Meir “Chesky” Holtzberg was saying a graveside prayer when he learned the news: Terrorists were holding his cousin hostage in India.
A crowd turned out at the graveside to pray for Meir’s cousin, Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg, and his cousin’s wife Rivka.
Meir (pictured) had traveled Wednesday from his home in New Haven to the grave in Queens in order to say a prayer to mark his 33rd brithday. He hadn’t known yet that the unfolding terror attacks in the Indian capital of Mumbai had spread to his cousin’s home. That Gavriel, Rivka, and three others were being held hostage.
Meir Holtzberg moved to New Haven five years ago, part of a fast-growing community in the Beaver Hill neighborhood associated with the Hasidic Jewish Lubavitch/ Chabad movement. Meir’s 29-year-old cousin Gavriel, with whom he’d been close since childhood, had made a different journey, Gavriel and Rivka took their young family to Mumbai to open one of some 5,000 “Chabad Houses” the movement runs worldwide to serve as outposts of learning and celebration.
Meir was saying his prayer Wednesday at the grave of the movement’s spiritual leader,
the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson. He was surprised to encounter the large group of fellow Lubavitchers there.
“What are you doing here?” Meir asked.
“We’re here to pray for your cousin.”
That’s how he found out his cousin’s life was at risk.
Thus began a vigil into Thanksgiving of prayer that the hostages at the Mumbai Jewish center would survive.
Then they learned the sad news: The terrorists had killed five hostages, including Gavriel and Rivka (pictured). A cook managed to escape the premises with Gavriel’s and Rivka’s blood-covered 2 year-old son Moshe, who’s now an orphan. They were among 174 estimated victims of a terror spree that began at two luxury hotels frequented by foreigners.
Meir proceeded to contact U.S. government offices to try to arrange for emergency travel permission to Israel for family members. Sunday he was returning home to New Haven’s Beaver Hill, where the neighborhood’s Lubavitch community held a Sabbath “kiddush” in honor of the Mumbai victims on Saturday. A memorial service is being planned for this coming Thursday night at 7 at the Southern Connecticut Hebrew Academy at 261 Derby Ave. in Orange.
Meir is returning home with a message of “light” inspired by his cousin’s life of charitable deeds.
“The only way to combat darkness is with light,” he said Sunday. “People should try to make the world a better place” in honor of his cousin, “increasing acts of goodness and kindness.”
A Beaver Hill Base
News travels fast through Lubavitch circles, with its large tight-knit families and so many of its young rabbis dispatched to open Chabad Houses around the world. When a tragedy like last week’s strikes, people inevitably have relatives affected or else friends deeply impacted.
That includes the community that lives within walking distance of the Lubavtich shul in New Haven’s Beaver Hill. When Meir moved here five years ago, the community had 10 to 15 families. Now it has 63 families. The families tend to be young, with four, five, six children.
Most of the local Lubavitch used to be members of two extended families: the Dietsches and the Katzes. Newer families have set down roots here drawn by a lower standard of living than New York, an easier pace, and a warm, heimische environment.
“There’s a Hasidic saying: We’re all one family. What happened to Rabbi Holtzberg is Mumbai affects us because he’s our brother in every sense of the word. We all feel interconnected. We’re all part of the same family,” said Alderman Moti Sandman, who grew up in the neighborhood.
Sandman is Meir Holtzberg’s brother-in-law. He said the Mumbai murders “shook me to the core.”
“Here you have a family that was giving of themselves,” Sandman said. “It shook a lot of the preconceived notions that I have about my personal security. This wasn’t a random attack. This was one of the key targets. They were clearly going after Chabad people” in India.
“We have a very noticeable Chabad community here” in New Haven, Sandman noted. “We don’t hide anything. We don’t blend in well. We can’t just walk by the wayside and people ignore us.”
2 Cousins
Gavriel’s family moved to Brooklyn from Israel when Gavriel was 8, Meir said. “He lived around the corner from me. We went to the same school. We played at each other’s houses.”
As young adults, they pursued different careers. Meir went into business. He current runs Advantage Business Systems, a Shelton-based office equipment company. Gavriel became a rabbi, one of Chabad’s shlichim, or emissaries, sent to bring Judaism to other parts of the world.
As their paths diverged, Meir and Gavriel and their extended family stayed in touch. Gavriel befriend Meir two weeks ago on Facebook. Gavriel “Skyped” Meir’s brother last week, shortly before the terror attack. He reported “that people were planning on coming to visit India for a trip or for business,” Meir said Sunday.
“Every week he had 800 people come through his Chabad House. It was a very, very busy place. People went there and visited, whether they were Israeli backpackers who finished the army or Americans who were going there on business.”
Meir spoke of how Gavriel was “living in a place that’s underdeveloped in terms of the luxuries he was used to, like having fresh milk and bread. The mission was to help others. The vision was the make the world a better place. He gave up his life for that.”
Channukah Message
Rabbi Sheya Hecht, a longtime New Haven Lubavitch leader, echoed Meir’s call to honor the Holtzberg’s memory by bringing “light” to the world through good deeds and acts of kindness. Hecht noted the message’s centrality to the upcoming Channukah holiday. (Pictured: Meir Holtzberg and his son David Shlomo lighting the menorah on a Channukah past.)
“The message of light overcoming darkness, right over might: These are symbols that resonate every year at Channukah — so much more now when we see tyranny and terrorism, people who want to bring more darkness and hate and terror to the world,” Hecht said. “The only way to combat that is to radiate the world and our own little areas.”