Mumbai, India – An Israeli couple will take charge of Mumbai’s Chabad House, a Jewish community center that has been without a permanent rabbi since the previous leader was killed in the November 2008 terror attacks, a Chabad official said Thursday.
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Rabbi Avraham Berkowitz, who heads the Chabad Mumbai Relief Fund, said the new couple will replace Gavriel and Rivkah Holtzberg, who were among the six murdered during a spasm of violence that left the center scarred with bullet holes and grenade blasts.
Their infant son, Moshe, escaped in the arms of his nanny. In all, 166 people across the city were killed in the rampage.
Rabbi Chanoch Gechman and his wife, Leiky, who have been making trips to Mumbai since 2006, will move to the Indian financial capital within a few weeks, the Chabad Lubavitch group said on its website.
Gechman, 25, was a student of Gavriel Holtzberg.
Mumbai’s Chabad House, part of an international network run by the Orthodox Chabad Lubavitch movement, served as a spiritual oasis, hostel and kosher food source for travelers. It also offered religious instruction to Mumbai’s tiny community of Jews, who settled here 2,000 years ago.
It has been shuttered since the November 2008 attack, but members of the Chabad community have continued to gather at another, undisclosed location.
These guys are unbelievable I would be dead scared to move down there after that, kol hakovod lchabad
Are they holding it for the son moshele?
Doesnt anyone realize that we don’t belong in places like this? Where is the heter to put himself into a sakana?
If your son or daughter was off the derech chv
If your son or daughter was off the derech CH”V, and wandering that part of the world “seeking” like thousands others, I think you’d retract your sill selfish comment very quickly and apologize to these heroic soldiers of yisdishkeit to whom one neshama in a third-world country is the same as one in Monsey. You should feel the same too.
Compared to what?
Are YOU doing anything for Klall Ysireol or just like to throw pot-shots at fellow jews?
Wishing this young couple lots of blessings and success!
Kol HaKavod!!!
In the depth of my heart, i really envy all these shluchim, who give up there confortable lives, where they can have evrything they wish for, yet they move away to help, and be there for other Jewish souls in need.
G-d Bless you Chabad and your Rebbe!
Congrats! It’s defintly mixed feelings-somewhat bittersweet! We truly miss Gaby and Rivky Holtzberg and Their presence will always be missed forever, But I am confident that these new Shluchim will continue the legacy of Gaby and RIvky and make the Rebbe Proud! Mazal tov and good luck !!!
If anyone thought for a second they would relize that now its the safesy place to be