Loss at Chabad Lubavitch of Mumbai, India
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Our hearts are broken with the news of the loss of our beloved brothers Rabbi Gavriel and Leah Holtzberg OBM. Rabbi Holtzberg and his wife had their lives taken brutally by terrorists during the recent terrorism attack in Mumbai, India. They left two children and one of them, Moshe, has completed 2 years old last Saturday.
They are the paradigm of care and compassion to others. Giving up friends, family and ultimately their lives in the service of the Jewish People.
The Holtzberg’s arrived in Mumbai in 2003 to serve the small local Jewish community, visiting businesspeople and the throngs of tourists, many of them Israeli, who annually travel to the seaside city.
Gavriel Holtzberg, 29, was born in Israel and moved to the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, N.Y., with his parents when he was nine. A prodigious student, Holtzberg was a two-time champion in a competition of memorizing the Mishnah, a compendium of rabbinical enactments redacted in the second century C.E.
He studied at yeshivas in New York and Argentina, and as a rabbinical student served communities in Thailand and China under the Summer Rabbinical Visitation Program run by Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch, the educational arm of Chabad-Lubavitch.
His 28-year-old wife, born Rivkah Rosenberg, is a native of Afula, Israel. Chayki Rosenberg described her sister as dedicated to helping Jews.
Two years ago, the Holtzbergs raised funds to purchase the current location of the Rohr Chabad House, a five-story building in Mumbai’s Colaba market area known as Narimon House. The rabbi also conducts weddings for local Jewish couples in addition to teaching Torah classes and visiting with tourists.
Chabad Lubavitch Headquarters has set up a fund to help the family and rebuild the Chabad House in Mumbai which was seriously damaged in the terrorist attack. Donations can be made online at www.chabadindia.org.