Even as a child, Rose Ida Lubin knew she wanted to join the Israel Defense Forces. So as soon as she graduated from Dunwoody High School in 2021, she immigrated to Israel and less than a year later was serving as a “lone soldier” in the IDF — meaning that she lived in Israel without her family.
On Monday, Nov. 6, she was stabbed to death in the Old City of Jerusalem, where she was on duty serving as an IDF Border Police officer. Her death left her large extended family in the Atlanta area reeling, with many immediately traveling to Israel for the funeral on Thursday, Nov. 9, at Mount Herzl cemetery in Jerusalem.
Sgt. Rose Ida Lubin // Photo Courtesy Israel Police/Times of Israel
“She was an exceptional woman, sensitive and perceptive,” said Congregation Ariel Rabbi Binyomin Friedman. “As a little child, she was mature, a writer, performer, artist, and she thought deeply about everything. She would share with me what she wrote for school. She was mature way beyond her years. I told her father that she was special.”
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More than one person who knew Lubin compared her to a comet shedding light while speeding across the universe. “That was Rose,” said her step-grandmother, Lynne Keating, who related that one of Lubin’s four siblings stated that their sister accomplished more in her small lifetime than many people do in many more years.
In June, in Acre, Tom and Lynne Keating, along with their daughter, Stephanie, and her son, Isaac, visited Rose in Israel. Pictured, from left: David Lubin, Lynne Keating, Isaac; other side of table: Rose (white hat) and Stephanie Lubin (blue hat).
Keating said that when Lubin was seven or eight, her counterparts would say, “I want to be your friend.” Lubin would respond: “I have to tell you that when I’m 18, I am moving to Israel and I’m going to be in the IDF.”
“She was devoted to her Jewish heritage,” said Keating….
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