Mumbai Jewish Center Hit by Terror Is Part of Program

By Peter S. Green

Nov. 29 (Bloomberg) -- The Mumbai Jewish center where suspected Islamic terrorists killed a rabbi and his wife is part of a global program run by a Brooklyn-based orthodox group to spread their faith among Jews living and traveling abroad.

The Chabad-Lubavitch movement has about 4,000 rabbis who serve with their wives in more than 3,300 centers in 72 countries and in U.S. cities and college campuses. Gavriel Holtzberg, the 29-year-old rabbi who ran the Chabad mission in Mumbai and his wife Rivka, 28, were among five people killed after gunmen raided the five-story Chabad House synagogue and cultural center Nov. 26 in the city’s Colaba market district.

The Holtzbergs’ two-year-old son escaped from the carnage with his nanny, his trousers stained with blood, Chabad said on its Web site. Two gunmen also died in the attack, which ended yesterday evening in Mumbai when Indian commandos breached a wall of the house with explosives and stormed inside.

“Their toddler son Moishele, who was heroically rescued from the hell by his nanny Sandra, will mark his second birthday tomorrow,” Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, chairman of the Chabad- Lubavitch movement’s social and cultural arm, said yesterday at a news conference in New York.

Rabbi Leibish Teitelbaum, a Brooklyn native, was also killed, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in a statement yesterday.

Jewish Texts

The Holtzbergs arrived in Mumbai in 2003 to teach Torah, the study of the key Jewish texts also known as the Old Testament, and run outreach programs, including a drug rehabilitation program, for the many young Israelis who travel through India after completing their obligatory service in the Israeli army.

India has an indigenous Jewish community of about 4,500 people, mostly in Mumbai and Calcutta, according to the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, an aid group based in New York.

The Committee runs social and welfare programs for Mumbai’s aging and impoverished Jews, including an old-age home, a secular school open to non-Jews and a meals-on-wheels program for the elderly and infirm unable to leave their homes.

“There is a very active Jewish life in India, especially in Mumbai,” said Judy Amit, the group’s chief operating officer and a former director of its programs in India.

Rabbi Holtzberg helped minister to the Mumbai Jews, although the bulk of those visiting the Chabad house were non- Indians living or traveling in the country, according to both Chabad and Amit.

The Chabad movement, which grew out of the 17th-Century mystical orthodox Hasidic tradition in eastern Europe, aims to increase observance by Jews, not to convert others to Judaism.

‘Goodness and Godliness’

“We are trying to bring more goodness and Godliness to the world to lead to the coming of the Moschiach,” Rabbi Menachim Schmidt, a Chabad rabbi at the University of Pennsylvania, said in an interview. “The more mitzvahs that a person does, the closer it brings the world to Moshiach.” A mitzvah is the Hebrew term for a good deed, and Moshiach is Hebrew for the Messiah.

Jews first arrived in India some 2,000 years ago, according to their oral tradition, possibly by boat from cities in what is now Israel, Amit said. Others, called Baghdadis, came from across the Middle East to British-ruled India and were known as traders and philanthropists, she said.

India’s Jews numbered about 40,000 when the country gained independence from the U.K. in 1947. Since then, most Indian Jews have emigrated to Israel, Britain, Canada and the U.S., Amit said in an interview. The largest remaining community is in Mumbai, which today has eight functioning synagogues.

“There has been virtually no anti-Semitism in India and quite frankly, the fact that a Jewish home was targeted is a matter of concern,” Amit said.

Fedora Hats

The Chabad rabbis are distinguished by their dark suits and wide-brimmed black felt fedora hats, inspired by the clothing once worn by Orthodox Jews and Polish noblemen in some parts of Eastern Europe.

The modern Chabad movement was guided by Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, who died in 1994 and was thought by some of his followers to be the Messiah.

Last week some 4,000 Chabad rabbis from around the world gathered in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, where the movement is based, for the annual meeting of the Shluchim, a Yiddish word meaning emissaries, as the group’s rabbis around the world refer to themselves.

Gavriel Holtzberg was born in Israel and raised in Crown Heights. Rivka Rosenberg Holtzberg was a native of Afula, Israel, according to Chabad.

“Gabi and Rivky Holtzberg made the ultimate sacrifice,” said Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, vice-chairman of Chabad’s educational arm. “As emissaries to Mumbai, Gabi and Rivky gave up the comforts of the West in order to spread Jewish pride in a corner of the world that was a frequent stop for throngs of Israeli tourists. Their selfless love will live on with all the people they touched. We will continue the work they started.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Peter S. Green in New York at pagreen@bloomberg.net.