Mumbai victims remembered in local memorials

TONIGHT, Thursday, Dec. 2, 2008 at 7:45 p.m.

Chabad of the Five Towns hosts an evening of inspiration in memory of Rabbi Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg z”l, Rabbi Aryeh Leibish Teitelbaum z”l, Ben-Tzion Kruman z”l, Yocheved Orpaz z”l, and Norma Shvarzblat Rabinovich z”l on Thursday, Dec. 4 at Congregation Beth Sholom, 390 Broadway in Lawrence, from 7:45 to 9:00 p.m.

By Michael Orbach

Issue of Dec. 5, 2008 / 8 Kislev 5769

Memorial candles flickered across the world for the victims of the terrorist attack in Mumbai, India that claimed more than 170 lives. Funerals were held in Israel Tuesday for six Jewish victims. A community-wide memorial was planned for Thursday evening in the Five Towns (see box). A scheduled speaker was a person who spent time at the Chabad House in Mumbai, followed by a video presentation about the lives of Rabbi Gavriel and Rebbetzin Rivka Holtzberg, the murdered Lubavitch emissaries. On Sunday, over 250 attended a memorial at the Chabad House in Mineola, according to Rabbi Anchelle Perl. Rivka Holtzberg’s father told mourners at her funeral that his daughter had been five months pregnant. The well-planned attack Wednesday by Muslim terrorists crippled the commercial center of Mumbai, formerly known as Bombay, and captured world attention through the Thanksgiving weekend. Two luxury hotels and a café were targeted, as was a well-known Jewish site in Mumbai, the Chabad House. Nine people were murdered in the building, including the Holtzbergs. The Holtzbergs’ nanny, Sandra Samuel, saved their two-year-old son, Moshe. She flew on an Israeli Air Force flight to continue to care for the boy in his grandparents’ home in Israel. Samuel, an Indian woman, is being considered by Israel’s Interior Ministry for an honorary designation as a Righteous Gentile, which would allow her to remain in the country for an extended period of time, according to The Jerusalem Post. Others murdered at the Chabad House include Rabbi Aryeh Leibish Teitelbaum, a native of Brooklyn who lived in Israel; and Ben-Tzion Kruman, an Israeli with dual American citizenship. Both had traveled to India on kashrut-related business. Yocheved Orpaz, of Givatayim, Israel; and Norma Shvarzblat Rabinovich, a Jewish woman from Mexico who had planned to make aliyah, were also brutally killed. Three other victims found in the Chabad House had not been publicly identified as of Tuesday. Rabbi Perl, who is distantly related to the Holtzbergs, said that Gavriel Holtzberg volunteered in the Chabad-run matzo factory on Long Island seven years ago. The attack contrasts the mission of the shluchim with the nature of the terrorist act, according to Perl. “The fact that isn’t being heard is who’s to blame: those religious leaders who are bringing up a generation brainwashed to destroy people and harm this world,” Perl asserted. “Rav Schneerson, following the Holocaust, helped rebuild the Jewish world by inspiring young men and women to become a force for good. Just as there are those who train younger generations to be destroyers, the Rebbe trained us to be builders. One has been trained to bring darkness, Gavriel and his dear wife, Rivki, were trained and exemplified what light can do.” The Muslim community in India has refused to let the terrorists be buried in a Muslim cemetery, according to the BBC, since they, in a community leader’s words, “have defaced Islam.” The tragedy has an added weight, said Perl, since it occurred less than a week after the annual gathering of the Shluchim that took place in New York, and less than a month before Chanukah. “I can’t stop thinking that [the Holtzbergs] are like the cruse of oil that burned and kept on burning. The work they began will continue,” Perl said. There are thousands of Chabad Houses in 73 countries. A Chabad House was last attacked in 1956 when Arab terrorists invaded Kfar Chabad in Israel, killing one teacher and five students. When the Lubavitcher Rebbe heard about the murders he didn’t leave his room for three days, and when he emerged, sent out a six word telegram that became one of the mantras of Chabad: “through building you will find comfort.” Rabbi Zalman Wolowick, of Chabad of the Five Towns, echoed the statement. “We will be comforted by building,” he told The Jewish Star. “That will be our revenge and comeback.” Wolowick said he received hundreds of calls from around the world after the deaths inside the Chabad House were confirmed. Some callers offered condolences; others simply wanted to express their feelings. “Belonging to the Chabad House is belonging to an international world,” Wolowick said. “When one Chabad House is hit, it effects world Jewry, not just the movement.” One man who asked to put on a tallit for the first time, Wolowick said, had heard that some of the victims were found wrapped in tallitot. That detail was discounted by later reporting. The attack laid bare a major security concern for Chabad, whose centers are known for their openness and pronounced Jewish identity, exposing them as rich targets for terrorists intent on harming Jews, chas v’shalom. According to the Malaysian Insider, the terrorists posed as Malaysian students to rent an apartment in Colaba Market next to the Chabad House. “It’s clear that we don’t want our Chabad Houses to turn into barricaded forts,” Rabbi Menachem Brod, a Chabad spokesman in Israel, told the Los Angeles Times. “The whole idea of Chabad is that we are open and accessible to Jews traveling abroad.” Sue Fishkoff, author of The Rebbe’s Army, a book detailing the work of the Shluchim, believes that Chabad policy will not change in light of the tragedy. “I don’t think they’ll change the way they operate,” Fishkoff told The Jewish Star. “They have to be open to the local Jewish community wherever they live. That’s the entire reason why they are there, to do outreach, and they can’t block off access. That would be counter-intuitive, it would go against the very mission that compels them to go to these far-flung places.” Fishkoff added that while she doesn’t know of any other recent terrorist acts against Chabad Houses, individual shluchim and rabbinical students have been attacked, in places such as Russian and Ukraine, and the attacks have not forced changes in Chabad conduct abroad. Rabbi Motti Seligson of Chabad.org said, “Security, by nature, is something we don’t want to discuss in a public forum. Obviously we’re reviewing everything, security-wise.” While it is certain that the Chabad House in Mumbai will reopen, it is not clear whether it will reopen in the building formerly known as Nariman House. Several young couples have already stepped forward to take over the work begun by the Holtzbergs, according to Chabad leaders. A shliach from a Chabad House elsewhere in India is filling in temporarily. The Shabbat after the attack, the Chabad House was operating from an undisclosed location. Parents of the Holtzbergs were there with their two-year-old orphaned grandson. Singing, dancing, and crying accompanied the Sabbath. While security was tight and the location wasn’t publicized, on Friday night and Shabbat day, there was a minyan in Mumbai.