ABOUT THE EVENT

At 9:30 PM on November 4, 1995, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin descended the steps of Tel Aviv’s city hall, where moments earlier he had stood before a crowd of 100,000 Israelis who’d gathered to support his vision for peace.

Then came four gunshots. Ninety minutes later, Rabin was pronounced dead.

Three decades on, we are still haunted by the question: What if…?

What if the man who won the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize for forging historic agreements with the Palestinians, Jordanians and Egyptians had lived to defeat Benjamin Netanyahu in the following year’s election?

What if the assassination had not dealt a fatal blow to Israel’s fragile peace process and irrevocably shifted the course of its politics and diplomacy?

The conversation will explore how Rabin’s assassination shaped Israeli and Jewish identity and changed both Israeli society and the American Jewish community, why his legacy has faded, and how we can reclaim his memory today in the struggle for peace, democracy, and Jewish unity, alongside readings from the anthology and a special offer for participants who will buy the book.

For more information on Class of 95: https://www.theclassof95.com/

ABOUT THE BOOK

When Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated on the night of November 4, 1995, a generation came of age in grief, awakening to the fragility of democracy and the cost of Jewish division. His death tore through the heart of Israeli society and reverberated across world Jewry, becoming one of the defining ruptures in modern Jewish history.

Class of 95 presents, for the first time in English, Israel’s poetic response to this national trauma. Originally published in Hebrew as Machzor 95, this anthology gathers diverse and powerful Israeli voices, including both renowned poets and a new generation of writers who gave words to a nation’s shock, grief, and search for meaning.

This new edition appears in November 2025, marking the 30th Memorial Day of Rabin’s assassination. It offers English-speaking audiences a powerful entry point into Israeli cultural memory, weaving together poetry, art, and reflection at a moment when Rabin’s legacy of democracy, unity, and peace feels newly urgent.

Edited by Barak Sella, former spokesperson for the Rabin national rally and expert on Israel-US relations. Foreword by Yehuda Kurtzer, President of the Shalom Hartman Institute, and afterword by Silvio Joskowicz, Head of the Zionist Enterprises Department in the World Zionist Organization.

Class of 95 is available for order!

Order now: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FT8W6DMR