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KFAR CHABAD, IsraeL–Thousands of grief-stricken Orthodox Jews prayed and wept yesterday before the shrouded bodies of Israelis killed in Mumbai, joining the national mourning in a ceremony broadcast on TV and attended by Israeli leaders.
The six died when gunmen on a deadly three-day rampage through the Indian city struck Chabad House, the Mumbai headquarters of the Jewish Chabad-Lubavitch movement, last Wednesday. They were among 173 people killed.
A crowd gathered at Kfar Chabad, the movement's Israel headquarters, to mourn Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg, 29, and his 28-year-old wife, Rivka.
The two were outreach envoys dispatched to Mumbai as part of the movement's attempt to bring its brand of Judaism to Jews across the world, running an open house aimed mainly at Jewish travellers and merchants.
The couple left a 2-year-old son, Moshe, who was rescued by his Indian nanny. Rivka was six months pregnant when she was killed, said Chabad spokesperson Avraham Berkowitz.
The crowd of thousands at their funeral included Israeli President Shimon Peres, the country's chief rabbis and other top government officials.
"We will answer the terrorists," Moshe Kotlarsky, a Chabad rabbi from New York, vowed, his voice shaking, naming his weapon – the teachings of God.
He pledged to rebuild the Mumbai centre and name it after the Holtzbergs. Chabad operates thousands of such outreach centres around the world.
The Holtzbergs' bodies – hers wrapped in a shroud, his in a prayer shawl – rested on benches on a dais nearby. Coffins are not used in Jewish funerals in Israel.
Their small son, who returned to Israel on Monday with the nanny and the bodies of his parents, was not present.
At a tearful ceremony held at a Mumbai synagogue before their flight, the boy called out for his mother in a scene that was repeatedly broadcast on Israeli TV.
"You don't have a mother who will hug you and kiss you,'' Kotlarsky said, his eulogy alternating between Hebrew and English. But the community will take care of the boy, he vowed: "You are the child of all of Israel.''
The only other surviving member of the family, Moshe's brother, has Tay-Sachs, a terminal genetic disease, and is institutionalized in Israel. The Holtzbergs' eldest son died of the illness.
The Holtzbergs lived in Israel and New York before they moved to Mumbai in 2003. Rabbi Holtzberg also had U.S. citizenship.
The grimness of the funerals, and the national attention, was deepened by the conviction that the victims died because they were Jews.
"It's a very difficult feeling because we know this was targeted against us," said Eliahu Tzadok, 41, who attended the funeral of another victim, 38-year-old Leibish Teitelbaum, in Jerusalem.
Teitelbaum, an American citizen who lived in Jerusalem, was a member of Satmar, an ultra-Orthodox sect that does not accept Israel as a Jewish state. Several thousand mourners, most of them bearded men with sidelocks and garbed in long black coats and black hats, packed the main square, narrow alleys and rooftops of Mea Shearim, a large Orthodox neighbourhood in Jerusalem, for his funeral.
Death notices plastered the neighbourhood's billboards and walls, reading "May God avenge them." Loudspeakers carried the sounds of wailing mourners reciting prayers from the Book of Psalms.
A fourth victim, Norma Shvarzblat Rabinovich, 50, of Mexico, had planned to immigrate to Israel this week. The two other victims were Yocheved Orpaz, 60, who was travelling in India and Bentzion Chroman, 28, who like Teitelbaum, was a supervisor of kosher food.
