Emotional farewell for rabbi

2008-12-02 19:10

Micael Blum

Kfar Chabad - Wailing and chanting psalms, thousands of people on Tuesday bid an emotional farewell to the six Jews killed in the bloody Mumbai attacks whose bodies were flown to Israel for burial.

Kfar Chabad, a village near Tel Aviv that houses the headquarters of the the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, around 10 000 mourners thronged the main square, with men and women separated in keeping with Jewish ultra-Orthodox tradition.

Many mourners had tears streaming down their eyes as a rabbi delivering a eulogy cried out: "Why, why, why?"

The crowd chanted psalms in honour of Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife Rivka, who ran Mumbai's Chabad House, a cultural and outreach centre that was one of the targets of Islamist militants whose attacks left 188 people dead.

The two bodies, wrapped in blue and white prayer shawls, were laid out on benches set on a podium.

The couple were among those who died when the heavily-armed extremists last week stormed into the five-storey complex in India's commercial capital. The six Jewish victims were four Israelis, one US citizen and a Mexican.

"Every time a Jew is killed it is hard, but in this case it is members of the family who died," said Yossi Swerdlov, a Chabad leader who called himself a close friend of the Holtzbergs.

Wailing, chanting, reciting

"He was like abrother to me." Several political figures attended the ceremony, including President Shimon Peres, Defence Minister Ehud Barak and right-wing opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu. A few Indians, sporting bright turbans, were also among the crowd.

The Holtzbergs were to be buried on Jerusalem's Mount of Olives.

In Mea Sharim, an ultra-Orthodox enclave in Jerusalem, thousands of people mourned Aryeh Leibish Teitelbaum, a US national who belonged to a small group of strictly observant Jews who oppose Zionism on the grounds there can be no state of Israel until the Messiah comes.

Bearded men, clad in the distinctive wide-brimmed hats and black coats of the ultra-Orthodox, wailed, chanted and recited psalms.

Also among those killed in the attack on Chabad House was Mexican citizen Norma Schwartzblatt-Rabinowitz who had planned to move this week to Israel where she has now been laid to rest.

On Monday night, a brief ceremony was held at Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv as the flag-draped coffins arrived on board an Israeli air force plane.

Among those on the plane were the parents of Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg, who had earlier attended an emotional ceremony at a Mumbai synagogue where their orphaned two-year-old grandson Moshe cried out for his mother.

Moshe was rescued by his 44-year-old Indian nanny Sandra Samuel, who fled the attackers with the toddler in her arms. Samuel, who was given a passport at the last minute, travelled to Israel with the young boy.

On Monday, Mumbai's Jewish community also paid a tearful farewell to the couple who ran Chabad House, which served as an educational centre, synagogue and a hostel for Israeli tourists.

Chabad House 'will live again'

Rivka's father, Shimon Rosenberg, told about 100 mourners at the Keneseth Eliyahoo Synagogue that Chabad House will be rebuilt.

"The house they built here in Mumbai will live with them. They were the mother and father of the Jewish community in Mumbai," Rosenberg said. "The House of Chabad will live again."

Founded in the 18th century in Russia, Chabad is one of the largest Hassidic sects, whose members remain profoundly attached to their traditions.

India says initial investigations show all 10 militants who carried out the co-ordinated Mumbai attacks were Pakistani, and suggest they may have been members of a Pakistan-based Islamist group.

- AFP