new york | The deaths of Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife, Rivkah, at the Chabad House in Mumbai hit hard in the Lubavitch neighborhood of Crown Heights, where tens of thousands of Chabadniks live. In this tight-knit community, nearly everyone is connected to one another.

"It is painful to see," Rabbi Velvel Farkash said outside of Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters. "It is a deep pain. I really have no words for it."

At a Nov. 28 news conference at Chabad world headquarters in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y., the mood was one of shock and grief.

Those who knew the Holtzbergs — Gavriel, 29, and Rivkah, 28 — spoke of them as highly dedicated to the Chabad mission of spreading Judaism to Jews around the globe. The couple moved from Brooklyn to Mumbai in 2003 at the urging of Chabad's leadership. Their apartment in Colaba, in the southern part of Mumbai, quickly became a hub both for Jews traveling in India — many of them Israeli backpackers traveling in the country following their service in the Israeli army — and for those living in India.

"Jews from all nationalities stopped there — primarily Israelis, but also those from Singapore and other places," said Elijah Jacob, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee's country manager for India. "It was almost like a second home to them. Our country director used to say it was like a second home to him because of all of the Jews there on Shabbat."

Gavriel "was one of the finest and kindest gentlemen you could imagine," said Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, the vice chairman of Chabad's education arm. He recounted the last conversation Gavriel had with the Israeli Embassy, on the night of Nov. 26, shortly after the center was taken over by the terrorists.

"He said, 'The situation is not good,'" Kotlarsky recalled. "And then he was cut off."

Jacob described Gavriel Holtzberg as a community builder in Mumbai, home to some 4,500 Jews living in a western Indian city of 14 million. The city has eight synagogues, mostly in the southern part in predominantly Muslim neighborhoods.

"[Gavriel] helped out with some of the local synagogues. He helped them collect donations and did fund-raising for the synagogue T'feret Israel, in central Mumbai in Jacobs Circle. He helped build a mikvah there," said Jacob, who grew up in India.

"He was also officially a shochet [ritual slaughterer] and made chickens available to the community. They also made challah for the community. They were available for the community. If people had questions about halachic principles, what is right and what is wrong in terms of the rights and customs of Judaism, they were basically guiding the local community."

On Nov. 27, the day after terrorists took over the Chabad House, the Holtzbergs' 2-year-old son, Moshe, was spirited out of the center by the building's cook, Sandra Samuel, a nanny who had worked there for years.

During the siege, Samuel had locked herself in a laundry room when she heard Moshe's mother Rivkah screaming "Sandra, help!" Then the screaming stopped, and it was quiet, said Robert Katz, the director of an Israeli orphanage

who was close to the Holtzbergs. She cracked open the door of her hiding place and saw a deserted staircase. She ran up one flight and saw the rabbi and his wife, covered in blood and shot to death. She snatched the crying boy, bolted down the stairs and out of the building.

Moshe Holtzberg was flown to Israel Dec. 1 on an Israeli Air Force jet with his parents' remains and Samuel. Moshe was also accompanied on the trip to Israel by his maternal grandparents, Yehudit and Shimon Rosenberg, who were reunited with their grandson when they arrived in Mumbai Nov. 28.

Moshe's father was a dual American-Israeli citizen and his mother was Israeli. The couple lived in Israel and Brooklyn before they moved to Mumbai in 2003.

Moshe has one older sibling, who has Tay-Sachs and is permanently hospitalized in Israel. The couple's first-born child died of Tay-Sachs, and Rivkah was six months pregnant at the time of her murder.

Krinsky said Chabad would take care of Moshe, and that he will live in Israel with Samuel "so at least he has someone he knows and recognizes and loves," said Katz. Though Samuel has no passport or papers, Moshe's grand-uncle, Rabbi Yitzchak David Grossman, helped arrange for her to get a visa to Israel.

Benjamin Holtzman lived who in Mumbai for six months last year and would go to the Chabad House with friends for a Shabbat meal, got to know the rabbi and his wife quite well. "The rabbi 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 d'var Torah, relating an inspirational story, declaring to take on a mitzvah or leading a song."

Holtzman said the rabbi's wife "also relished the 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."

Unlike other Chabad houses in the Far East, which see a steady stream of Israeli backpackers, the Nariman House catered more to Israeli and foreign businessmen. A typical Shabbat dinner at the Holtzbergs would include up to 50 guests, ranging from locals to the Israeli consul general and his family, said Erin Beser, who spent a year in Mumbai as a volunteer for the JDC Jewish Service Corps.

"They were so committed to what they were doing and they were such good people," Beser said of the Holtzbergs. "They were so welcoming. It was amazing how many people came through that house. And still she was like, 'How was your week?' and was able to hold all of this information about what I was doing."




Tragedy in Mumbai