U. Rabbi mourns friends slain in Chabad House

Chabad Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife, Rivka, both good friends of University Chabad chaplain Rabbi Eitan Webb, were killed late last week in a terrorist attack in Mumbai, India.

The couple had moved from Brooklyn to Mumbai about five years ago with the goal of managing a Chabad House, a synagogue and social hall run by the Lubavitch Hasidic movement. Prior to the announcement of the Holtzbergs’ deaths on Friday, Nov. 28, Webb and others spent nearly 40 hours working to locate the couple.

Webb explained that he didn’t have much time to think about the situation and instead joined many others to provide help and mobilize resources.

“We assembled a roster of people [on campus] who spoke every Indian language,” Webb said. “We also tried to find people who were there on the ground in India, in Mumbai, to see what we could piece together, and that was our focus until Friday afternoon when we found out that, unfortunately, Holtzberg had been killed.”

“At that point, my wife and I just cried,” he said.

Webb said that he received more than 30 e-mails from Princeton students of Indian background looking to help. “The support has been amazing, and I really want to give a heartfelt thank you to the entire community here,” Webb said.

“This particular situation has hit us very hard,” said University Coordinator for Hindu Life Vineet Chander, who helped organize student speakers of Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu. “From the beginning, we were part of the process of trying to help, and certainly our hearts and prayers are with the Chabad community,” he said.

Webb, who attended a Brooklyn religious school with Holtzberg, explained that Holtzberg was a tremendous scholar with a good sense of humor. “He always had this little half-smile,” Webb recalled. “What can you say, he was just an amazing person.”

The Holtzbergs were particularly well known for their generosity in providing open dinners in Mumbai for anyone who wished to come, Webb said.

He added that Holtzberg served as the only ritual slaughterer in his Jewish community. He would slaughter roughly 200 chickens a week, most of which he would give away to people who could not afford kosher meat.

Hundreds gathered for prayer at a synagogue in Holtzberg’s childhood town of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, during the 40 hours when he was missing. Holtzberg’s son, Moshe, who turned 2 on Saturday, survived the attacks and is currently in Israel with a caretaker.

“These terrorists want to drive people into inaction, and, to my mind, the right response to that is greater action,” Webb said. “If you are trying to tear down a democracy, the right response is to build a great democracy.”