Published: 20 July 2020
Last updated: 4 March 2024
AS STUDENT ROOM-MATES in a foreign country, you soon learn what pushes other people’s buttons. In Tamara Rosenberg’s case, it seemed, not a lot. She did not sweat the small stuff – a valuable trait for coping with Israel’s intense vibe. “Do you want to have this for dinner?” Tamara’s flatmate, Carolyn Rubinstein, would ask of her roomie. “Yeah, sure,” Tamara would reply. “Which movie shall we go see?” “You choose.”
Carolyn, then 22, and Tamara, 20, had known each other for only three or four weeks before the morning of August 21, 1995 – the day that would bond them forever.
The pair shared a room at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem after Tamara, who had grown up in Paris, and Carolyn, from Sydney, travelled to Israel to study Hebrew and immerse themselves in a culture that was, and still is, a magnet for so many young Jewish people around the world.
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Photo: Tamara Rosenberg and Carolyn Rubinstein meet up in New York in 2016 (supplied)
