B’nai B’rith International (BBI) Executive Vice President Daniel S. Mariaschin spoke at a tribute and memorial service on Wednesday, December 10, for the victims of the Mumbai, India terror attack.
Among those remembered were Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his pregnant wife, Rivka, who were killed at the Nariman House, the Jewish community center they ran in Mumbai.
The memorial at the Melvin J. Berman Hebrew Academy in Rockville, MD, drew a large crowd to remember all of the victims of the three days of bloodshed that began Nov. 26 and left more than 170 people dead and hundreds injured.
Read Mariaschin’s remarks below…
So says Iyov, Job:
“My face is reddened with weeping, and on my eyelids is the shadow of death; although there is no violence in my hands, and my prayer is pure. Oh earth, do not cover my blood… Even now, alas, my Witness is in heaven, and He that testifies of me is on high.”
What kind of response can we have when true evil meets true good?
The question of why terrible things happen to good people has confronted humankind – and, not least, the nation that first recognized its Creator – since the beginning of time.
But some misfortunes are wrought, sometimes inexplicably. Other injustices are committed by men, who are granted wisdom and free will, the potential to do good or bad, by the One in Whose image we were created. Tragically, the injustices of the wicked often target those who strive only to do good.
So are we told in D’varim [Deuteronomy]: “I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse; therefore, choose life – that you may live, you and your seed.”
We are here today to witness a choice that was made for life. And we are here to testify against those who monstrously, senselessly, chose death – and to inflict it.
We are here to tell the world – and we will do so, if necessary, again and again – that which is written in Kohelet [Ecclesiastes]: “A twisted thing cannot be made straight…” Terrorism is terrorism. Terrorism, whether carried out in the name of religion, politics, or both, can have no possible justification. And terrorism must be recognized as such wherever perpetrated – whether in New York, or in Washington, or in London, or Madrid, or Istanbul, or Bali, or Casablanca, or in Djerba, or in Buenos Aires, or in Munich, or in Mumbai, or in Jerusalem and anywhere else in Israel. When the significant majority of international terrorist movements and attacks are motivated by the same set of twisted ideologies and goals, the same twisted interpretations of faith, this must be acknowledged publicly and without equivocation. And those responsible for the acts of premeditated and indiscriminate evil – not just the operatives, but the financers, and the harborers, and the inciters, and even the apologists and the appeasers – must be combated, collectively, consistently and effectively.
Sadly, though, it is unlikely that the world, particularly those with direct influence over the past and would-be murderers, will finally be moved to say “enough!” to people who enter a train station or a social-religious center and massacre, with a smile on their face and the name of God on their lips, over 170 random or not-entirely-random innocents. And the world may still not truly distinguish between the piety of violent haters who target journeyers (of all backgrounds) staying in hotels and the piety of a young couple who have moved far from their birthplaces to extend warm, eager and unquestioning hospitality. Even in death, some of these holy ones and those they’ve left behind do not have total rest from the persecutors: today, many mourners are afraid to visit their relatives in that largest and most ancient of Jewish cemeteries, the Mount of Olives, which overlooks our people’s eternal heart, the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
Beyond outrage at any act of mass murder, the atrocity committed at the Nariman House in Mumbai is especially poignant for me. My wife, Mazal, later raised in Israel, was born to a Bukhari and Baghdadi Jewish family in Mumbai, then known as Bombay. Just about a week before the Mumbai attacks, I had the special experience of attending the closing event of the kenes ha’shluchim, the astounding annual meeting in New York, of thousands of Lubavitch emissaries around the globe; regrettably for me, Rabbi Gavriel and Rebbetzin Rivkah Holtzberg, Zikhronam Livracha did not attend, though those gathered seemed especially proud of their representation in the far-away financial hub of India.
Let me say a word about Chabad. I am privileged to know well the tireless Chabad representative in Washington, Rabbi Levi Shemtov, and my local Chabad rabbi here in Maryland, Benzion Geisinsky; of course, I am also grateful to Rabbi Shmuel Kaplan (along with the Washington Jewish Federation) for inviting me to join you here today. But as the professional head of a non-denominational Jewish service organization – the world’s oldest – and as someone who, like so many others, has had occasion to benefit from Chabad Houses, there is something more about Chabad that inspires and humbles me. Chabad stands for chochmah, bina v’da’at – all strands of wisdom – but, aside from the singular joy and innovation that Chabad brings to its work, there is something that very much defies conventional thinking in the self-sacrificial mission of shluchim who relocate to develop and preserve Jewish life worldwide, in the spirit of the promise we just read in the Torah: u’faratzta – “and you shall spread, to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south…”
One American Jewish student who was an extended guest of the Holtzbergs’ was quoted in last week’s [New York] Jewish Week contrasting the modesty of “the[ir own] small apartment compared to the [Chabad House] guest rooms, library and beit midrash. ‘I just got a glimpse into their bedroom, and that’s where I saw the peeling paint.’” A friend added of the Holtzbergs, “‘They were each other’s first date… They were each other’s world. They lived in India for five years with no consistent friends… They were each other’s everything.’”
In a community which is struggling to attract and retain devoted and capable “young leadership,” let alone committed masses, two Jews in their 20s epitomized this by building, over the course of five years, a center of Jewish outreach and vital Jewish chessed welcoming to locals and visitors alike. Chabadnikim are extraordinary in the unyielding openness with which they project their Jewishness, their yiddishkeit. While it may be possible in places like New York or perhaps Washington to take Chabad for granted there is no such luxury in so many corners of the globe, where Chabad’s presence can be spiritually indispensable to Jews.
It is appropriate that the Mumbai emissaries of the Lubavitcher rebbe, of righteous memory, were returned to burial in the Holy Land draped first in the flag of Israel, and of course in the tallit; they were representatives and leaders of the Jewish people, who were killed as Jews, in Jews’ service, along with four of their brothers and sisters in faith – each of them an entire world of stories, good deeds, dreams and families: Norma Shvartzblat Rabinovich, Yocheved Orpaz, Rabbi Ben Tzion Chroman and Rabbi Aryeh Leibish Teitelbaum. (Zichronam Livracha)
When Cain [Kayin] killed his brother Abel [Hevel] in B’reishit [Genesis], God exclaims, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s bloods cry out to Me from the ground.” We are taught that “blood” is phrased in plural – to include also all the future generations who were denied entry into life. It sears the heart to learn that Rivky Holtzberg, who with her husband endured personal and family hardships, was pregnant with another child when she was gunned down in the presence of a current one – on the eve of the Shabbat on which they would have celebrated as a family his second birthday.
Yet let us not for a moment forget or neglect to be in awed appreciation of the fact that little Moishy Holtzberg was near-miraculously rescued – that he, and God willing, those who will come after him, will not be lost to the Jewish people and the world, but rather serve as a living monument to, and a best example of, his parents’ redemptive life work.
We all feel broken hearing the now-unanswered cries of Moishy – “Ima! Ima!” – but, make no mistake, the Chabad leader Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, is right: “Moishy will be the child of all of Israel.”
Let us never, for the duration of her life and beyond, fail to retain and demonstrate our thankfulness and utter admiration for the heroism of Moishy’s nanny Sandra Samuel – and let us be encouraged by this reminder of the chassidei umot ha’olam, and of the potential for goodness, indeed greatness, among all people.
As Rabbi Menachem Mendel Nemes, a teacher and program organizer at the Jewish Children’s Museum in Crown Heights, was quoted as telling his students of the terrorists, “if this group can cause that much destruction in the world, imagine if that size[d a] group got together with good deeds.”
We Jews, despite all the challenges, are charged with being a light onto the nations. The Lubavitcher rebbe showed his followers how to practically illuminate the pervasive darkness with just bits of light. Let us set an example by committing ourselves to grow in our Judaism, to grow in our humanity, to answer the “army of the pure” hatred with the legions of pure love. B’chol dor vador omdim aleinu l’chaloteinu – in every generation, we have faced those committed to evil and to our destruction, but we’ve seen even the most formidable adversaries come and go, while we have persevered and remained, as we shall.
May the memories of all those who were taken from us al kiddush Hashem be for a blessing – and may their families, and we as one larger family, be comforted among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.
