, keeps her husband;s flame despite those who speak ill of his peace efforts.

Knight-Ridder Tribune Photo Service