The Heroine

We have all heard and read about the heroine of Mumbai, Sandra Samuels, the nanny who heroically saved 2 year old Moshe Holtzberg. This interview on CNN has appeared on most of the Chabad sites but I thought that it was worth reproducing here. Her devotion to Moshe, as seen in this video, is quite touching.

It is wonderful and only fitting that she has been accepted into Israel.
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Tributes, Gatherings and Practical Stuff

There have been numerous tributes to those who were murdered in India last week. A casual perusal of Chabad and other Jewish sites will reveal a large number of articles and tributes to the kedoshim. Isaac Balbin, who was in India only a few weeks ago and spent time with the Holtzbergs, wrote an article which Emmanuel sent out. There is also a copy here on Circus Tent.

Last night in Melbourne a "Kinnus" was held at Yeshivah Shul. A large crowd heard a number of speeches and watched the obligatory video of the Rebbe. I understand that the event was organised by the Shluchim of Yeshivah Gedolah and one of the shluchim gave, in my opinion, the most practical address of the evening. He asked that, in honour and memory of the Kedoshim, we take on practical mitzvos. The Shluchim distributed cards and tzedokah boxes. A copy of the card is reproduced below.


Photos of the crowd were taken by Zelig Shaul.

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I have also received links to websites in support of the families of some of those murdered.

The Holtzberg Family Fund

The Kruman Foundation

The Teitelbaum Orphan Fund

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The Chabad Houses in Melbourne are holding a memorial this evening:

It is with profound sadness and broken hearts

that we invite you to join us for a

Memorial Service

to honour the memory of

Rabbi Gavriel & Rivkah Holtzberg

Selfless Shluchim of Chabad Mumbai

and all those who were brutally murdered

in the Mumbai Massacre

Tuesday 2 December

7.15 - 8.00pm

at Bnei Brith Hall, 99 Hotham St, E St Kilda

The memorial will be followed by a live broadcast

of the funeral of Gabi & Rivkah in Israel

May Hashem comfort all broken hearts and may we all merit to

see only joy and gladness with the complete redemption of Israel now!

What is a "Chabad House"

Now that the tragic events in India appear to have ended non-Jews (and possibly many Jews) the world over are wondering about this Jewish group in Mumbai called Chabad. I liked this interview on CNN with Professor Mel Konner and I think he explained things quite well.


Also, for those in Melbourne, there will be a gathering at Yeshivah Shul tomorrow night (Monday, 1 December) at 8:00pm. The notice says:

In light of the recent tragic events,
the community is urged and
encouraged, to take part in a Kinnus
(הקהל) gathering, to hear words of
inspiration and guidance.

לזכר ולעילוי נשמת:
OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS, ALEIHEM HASHALOM
WHO DIED AL KIDDUSH HASHEM - MURDERED IN THE
MUMBAI CHABAD HOUSE

A WarmTribute

Piece on the JTA website by Benjamin Holtzman:

Remembering Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg

November 28, 2008

FIRST PERSON

By Benjamin Holtzman

Just minutes ago I heard the terrible news that five Israeli hostages were found dead inside the Chabad center at Nariman house in Mumbai. Although the media hasn’t officially confirmed their identities yet, it seems quite certain that they are Chabad Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, his wife Rivka, an Israeli couple and another Israeli.

After having been glued to the news for two days straight, relentlessly combing through twitter updates, news reports, and blogs, I am totally exhausted, yet feel compelled to write something about these great people I knew.

I lived in Mumbai for six months last year, and would go to the Beit Chabad with friends for a Shabbat meal about every second week. Over the course of six months, we got to know the rabbi and his wife quite well.

They were wonderful people: warm, inviting and engaging. Gabi would get visibly excited to have so many guests for Shabbat; you could tell it really made his week. He would have a grin on his face almost the entire meal, including during his dvar Torah. He was always so eager to create a communal feeling that he insisted everyone go around the table and say a few words to the group, giving guests four options: either delivering a dvar Torah, relating an inspirational story, declaring to take on a mitzvah or leading a song.

As most of the guests were Israeli backpackers and other passers-through, they might have found this quite novel. For us regulars, it was just Gabi’s shtick. I can still hear him reciting those four options to the group now, as if he had discovered some miraculous way to make everyone involved in the Shabbat with no escape, impressed by his own genius week in and out. He had a devilish smile; you could really see the child still in him, just beneath the surface.

Gabi was also exceptionally thoughtful. Though most of the guests were Israeli, Gabi would give his dvar Torah in English for the sake of the few of us English speakers there with sketchy Hebrew, so we’d understand. Sometimes he spoke line by line first in English, then Hebrew. Gabi would start discussions and made it his personal mission to get everyone talking, to make a group of disconnected Jews feel like a family. It worked. That was Gabi.

Rivki was a certified sweetheart. She’d generally sit apart from Gabi, to spread herself out, and usually sat with the girls. She too relished Friday night dinners -- I think she needed her weekly female bonding time. She’d talk to the girls about the challenges of keeping kosher in India and share exciting new finds at the market together.

You could tell she was far from home, in this dense Mumbai jungle, but she was tough and really made the best of it. She would balance Gabi’s presence, occasionally making comments to people at her table while Gabi was speaking -- not as a sign of disrespect, but to keep the people around her having a good time. That was Rivki: brave, fun-loving and super sweet.

Perhaps the greatest testament to their character was simply the fact that they lived in downtown Mumbai for years on end. Having lived there for just six months, I understand how incredibly taxing just existing in the city is. Even when trying to relax, the city still seems to suck the life out of you. Living as Westerners in modest conditions in the thick of Mumbai, with the restrictions of kashrut and Shabbat, is certainly no small feat.

I’m not sure if they were thrilled with their placement in Mumbai, but they certainly made a good go of it. They were only a few years older than me, in their late 20s, and despite being far from friends and family and perhaps not in the most exciting Chabad placement (compared to Bangkok, Bogota or Bondi), they kept positive and built a beautiful bastion of Jewey goodness.

They chose a life that demonstrated such altruism and care, in the truest sense. The Mumbai Chabad really made a difference to my time in India, and made me feel that much more at home in such a foreign country.

It was at Gabi and Rivki’s where I met Joseph Telushkin, the famous Jewish author. It was at Gabi and Rivki’s where I randomly bumped into friends of friends from back home. It was to Gabi and Rivki’s where we brought our non-Jewish Indian friends who became curious in Judaism. It was at Gabi and Rivki’s where a girl I would later fall for first developed feelings for me, when I brought her some water while she lay sick on the sofa from Indian food poisoning. She was being nursed by Rivki.

We often hear about tragedies in distant, disconnected places and feel frustratingly estranged from them. We want to connect, but can't; we feel as though in a different world. And mere numbers, names and images don’t amount to much. I hope I’ve been able to paint a small picture of two of the victims of the Mumbai terror attacks, which claimed more tha 140 lives and left hundreds injured.

I know they would have been brave throughout the whole ordeal. Though unconfirmed, it is likely they would have been murdered right as Shabbat was coming in. I feel that this would have provided them with comfort, knowing that they departed this world in a time of peace. I also know the knowledge that their 2-year old son Moishe managed to escape in the arms of his nanny would have provided them with great comfort in their final hours. When I would look at the young Moishe I would see Gabi’s face and Rivki’s carefree spirit.

Chabad lost two soldiers today, emissaries and keepers of the Jewish people. Let us honor their work and their lives in our prayers, in our thoughts and in our deeds, and let us pray for the families of the dozens of other victims of these attacks. May all their souls rest in peace, and may we see an end to violence in our time.

The Worst News

We come out of Shabbos here in Australia with the sad news that Rabbi Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg have not survived the siege at the Chabad House. While we are just hearing this those in the United States were aware of this before Shabbos in their time zone.

The feelings are still raw. This news article on JTA states the facts and talks about the Holtzbergs and their impact on India. The article below - by Rabbi Shimon Posner of Chabad of Rancho Mirage - begins to express the anguish that most of us are feeling.

GRIM. EREV SHABBOS.

It's happened. We held out against what we didn't want to hear but now we've heard it... and what do we do? Do we rant? Do we shut up?

We mourn. In silence. But if we stay home and mourn in silence, how is anyone to think anything other than we are just taking a nice long bath? So we mourn silently in public. Without speaking of hope, without speaking of pain; we speak only of the matter at hand – the burial which is now incumbent upon us.

I am sure that there on the other side of the globe competent people are going about that grim task. We sit here and we watch them without seeing. We watch them with our hearts. Not the gruesome scene: whom would that honor, the martyrs or the cowards? No, we watch the sanctity, the pure and sacred bodies who served You with joy in life, and in death did not part from You – and by extension not from us either. And we hear echoes of times past and other places which move forward with glaring clarity -- remarkably en courante?

Rabbi Chananya ben Tradyon is being publically murdered by the Romans. They wrap his body in a Torah and light it on fire. And the saintly one proclaims –in his anguish – "the parchment I see burning but the letters they soar into the air! "

The archive footage comes back to us again of a young exuberant couple: "Hi my name is Rivkie!" And he, with a smile that is open and somehow knowing beyond his years. Beyond his innocence. Baking challah for hundreds, shechting chickens for hundreds, dancing, davening. And then footage of Nariman House surrounded on November 28, 2008.

And we cannot yet mourn because the grim service must still be done. And oh! I nearly forgot! Shabbos is coming! Work must be done! Giving out challahs, verifying the minyan, cleaning, shopping...

And somewhere deep in our psyche we remember; Shabbos we cannot mourn. Shabbos we must rejoice...we are commanded thus. So it is written in no less an authority than children's stories we read decades ago. So Eli Wiesel confirmed in his story of Jews under Communist rule The Jews of Silence. The elderly chossid who cries bitterly at a farbrengen and then "remembers" it is Simchat Torah and he demands everyone rejoice because they will not dictate when we mourn and when we rejoice; only the Torah dictates.

Our medium is virtual and we virtually gather together waiting for a grim and awful funeral procession to commence. We watch the letters floating in the air and we hear the cries of two mothers, two fathers, brothers and sisters and one two-year baby looking for Mommy.
Shabbos is coming towards us and we must go out and greet her. We will go into Shabbos knowing that Sunday looks grim. We will wish that Shabbos will just last all week. A Shabbos that would not end. A Shabbos that would permeate every corner of the globe and every cranny of the human psyche and envelope it in its warmth and glow and melt all evil from hearts which were not born evil or corrupt, until they too – they especially—will sing Shabbos!

I've digressed, and it is this digression which the Jew considers the straightest of lines, obscured though it might be by glaring headlines and the painful present. Good Shabbos... Shabbat Shalom. And as my children have taught me to say: TTYL.

Good News?

Zelig Shaul sent me news from IBN News that the hostages, including the Rabbi Holtzberg and his wife, have been released from the Chabad House. I could not find confirmation of this from any other news source and hope and pray that it is correct. Hopefully when Shabbos is over the drama will also be over with a good outcome.



The news item below - relating to the situation and how Chabad is responding to it - is from Israeli English news.

Mumbai Update

Commandos abseiling into the Jewish Centre

Reports in the Age and on ABC have stated that commandos stormed the Jewish Centre but as yet it is not known if the hostages have been released.

We should keep saying tehillim for all people - Jewish and non-Jewish - who are caught up in this tragedy.
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No Definitive News

The nanny escaping with Moshe Holtzberg, the son of the shluchim

As I woke this morning there is still no definitive news about the situation in the Chabad House, Nariman House, where the shluchim and others have been held. Reports are that all the hostages have been released but the Chabad sites and others are still unclear about the fate and condition of the hostages.

Israel National News
Chabad.org
Lubavitch.com
ABC News
The Age

Please continue saying tehillim for all the hostages and injured. Hopefully this situation will end soon with no more killed or injured.
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India Update

From COL:

12:21 AM: After 12 hours in captivity, 3 hostages escaped the Chabad House building. Footage shows a woman and her 2 year-old daughter of "foreign nationality" rushing into an ambulance. They reported of 5-6 terrorists in the building.

12:42 AM: A woman who is the maid, and Moshe Holtzberg - child of Chabad Shliach where rescued, also rescued is the cook lady for Chabad.

1:44 AM: Lubavitch spokesman Zalman Shmotkin said that "the terrorists commandeered a police vehicle which allowed them easy access to the area of the Chabad house and threw a grenade at a gas pump nearby, blowing it up."

1:59 AM: Holtzberg's mother-in-law Yehudis Rosenberg: "The nanny said they were alive but unconscious."

I am assuming these are New York times which would make the latest report 90 minutes ago.
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Dire Situation

I didn't post this previously as most other Jewish websites have been reporting on this but I have had requests from a few people to publicise the situation.

As most of you know there has been a series of terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India with the terrorists apparently targeting Americans and the English. Some of these attacks occured in the vicinity of the Chabad House and apparently three Israelis have been killed r"l and the Shluchim, Rabbi Gavriel & Rivka Holtzberg and their child haven't been heard from for a number of hours.

Please say tehillim and give tzedokah for:
Gavriel Noach ben Freida Bluma
Rivka bas Yehudis Holtzberg
Moshe Tzvi ben Rivka

and for all the missing and injured.

ABC News

Lubavitch.com

Arutz Sheva

COL has some breaking news

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