A rose or a comet? Remembering Sgt. Rose Lubin - opinion

Growing up in America, “cousin” was a specific term. We spoke of relatives as first cousins, second cousins, third cousins. From Rabbi Berel Wein’s history cassettes, I learned that in Europe the Yiddish word “kuzyene” wasn’t specific. Family was family. Cousins would travel far to attend the happy or sad occasions of a distant cousin.

Sgt. Rose Lubin, of blessed memory, was my kuzyene.

My mother’s maiden name was Lubchansky, which many in the American family shortened to the more convenient Lubin. Most of the family emigrated in the early 1900s from Poland, now Belarus, via Ellis Island. I’m from the northern branch of the Lubchansky family, its hub in New London, Connecticut. Rose hailed from the southern branch, centered in Memphis, Tennessee. Her father, David Lubchansky (also common among northern Lubchansky members), moved to Atlanta, Georgia, where Elisheva Rose Ida Lubin grew up.

Rose Lubin was the only person in Dunwoody High School in Atlanta to earn a letter in both cheerleading and wrestling. She walked to the wrestling meets because she was Sabbath-observant. She changed hair color and never wore matching socks, but she graduated from high school with honors.

Rose pursued her childhood dream of serving as a combat soldier in the IDF. She became a Border Police officer, stationed near Herod’s Gate in Jerusalem’s Old City. She loved protecting holy ground.

A member of Garin Tzabar, the support program for lone soldiers, Rose was assigned an adoptive family on Kibbutz Sa’ad near the Gaza Strip. On Oct. 7, 2023, she was celebrating Simchat Torah on the kibbutz. She donned her Border Police uniform and joined the kibbutz civil defense squad to repel the terrorists. Commanding the heavy kibbutz gates, Rose kept out invaders and let in escapees from the Supernova music festival attack.

Afterward, she returned to Jerusalem and continued her patrols in the tense Old City. A terrorist with a bent on murder entered the Old City from the Isawiya neighborhood abutting Mount Scopus. With his sharpened knife, he stabbed Rose. She was rushed to Hadassah-University Medical Center, on Jerusalem’s Mount Scopus, but it was too late. She was pronounced dead. Twenty years old.

The one-year marking of Rose’s death is among so many since the beginning of Operation Swords of Iron.

My husband and I joined the light-flashing, music-blasting Torah dedication van with Rose’s name going around and around in neon letters. A Torah scroll in Rose’s memory was being dedicated in her memory to lone soldiers. The procession began on Bezalel Street and walked up King George Avenue and onto Jaffa Road. Major Jerusalem arteries were closed to let the memorial cavalcade move safely by.

The playlist of the Torah dedication van was probably fixed, but one of the songs made me tear up – the wedding song “Od yishama b’arei Yehuda... (It will be heard in the cities of Judea and in the streets of Jerusalem... the voice of a groom and the voice of a bride).”

Lone soldier Rose’s personal life plan included getting married and having six children.

And I think of Rose and the hundreds of other beautiful men and women who have had their dreams truncated this year in the service of our nation.

Rose’s grave is in the section of Mount Herzl reserved for fallen police officers. Last year at the funeral, thousands came to pay their respects. The roads were clogged from my home in Katamon to Mount Herzl. I wound up leaving my car and hitching a ride in a military jeep. At the cemetery, it was hard to get close enough to see. Should I push my way through by saying I’m a kuzyena?

Thankfully, the eulogies were broadcast on loud speakers. Rose’s dad saying with loving affection that he had been kind of happy she was finally wearing matching socks in her Border Police uniform. Her brother describing her practicing wrestling on him. Her mom reading from Rose’s bat mitzvah speech.

A year later, on the anniversary of Rose’s death, my husband and I walked behind Border Police women who were walking among the graves to get to the memorial tent for the yahrzeit. Young, beautiful women like Rose. A smaller crowd.

Mount Herzl Military Cemetery is the domain of the unbearably young: thousands upon thousands of men and women who have given us the privilege of living in this country.

The year anniversary was quieter and smaller. Speakers praised the whimsical, serious, short, strong, militaristic, musical, spiritual, tactical, 20-year-old Rose, who left home to protect her people’s forever home.

Rose’s mother, Robin Lubin, read the last words Rose wrote in her diary the day before her death and recited an elegiac, emotive poem about her daughter.

She gave me permission to share them here.

From the diary of Rose Lubin

FIRST, THE diary: “There is good in all things. My ugly slippers are comfy. My crazy hair is loved by my friends. I can’t go home, but my friends are 15 minutes from me. My family is far away but out of danger. My back hurt but for a good cause. I hate feeling miserable so I choose to be optimistic. I am manifesting better days and am faithful that they will come.

“I spent this Shabbat with girls from the Jerusalem apartment and I feel they give off such restorative energy; they make me feel like myself again. They make me want to be hugged and talk things out. I am grateful for friends.”

And then this mom from America, whose daughter was a lone soldier who fought terrorists and guarded the Old City, made a beautiful tribute to her late daughter. Here are excerpts:

“A love expressed so deep in her gaze,

How could you walk by and not know she cared?

The quiet mouse; the hungry hippo; the broken promise; the untold story; the faded color; the one that got away; the music that was not composed; a journey left undone.

Doubt, fear, and loneliness did not have a chance to exist in her presence. She could feel if you were lacking and would lend a listening ear, hold fast her strong arm, maintain control in chaos, and her sweet song would bring chills, and we would be complete for a moment.

The walls of the Temple tremble, and her life soaks in the Jerusalem gold. She marched as you do upon the holiest ground, defending the very place God will set down the final Temple.

Her mark is eternal, engraved on our hearts, etched into our souls. How do you count the ways of pure energy? Rose, a comet shedding light.

“‘A song of Ascents: When the Lord brought Zion out of captivity, we were like a people in a dream. At that time our mouth was filled with laughter and our tongue with cries of joy…. he who weeps as he trails the seed along will return with cries of joy, carrying his sheaves.’

This song will be the final song to be sung among all the nations, together. How could we be filled with so much joy if we are not with our loved ones? It must be. We will be reunited.”

Amen v’amen.

The writer is the Israel director of public relations at Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America. Her latest book is A Daughter of Many Mothers.