Holtzbergs to be Buried in Israel on Monday
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Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife Rivka, who were gruesomely murdered in the Mumbai terrorist attacks, will be buried in Israel Monday, Chabad announced. The funerals will begin at the 770 Kfar Chabad Center.
Both victims were born in Israel, but Rabbi Holtzberg lived several years as a teenager in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, where he learned to be a kosher slaughterer of animals [shochet]. He and his wife were Chabad-Lubavitch emissaries in Mumbai, formerly known as Bombay, since 2003, where they opened the Chabad House that served as a haven for Jewish visitors from all over the world.
Her father is the head of a girl’s school in Migdal HaEmek, located in the Lower Galilee.
Rabbi Moshe J. Kotlarsky, vice chairman of the education branch of Chabad in Brooklyn, told reporters that Rabbi Holtzberg and his wife Rivka “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.”
The Muslim terrorists, apparently associated with Al Qaeda, killed the couple shortly after the beginning of the attack Wednesday night but were not eliminated by Indian commandos until shortly before the Sabbath began Friday night.
The couple was known for their warmth, Torah scholarship and hospitality at the five-story Chabad House, known as the Nariman House and which was a “home away from home” for Jewish businessmen, Israeli backpackers and Indian Jews.
Chabad-Lubavitch Chairman of Educational and Social Services, Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, said that “the targeting by terrorists of foreign nationals underscores the need for governments to work collectively to fight terrorism resolutely and effectively, so that the hands of those seeking to destroy life and disrupt peace will no longer reach their targets.”
The Mumbai attacks, which were described as a pogrom by American radio newscaster John Batchelor[..]