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Tragedy cancels rabbi's India trip
Dayton's Shmuel Klatzkin was to meet with a rabbi who was slain in Mumbai.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Dayton Rabbi Shmuel Klatzkin was looking forward to being a guest next week in the Mumbai, India, home of the young, bright rabbi he last visited in August.
But that plan was canceled Friday, Nov. 28, after news that Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife, Rivka, were killed late Thursday, Nov. 27, at their Chabad House during an apparent standoff between Indian military forces and terrorists.
"It's bad enough when there's lots of innocent people killed of any sort, but when it's people you know it has a special edge to it," Klatzkin said from New York, where he was preparing to depart for India when the trip was canceled.
According to news reports, the Holtzbergs' toddler son, Moshe, managed to escape with his nanny some hours before Indian commandos stormed their building, also known as the Nariman House, in the popular touristy neighborhood of Colaba. The Associated Press reported the boy was unharmed, but was wearing blood-soaked pants.
More than 150 people have been killed since gunmen attacked 10 sites across India's financial capital starting Wednesday night, including 22 foreigners — four of them Americans, officials said.
Klatzkin said he had planned to work with Holtzberg next week to inspect and certify local factories for kosher food production. He described the Chabad House as an outreach and education center, a hotellike facility that served as a "home away from home" for Jewish travelers and Israeli businessmen.
"He had the real trademark ability to stress things people have in common, the joy of living a good life," Klatzkin said of Holtzberg, 29. "He would attract all kinds of people to his place; it wasn't a place where you had to be particularly orthodox or religious to feel at home."
Holtzberg's last known phone call was to the Israeli Consulate to report that gunmen were in his house. In the middle of the conversation, the line went dead.
The news stunned Rabbi Nochum Mangel, director of Chabad of Greater Dayton, who said he knew Holtzberg's family in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, N.Y.
