For thousands of Jewish travellers visiting Mumbai each year – ranging from Orthodox business people to young Israeli backpackers – the five-year old Chabad House was an important port of call, offering services that ranged from Kosher meals to holiday services to the sympathetic ear of a young rabbi.
But on Wednesday night, the Chabad House was one of the carefully-selected targets of the devastating terror attacks that rocked Mumbai. An Israeli rabbi connected to Chabad House was among at least three people being held hostage by gunmen. According to Reuters a woman and a child were released and one of the gunmen was killed. However, at least four armed men remained in the building by mid afternoon on Thursday Mumbai time.
The choice of the Chabad House as a target, heightening suspicions about the attackers’ potential international links, or influences.
India’s own radical Muslims have traditionally focused their wrath on the dominant Hindu population and has never previously targetted India’s tiny and diminishing indigenous Jewish community, which number just a few thousand.
The founders of the Chabad centre, Rabbi Gabriel Holtzberg, a young Israeli who also holds US citizenship, and his wife Rifka, were part of the Chabad Lubovitch movement, which is dedicated to deepening religious practice and observation among Jews – both faithful and secular.
Along with working in traditional large Western centres with large Jewish populations, young Chabad rabbis, known as emissaries, have in recent years spread to far-flung corners of the globe, including Asia, catering to the needs of both local Jewish communities, often expatriates on assignment in business centres, and Jewish travellers.
Besides promoting religious worship, study and observance, Chabad rabbis in Asia are also known for their support and aid to Jews in distress, whether as a result of illness, injury, trouble with the law, or other problems.
Rabbi Holzberg and his wife set up the Chabad House in Mumbai about five years ago, soon after he finished his rabbinical training, during which he also spent a year working with a a Chabad rabbi in Bangkok. Since then they had a son, who is now two-years-old
”Like all Chabad rabbis everywhere, he is a one stop response for everything a Jew would need – spiritual or material,” said Rabbi Yosef Kantor, a Chabad rabbi in Bangkok, who worked closely with Rabbi Hertzberg. ”He is a man with a very big heart...He was very committed to the mission he took upon himself – to do whatever was necessary to fulfill the needs of the Jewish community there.”
The Mumbai Chabad House – which owned the building in which it was located – catered especially to growing numbers of business travellers coming to the city each year. It also catered to some of the large numbers of Israeli backpackers who typically travel around India after completing their military services, as well as to the needs of Mumbai’s own historic, but small and rapidly shrinking indigenious Jewish community.
