To see two mechutanim standing at the fresh graves of their children...There are no words to describe the depth of this tragedy. Which kreiz is not feeling the pain today?
Why don't you post something constructive, like Shas Mishnayos, for your learned readership to undertake in their memory?
had its moments, Grossman I thought was really "real", Peres I could have done without, Rosenberg was...well what can you say...Mir Zol Nisht Ge'Prift Veren.
threw together a little tribute song to the Mumbai Shluchim HY"D...I'm not doing well talking about it, too fresh. song on top at www.myspace.com/thesheichet
L'maaseh six kedoshim murdered in cold blood. We all feel tremendous grief and outrage at the atrocious shedding of innocent yiddishe blood. I know were focusing on the instant disaster as it is still right in front of us but it's yet another step closer to the geulah.
To put the churban europe in perspective multiply the feelings you feel right now times 1,000,000. You can't take it!!!! It's time for teshuva and g'milus chasodim. Ha makom yenachem all of us and all of K'lal Yisroel and may we be zoiche to the geulah shlaima b'mheira B'YOMEINU. Amen!
those pictures really make it sink in something terrible, I suddenly feel like I can't understand the Eibershter anymore - how could he let this happen? I'm looking at these pics and I'm falling apart. And suddenly I just started to understand what happened to the 6 million.
Some positive fallout from the tragedy as media focuses on good works!
From the San Francisco Chronicle at http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/12/03/MNSJ14G460.DTL
Chabad-Lubavitch offers Jews abroad a home
Matthai Kuruvila, Chronicle Religion Writer
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Members of the Bay Area's Chabad-Lubavitch community mourned Tuesday as the bodies of two brethren killed in the Mumbai terrorist attacks were buried in Israel.
Lubavitchers, as they are sometimes called, have made a modern mission out of creating havens for Jewish religious practice in far flung corners of the world - a tradition whose early roots include the Bay Area.
For the secular Jew seeking a deeper connection to the faith or Jewish travelers abroad searching for a place to have Shabbat dinner on Friday night, there are Chabad Houses in places ranging from Kyrgyzstan and Laos to the Democratic Republic of Congo.
But the terrorist attacks have provoked many to question whether the community's trademark openness, where all are welcome, is also a liability.
"Our accessibility, which is the key to our success, also makes us vulnerable," said Rabbi Gedalia Potash, 32, leader of Chabad of Noe Valley, who went to religious school with the slain Mumbai rabbi, Gavriel Holtzberg. "We're always welcoming people we don't know or people we barely know."
Growth in California
Born in the 1700s in Russia as a branch of Hasidic Judaism, the Chabad-Lubavitch movement moved to the United States in 1940 when leaders fled Nazi persecution. It has been based in Brooklyn ever since.
A critical component in the denomination's growth in the 1960s developed in California. The first Chabad House was opened near the UCLA campus in 1968. It was an outreach to unaffiliated Jews, particularly young people. The second was formed in Berkeley in 1972, according to Rabbi Yosef Langer, leader of Chabad of San Francisco.
Langer said it was no coincidence that the first three Chabad Houses of their kind, including one in San Diego, were formed in California during that time. The era was marked by social experimentation by young people, from the Summer of Love to Beatniks. Religion was part of that.
Spiritual quest
"We had to address the yearning and the wanting to connect to something spiritual and something Jewish," said Langer, 62, who grew up in Oakland and is the senior rabbi for the Chabad movement in Northern California, where there are now more than 30 Chabad Houses. Langer said Chabad was part of a larger shift within Jewish practice in America that sought a more personal and less institutional connection to the faith.
"Judaism wasn't perceived as something spiritual before the late 1960s and early 1970s," he said. "It was something you were forced to take part in."
Chabad Houses typically are led by a married couple; there are more than 4,000 couples who run the houses in 73 countries. There are more Chabad Houses in California and Florida than anywhere else in the world. Each Chabad House responds to the needs of its own particular community.
Holtzberg, 29, and his wife, Rivkah, 28, opened the Chabad House in Mumbai in 2003. The Holtzbergs were catering to a growing number of Jews who have been visiting India, particularly young Israelis who have finished compulsory service with the military.
Chabad reaches out
The Web site for Chabad Mumbai lists services that include a kosher kitchen, circumcision, drug prevention and marriage preparation. Rabbi Holtzberg reportedly slaughtered meat himself due to the absence of a kosher butcher.
The openness with which Lubavitchers view the world is in contrast with many other Hasidic groups, said Sue Fishkoff, an Oakland resident and author of the 2003 book, "The Rebbe's Army: Inside the World of Chabad-Lubavitch."
"Many Hasidic movements were wiped out in the holocaust," said Fishkoff, a reporter for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. "Those who survived largely moved to America and turned inward. They became very insular. They put up walls to protect themselves from the outside world that had hurt them so badly.
"The leadership of the Chabad movement decided instead to reach out and to try to persuade Jews to become more observant."
'The message of love'
Several Lubavitch rabbis spoke of the desire to persevere with acts of kindness and goodness in the face of terror. Fishkoff, who is not part of the Lubavitch community, said that she happened to be in Monterey on Friday and attended services at the Chabad House run by Rabbi Dovid Holtzberg, a first cousin of the slain Mumbai rabbi.
"He didn't talk about revenge," said Fishkoff. "He didn't talk about victimization. All he talked about was spreading the message of love."
The last time a Chabad House was attacked was in 1956 in Israel, where members' Jewishness obviously would not have been distinctive, unlike Mumbai. After that attack, the leader of the Chabad movement, Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, urged believers to be comforted in rebuilding.
That ethos will continue, several Bay Area Lubavitch rabbis said. Physical security, though needed, can only do so much.
"Who wants to become like Fort Knox?" said Rabbi Yehuda Ferris, who runs Chabad of the East Bay in Berkeley. "We have to be open and welcoming. It's a very delicate balance we have to strike. ... We have to balance the precautions with more strength and more light. A little light pushes away a lot of darkness."
Chabad-Lubavitch
For more information about Chabad-Lubavitch or how to donate to the community's effort to rebuild in Mumbai, visit www.chabad.org.
From The Dallas Morning News at http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/DN-chabad_03met.ART.State.Edition1.4a25ffa.html
In Dallas, Jews mourn deaths of friends in Mumbai
12:00 AM CST on Wednesday, December 3, 2008
By MISTY DEAN / The Dallas Morning News
As victims of last week's terrorist attack on a Jewish outreach center in Mumbai, India, were laid to rest in Israel, the North Texas Chabad houses united Tuesday in Dallas to pray for the injured and mourn the deaths of their colleagues and friends.
Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife, Rivkah Holtzberg, operated the Chabad-Lubavitch Jewish center, called "Nariman House," in Mumbai. They were killed, along with four others at the center, during the standoff between Indian military forces and terrorists.
"Tonight the purpose is to pay tribute to the people that died and to comfort those who share in their pain, to resolve that this loss will inspire us to redirect ourselves to the work of spreading goodness and light in the world," said Rabbi Zvi Drizin of The Intown Chabad, who spoke at the memorial service at the Chabad of Dallas.
Chabad is a sect of Hasidism, a form of Orthodox Judaism.
The Holtzbergs moved from the U.S. to Mumbai in 2003 to serve the local Jewish community and tourists.
About two years ago, the Holtzbergs established the center, a five-story building in Mumbai's Colaba market. It was founded as a house of God, a learning center and safe haven for travelers in need of spiritual and emotional support far from home.
"These were amazing people who dedicated their lives to helping people. They are a beacon of light to all of us in times of darkness," Rabbi Drizin said. "Chabad is dedicated to goodness, and terror has no future."
A fund has been established to rebuild the center and to help the extended Holtzberg family care for the couple's orphaned children. Donations can be made through Chabad of Dallas or at www.chabadindia.org.
From The Jerusalem Post at http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1227702405874&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Dec 3, 2008 0:50 | Updated Dec 3, 2008 9:42
Chabad: Vengeance through kindness
The message from the funeral at Kfar Chabad on Tuesday was one of revenge - but not through violence. Rather, revenge that answers brutal, pointless Islamic terrorism with the light of loving-kindness.
Mourners pray over the bodies of Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife Rivka z"l, during their funeral procession in Kfar Chabad, Tuesday.
"I vow that we will avenge the deaths of Gabi and Rivki," announced Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, vice chairman of Chabad's educational arm, from New York, referring to Mumbai emissaries Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife, Rivka.
"But not with AK-47s, not with grenades and tanks. We will take revenge in a different way," Kotlarsky said.
"We will add light. We will add good deeds. We will make sure that there is not one Jewish man who does not put on tefillin. We will make sure that there is not one Jewish woman who does not light candles.
"And the Chabad House in Mumbai will be rebuilt and it will begin operating again," he said.
Kotlarsky said the rebuilt Jewish center in Nariman House would named after the Holtzbergs.
Thousands gathered in Kfar Chabad Tuesday afternoon to eulogize the Holtzbergs, who were murdered last week in Mumbai by Pakistani Islamists.
Prominent politicians were in attendance, including President Shimon Peres, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu, and several Shas ministers and MKs.
There were also several top officials of Chabad's leadership, such as Rabbi Avraham Shemtov, head of Agudas Hassidei Chabad International, the movement's umbrella organization.
No one better symbolized the type of revenge promised by Kotlarsky than the Holtzbergs' two-year-old son Moishe, who was miraculously saved by the Holtzberg's Indian employee, Sandra Samuel.
"Rivki, Gabi you were loved in your lifetime and in your death," said Rabbi Shimon Rosenberg, Rivki's father, who turned to the bodies of his daughter and Gabi, which lay on wooden benches wrapped in shrouds.
"I promise that your shlihut [mission] will not be cut short, that your home will not be destroyed.
"The despicable murderers went into the rebbe's house to destroy it, but it shall not fall," Rosenberg said. "The child Moishie will be the rebbe's shaliach [messenger] and we will look after him. This Hanukka he will light a menorah in the Arc of Victory in Mumbai, and this will symbolize your shlichut. From here, from Kfar Chabad, the cry, 'Until when, until when' will spring forth. Rivki and Gabi, we love you!"
Kotlarsky added: "Moishe, you have no mom and dad who will take you in their arms. You have no one to hold and kiss you. You will be the child of all of Israel."
A new dimension of the Holtzberg tragedy was revealed by Rosenberg, who told the crowd, estimated at more than 15,000, that Rivki was five months pregnant when she was murdered.
"They killed three people, not two," he said.
Rosenberg and his wife have indicated that they will take over the Chabad House mission in place of their slain daughter and son-in-law.
Tel Aviv Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, a survivor of Buchenwald who lost both parents as a child, mentioned Moishe as the "beacon of light who will continue his parents' work."
So did Kotlarsky, who said, "Little Moishe, [you] will return to the Chabad House when you are older. That will be your house, a place where you will find comfort and continue your parents' work."
In addition to the disciples of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the last Lubavitcher rebbe, there were dozens present, perhaps more, whose lives were touched by the two young Chabad emissaries.
There were smartly-dressed diamond merchants, long-haired hippy backpackers, businessmen, kashrut supervisors, and many others who, due to a myriad of circumstances, had ended up as guests of the Holtzbergs and enjoyed their hospitality.
Whether it was kosher food, aid to Israelis who wound up in Indian prison for drugs, prayer with a minyan or just a bed, the Holtzbergs were there for travelers passing through Mumbai, said the many eulogizers, who included Chief Rabbis Yona Metzger and Shlomo Amar.
Still, the vast majority of mourners who came to accompany the Holtzbergs on their last journey were members of the Chabad movement, a vast and rapidly growing organization with representation in at least 73 countries, including potentially dangerous locations in North Africa, the former Soviet Union and India.
About 4,000 couples are Chabad emissaries, making Chabad the largest Jewish outreach organization in the world.
Chabad is not without its schisms, including an ongoing, occasionally violent, theological debate regarding the status of Schneerson, who died in New York in 1994, with some claiming that Schneerson is still "alive" and will soon reveal himself as the messiah.
This theological split was evident in Kfar Chabad's synagogue Tuesday. Hundreds filed into the house of prayer after the funeral procession departed for Jerusalem. At the conclusion of the afternoon Minhah prayer, some declared, "May our master, our teacher, our rabbi the anointed Messiah-king live forever," while others refrained, looking on wryly.
Among the sea of black hats surrounding the eulogizers there were yellow and black flags with a picture of a crown and the word "Messiah" printed on them in English, Hebrew - and Arabic.
But at the Holtzberg funeral the theological rift was temporarily forgotten.
Kfar Chabad's rabbi, Rabbi Mordechai Shmuel Ashkenazi, called on Chabad followers to use the tragedy as a means of fostering unity.
"There is one rebbe, one God and Chabad, and we all are working to prepare the world for the messiah," he declared.
Tens of thousands attended the Holtzbergs' funeral on Tuesday night on Jerusalem's Mount of Olives, overlooking the Old City.
The four other victims of the Mumbai bombings flown to Israel - Bentzion Chroman, 28, Leibish Teitelbaum, 38, Yocheved Orpaz, 60, and Norma Shvarzblat Rabinovich, 50 - were buried separately at cemeteries in Jerusalem, Bnei Brak, Petah Tikva and Tel Aviv.
From The Harvard Crimson at http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=525674
Harvard Remembers Rabbis
Published On Wednesday, December 03, 2008 1:17 AM
By LAURA G. MIRVISS Contributing Writer
Just 12 weeks ago, Peter N. Ganong ’09 paid his second visit in two years to the Chabad House in Mumbai, where he enjoyed a warm Sabbath meal and services. The atmosphere was exceptionally welcoming: the floor was covered with toys that belonged to the toddler of a young rabbi, Rabbi Gavriel, and his wife, Rivka Holtzbergand.
The couple was killed in last week’s terrorist assault on Mumbai, which left 171 people dead.
Last night at Harvard’s Chabad House, a community center for the Jewish Orthodox movement, Ganong delivered an emotional eulogy.
“He and Rivka ran a home away from home with the most devoted followers,” he said in his remarks.
Ganong, who describes himself as an observant Jew, traveled and conducted research on economic development in India for the last two summers.
Ganong said that he enjoyed visiting Chabad houses on Shabbat, where he could attend services and connect with the local Jewish community.
“These are outstanding places,” he said. “There is a network that makes it possible to be an observant Jew anywhere in the world.”
Ganong is among an increasing number of people who believe the Chabad House attacks were carefully targeted.
He remembered Mumbai’s Chabad House as being extremely inaccessible—it sits in a narrow, dark alleyway in the midst of the vast tourist city.
Ganong is one of at least half a dozen Harvard students who visited Mumbai and came in contact with Rabbi Gavriel and his family.
Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi, the director of Chabad at Harvard, frequently connected students to the Chabad in Mumbai and, as a result, got to know Rabbi Gavriel personally.
“They embraced and loved every person they came in contact with on any level,” Gavriel said.
He described the family as unfailingly generous people who were equally willing to provide spiritual guidance as they were to aid a traveler who had lost a passport, missed a flight, or just needed a meal or a place to stay. “They were there to serve,” he said.
Zarchi said that after he first heard about the Mumbai attacks he and other Chabad members immediately thought about their brethren in the city.
Soon after, the news from the city began to trickle in, and both Rabbi Gavriel and Holtzbergand were unreachable by cell phone.
In the midst of the crisis, Rabbi Gavriel had made a final call to the Israeli Embassy and said in Hebrew, “The situation is not good.”
Students and faculty members gathered last night to mourn the rabbi and his wife, as well as the nearly 200 other victims of the terrorist attacks last Wednesday.
The event, co-sponsored by Chabad and Hillel, was the second in two days held in honor of the victims.
Over 100 people gathered in Longfellow Hall on Monday night to grieve those who had died and to discuss how Harvard can help the victims and their families and promote peace.
That event was sponsored by the South Asian Initiative at Harvard.
Anjali Adukia, a student at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education who helped coordinate the event, said that she was especially encouraged by the diversity of the turnout, particularly the large presence of Pakistani students.
“You could never walk away from an event like this and say that Indians and Pakistanis don’t care about each other,” she said. “At the end of the day, we are just two trees that formed at the same base.”
Adukia has already set up an online group to coordinate relief efforts, including a fundraiser for murdered hotel workers who were the “breadwinners” for their families.
Executive Director of Harvard Hillel Bernard Steinberg urged students to participate in a vigil tomorrow night at 10:30 p.m. at Memorial Church, led by the South Asian Association. “When students organize grassroots events, that is Harvard,” he said.
I'm very bothered by the way people write what our responce should be - increase in good deeds, etc., it's all fine and good, but no one speaks of the most common sence and practical thing - that all chabad shlichim and wives (and all jews if possible) should be armed and trained well in combat! I think R' Bar Tzaddok does justice to it here: http://koshertorah.com/PDF/armedfaith.pdf (especially page 4, where he suggests how it's to be done). Hershel, may be you're the right person to breach this topic?
In the Wake of Mumbai: An Agnostic Jew Considers Chabad http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2008/11/30/in-the-wake-of-mumbai-an-agnostic-jew-considers-chabad/
Like many agnostic Jews, I have my own experience of Chabad.
I first encountered them years ago on Los Angeles’ LaBrea Avenue, when a rabbi from one of their “Mitzvah tanks” (mobile vans) stopped me on the sidewalk. He asked if I was Jewish and, if so, when was the last time I had “laid tefillin” (put on ritual phylacteries). Frankly, I couldn’t remember if I ever had and recoiled from the invitation. I was again accosted by one of their number – with the same invitation - in front of the Western Wall in Jerusalem. This time I let him do it. Hey, when in Rome….
But this all meant little to me beyond minor cultural/anthropological interest until I again met some Chabadniks in LA who were helping substance abusers. For scraggily bearded “whackos” dressed in weird hats and ill-fitting Eighteenth Century Polish business suits they seemed to be going about it in a surprisingly sympathetic and even modern way. Later – I was then researching my novel about Jewish fundamentalism Raising the Dead– I joined a study group led by a Chabad/Lubavitcher rebbe in Westwood. Most of the members were from the music business, cool characters in trendy haircuts out to find God (or G-d, as they would have it). These dudes and dudettes – guilty perhaps about living lives of sex, drugs and rock & roll - were on the edge of self-parody, but the rabbi was able to engage with them on their “groovy” level and his own spiritual one simultaneously. I was impressed. (It is important to remember about Lubavitchers that they are rather different from other Hasidic sects that tend to be insular. The Chabadniks emphasize outreach, not just to Jews but to all in need.)
Still later, my wife and I, though both agnostics, thought we should do something for the Jewish education of our five-year old daughter, for cultural reasons at least. Most of the Sunday schools we investigated, however, were pretty pathetic and scarcely educational enterprises until we discovered “Chabad of Mt. Olympus.” We giggled at the humorous name, which derived from the location of the rabbi’s house in an aging Los Angeles tract development, but we enrolled our daughter in the school. It was a good experience, even if we had to put up with a lot of atrocious food at various Passover events, etc. (Cuisine is not Chabad’s long suit.) But the school was educational. Trailing behind my daughter, I learned a few things about my tradition myself, and yet nothing was ever imposed on me. I wasn’t even really proselytized.
And that’s the point. Chabadniks really are religious Jews in the best sense. Whether we admit it or not, Reform Jews from my background are hardly religious at all. It’s more of a social club. There’s nothing wrong in that, of course, as long as you are honest about it. But it should give a hint why the Chabadniks are more mainstays in the War on Terror than Reform Jews whose values and views often veer more towards John Kerry than Moshe Dayan.
Which leads me to the topic of the hour – Mumbai. It’s clear the young Lubavitcher couple murdered by the terrorists, Rabbi Gavriel Holzberg and his wife Rivka, were the finest of human beings. They were dedicated to promoting goodness in the world in the deepest spiritual sense. They wished only the best for all humanity and also did their best to encourage it, in fact gave their lives for it. You don’t have to believe in G-d or even God to understand that. Their horrifying deaths reminded this agnostic that there is indeed something called evil in the world.
SDR, I agree that it's "nice" that the media is giving "positive" attention (though I would stop short at calling that a "positive fallout"), but on the flip side it also alerts every terrorist cell in the world that they can achieve outstanding media coverage (and thus "success" in their eyes) by attacking their local Chabad house. Think about it - why did they not attack the Israeli Consulate in Mumbai? Quite simply because they would be shot dead before they can do any real damage. Chabad Houses on the other hand are full of Jews and are completely unprotected. David has a point, we are now a known easy target for every terrorist cell in the world and we'd better start thinking about measures to make our Shluchim less attractive targets. I hate that we even have to think this way, but it's a reality.
True to form Lubavitch managed to turn this tragedy into a media circus.Three (!)hespeidim from American heads of Lubavitch ???Meylah,Kotlarsky I understand.Long list of "other" people that were not shayach. Interesting that the minhag of Lubavitch not to be maspid was mentioned , so they just called "hesped" another name. This is just an observation, not meant to chas vesholom trivialize the tragedy, but again a more Yiddishe ceremony would be more appropriate
What I'm saying is that essentially all of the atrocities of Klal Yisroel are a hemshech of the Churban Bais HaMikdash and ensuing galus and the ultimate geulah BB"A.
I was not bothered by WHO was maspid, I was bothered by the excess and media circus aspect. You weren't. That's ok.I was just stating my opinion.If you only allow people who agree with you to post ,I''ll go elsewhere.
Ok. Why were you disappointed? When I said "media circus" I meant that it was clearly set up for media exposure and less about traditional Yiddishe mourning. All you need to do is see what the levayas of the other kedoshim looked like. Also, there was no need for such a dragged out process with so many maspidim who clearly had little to do with the niftorim. Just my thoughts
Was anybody bothered by the CONTENT of some of the hespedim? I couldn't believe what I was hearing but maybe I am just not used to how Lubavitchers speak.
I beg to differ on the "clearly set up" part of your statement.
I think the emcee and the announcements, and the "kibbudim," and the text of the speeches were what was wrong. The fact that an old senile fool like Peres was asked to speak, and that Rabbi Lau, for all his qualities was there performing.
Basically we agree. Peres is not senile, but should not have addressed the oilom.There should be no place for a secular person speaking at a levaya of kedoshim. But, see, it was set up this way..
Peres is the President of Israel and was obviously invited by Lubavitch officials to speak.There was more than a touch of a secular Israeli ceremony. Lkwd Guy, Could you, respectfully, tell me what you found unusual about the content?
Why you coming down on Grossman, I thought he was pretty sincere?
Kotlarsky did pretty well for a guy that can't speak. Yudel looked REALLY tired, although keep in mind he just got up from shiva himself last week. Shemtov I didn't get with at all. I guess he was there to deliver Bush's letter.
This levaya was not a levya from a chasdishe yid that u r not maspid because of bitul.. Chanufa.. Its a int"l event a mini churban habayis its a war of a billion people against klal yisroel its not a shtibel levaya.
I don't have the time or the inclination right now to go through the whole video again. Here are the first few that instances that I noted:
24:50 - 25:35 and again at 27:25 - 28:00
As I mentioned before, it may have seemed so jarring to my ears because I am not familiar with Chassidus b'chllal and Chabad Chassidus b'frat. Perhaps someone can enlighten me. Is this a normal way of speaking within these circles?
Tzig - You make me feel better. Given the extent of this horrific tragedy, I felt uncomfortable criticizing aspects of the levaya (particularly Peres speaking). I am happy to see that you, a Lubavitcher, in part agrees.
However, as a non-Lubavitcher (or maybe anti-Lubavitcher), I squirmed in my seat when Rabbi Rosenberg asked the Rebbe to be megaleh himself.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought they should not have allowed Peres to speak. (And yes, I think he asked; they should not have made a public fuss, but quietly have told him no.) And I have little patience for Lau's performances at the best of times — and this was not the best of times. The current chief rabbis, I wouldn't have asked them to speak, but if they asked I'd have let them, and of course if one does then so must the other, shelo lehatil kin'oh bemaasei bereishis.
But the most heartrending speech was the impromptu one that R Nachman Holtzberg gave, right at the end, in Yiddish. I assume he wasn't on the roster of speakers because he's not a rov or a public speaker, and couldn't give a 10-minute prepared speech on demand. But when he came up he spoke directly from the heart, and it went directly into my heart, and I'm sure into many more. The fact that it was unpractised and unpolished, and that it was so short, made it that much more powerful.
As for R Rosenberg's speech, I don't understand what problem people have with it. He said that he expected the niftorim to meet the Rebbe when they come before the Kisei Hakovod: nu, don't you think that's so? Unless you believe the Rebbe is not to be found in the Next World, presumably because he's skulking in some secret chamber, it stands to reason that they will meet him. And when they do, he told them to say that just as their son needs his mother, we all need our father, and one way or another he needs to come back quickly. Again, what's your problem with this? You don't believe in techiyas hameisim?
I am not a fan of Pereses views but chabad is not Reb Arelech chassidus its a big tent for Klal Yisroel as a whole, in every shape or form and they should not hide it, since its the Rebbes view and obviously the view of the Kedoshie Mumbai, Peres spoke like a jew a Maamin Bashem this is as important as putting on tefilin since tefilin is also emuna. If you have a extreme lefty President talk in such a fashion its a kidush hashem on a big media scale, no matter what you think in your sinister mind that it was political but chassidus tells us that even Peres has a pure soul. If Hirshel doesnt think that way, thats a sign that he lost it, and its time for him to recharge on his chasidishkiet.
The photo of one of the fathers, I persume, grasping a shrouded body haunts me. I wake up in a cold sweat and that what I see. I can't get it out of my head
I felt the same way. And the calling out in their belief in the Rebbe, too.
There is no equivalent to this among other Chassidim or Roshei Yeshiva. No one is doubting that Chabad is unique, different. But is the manner in which Chabad differs so markedly from everyone else a good thing?
I'm no expert on Breslov, but I think that they go much further with their daily hisbodedus, where they cry out to the Rebbe to shlep them out of their rut.
Sorry to bring it up in a tragic post, but Lubavitch has serious hashkapha problems. Other Jews, Chassidim and Misnagdim, cry out to Hashem. Only Lubavitcher's cry out to the Rebbe.
I just can't understand how people that learn Chabad Chassidus, which is based on the התבוננות איך שהקב"ה ממלא כך עלמין וסובב כל עלמין וכו', can pray to a בשר ודם. Lubavitch today is far removed from all that Chabad stood for. I'm sorry to say that this is definitely the result of the הדרכה of the last Rebbe. שויתי ד' לננדי תמיד was replaced with שויתי הרבי.
I'm sorry to say this Ailimisher, but you spoke from your rear now. Plain and simple. You really think that a Lubavitcher wakes up in the morning and davens to the Rebbe? He thanks the Rebbe for giving him another day?
You know very well that a Lubavitcher thinks more about the Rebbe than about Hashem. Sure he davens to hashem, but does he internalize it? Does it go into the פנימיות, as you guys put it? And I mean relative to other Jews.
All of the good will that Lubavitch had from Mumbai was lost when the mass public was exposed to how Lubavitchers really speak, "the Rebbe controls the world" (Cunin), etc. People were truly shocked.
To see two mechutanim standing at the fresh graves of their children...There are no words to describe the depth of this tragedy.
ReplyDeleteWhich kreiz is not feeling the pain today?
Why don't you post something constructive, like Shas Mishnayos, for your learned readership to undertake in their memory?
Hershel,
ReplyDeleteYou did well posting those photos. We need to ingrain those images on our physche, the next time we take a 'gun' to shoot (figuratively) another Jew.
The Levaya was:
http://www.chabad.org/news/article_cdo/aid/778264/jewish/Holtzbergs-Funeral-Services.htm
had its moments, Grossman I thought was really "real", Peres I could have done without, Rosenberg was...well what can you say...Mir Zol Nisht Ge'Prift Veren.
אייניקל
ReplyDeletea good idea.
I'll get to it shortly.
Klausenberger Rebbe, 5742:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bhol.co.il/news_read.asp?id=7580&cat_id=1
deserves its own post, maybe.
technically it does have its own post. One below this one. I just added the links to the levayas.
ReplyDeleteSorry, didn't see that. The updates don't get added to my RSS feed.
ReplyDeletewhich reminds me: how many of you read the blog through RSS feeds and not by going to the actual site?
ReplyDeletedon't all answer at once...
threw together a little tribute song to the Mumbai Shluchim HY"D...I'm not doing well talking about it, too fresh. song on top at www.myspace.com/thesheichet
ReplyDeleteL'maaseh six kedoshim murdered in cold blood. We all feel tremendous grief and outrage at the atrocious shedding of innocent yiddishe blood. I know were focusing on the instant disaster as it is still right in front of us but it's yet another step closer to the geulah.
ReplyDeleteTo put the churban europe in perspective multiply the feelings you feel right now times 1,000,000. You can't take it!!!! It's time for teshuva and g'milus chasodim. Ha makom yenachem all of us and all of K'lal Yisroel and may we be zoiche to the geulah shlaima b'mheira B'YOMEINU. Amen!
those pictures really make it sink in something terrible, I suddenly feel like I can't understand the Eibershter anymore - how could he let this happen? I'm looking at these pics and I'm falling apart. And suddenly I just started to understand what happened to the 6 million.
ReplyDeleteThese pictures should inspire חשבון הנפש and תשובה in all of כלל ישראל and בפרט in the עדות which were so tragically effected.
ReplyDeleteSome positive fallout from the tragedy as media focuses on good works!
ReplyDeleteFrom the San Francisco Chronicle at http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/12/03/MNSJ14G460.DTL
Chabad-Lubavitch offers Jews abroad a home
Matthai Kuruvila, Chronicle Religion Writer
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Members of the Bay Area's Chabad-Lubavitch community mourned Tuesday as the bodies of two brethren killed in the Mumbai terrorist attacks were buried in Israel.
Lubavitchers, as they are sometimes called, have made a modern mission out of creating havens for Jewish religious practice in far flung corners of the world - a tradition whose early roots include the Bay Area.
For the secular Jew seeking a deeper connection to the faith or Jewish travelers abroad searching for a place to have Shabbat dinner on Friday night, there are Chabad Houses in places ranging from Kyrgyzstan and Laos to the Democratic Republic of Congo.
But the terrorist attacks have provoked many to question whether the community's trademark openness, where all are welcome, is also a liability.
"Our accessibility, which is the key to our success, also makes us vulnerable," said Rabbi Gedalia Potash, 32, leader of Chabad of Noe Valley, who went to religious school with the slain Mumbai rabbi, Gavriel Holtzberg. "We're always welcoming people we don't know or people we barely know."
Growth in California
Born in the 1700s in Russia as a branch of Hasidic Judaism, the Chabad-Lubavitch movement moved to the United States in 1940 when leaders fled Nazi persecution. It has been based in Brooklyn ever since.
A critical component in the denomination's growth in the 1960s developed in California. The first Chabad House was opened near the UCLA campus in 1968. It was an outreach to unaffiliated Jews, particularly young people. The second was formed in Berkeley in 1972, according to Rabbi Yosef Langer, leader of Chabad of San Francisco.
Langer said it was no coincidence that the first three Chabad Houses of their kind, including one in San Diego, were formed in California during that time. The era was marked by social experimentation by young people, from the Summer of Love to Beatniks. Religion was part of that.
Spiritual quest
"We had to address the yearning and the wanting to connect to something spiritual and something Jewish," said Langer, 62, who grew up in Oakland and is the senior rabbi for the Chabad movement in Northern California, where there are now more than 30 Chabad Houses. Langer said Chabad was part of a larger shift within Jewish practice in America that sought a more personal and less institutional connection to the faith.
"Judaism wasn't perceived as something spiritual before the late 1960s and early 1970s," he said. "It was something you were forced to take part in."
Chabad Houses typically are led by a married couple; there are more than 4,000 couples who run the houses in 73 countries. There are more Chabad Houses in California and Florida than anywhere else in the world. Each Chabad House responds to the needs of its own particular community.
Holtzberg, 29, and his wife, Rivkah, 28, opened the Chabad House in Mumbai in 2003. The Holtzbergs were catering to a growing number of Jews who have been visiting India, particularly young Israelis who have finished compulsory service with the military.
Chabad reaches out
The Web site for Chabad Mumbai lists services that include a kosher kitchen, circumcision, drug prevention and marriage preparation. Rabbi Holtzberg reportedly slaughtered meat himself due to the absence of a kosher butcher.
The openness with which Lubavitchers view the world is in contrast with many other Hasidic groups, said Sue Fishkoff, an Oakland resident and author of the 2003 book, "The Rebbe's Army: Inside the World of Chabad-Lubavitch."
"Many Hasidic movements were wiped out in the holocaust," said Fishkoff, a reporter for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. "Those who survived largely moved to America and turned inward. They became very insular. They put up walls to protect themselves from the outside world that had hurt them so badly.
"The leadership of the Chabad movement decided instead to reach out and to try to persuade Jews to become more observant."
'The message of love'
Several Lubavitch rabbis spoke of the desire to persevere with acts of kindness and goodness in the face of terror. Fishkoff, who is not part of the Lubavitch community, said that she happened to be in Monterey on Friday and attended services at the Chabad House run by Rabbi Dovid Holtzberg, a first cousin of the slain Mumbai rabbi.
"He didn't talk about revenge," said Fishkoff. "He didn't talk about victimization. All he talked about was spreading the message of love."
The last time a Chabad House was attacked was in 1956 in Israel, where members' Jewishness obviously would not have been distinctive, unlike Mumbai. After that attack, the leader of the Chabad movement, Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, urged believers to be comforted in rebuilding.
That ethos will continue, several Bay Area Lubavitch rabbis said. Physical security, though needed, can only do so much.
"Who wants to become like Fort Knox?" said Rabbi Yehuda Ferris, who runs Chabad of the East Bay in Berkeley. "We have to be open and welcoming. It's a very delicate balance we have to strike. ... We have to balance the precautions with more strength and more light. A little light pushes away a lot of darkness."
Chabad-Lubavitch
For more information about Chabad-Lubavitch or how to donate to the community's effort to rebuild in Mumbai, visit www.chabad.org.
From The Dallas Morning News at http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/DN-chabad_03met.ART.State.Edition1.4a25ffa.html
In Dallas, Jews mourn deaths of friends in Mumbai
12:00 AM CST on Wednesday, December 3, 2008
By MISTY DEAN / The Dallas Morning News
As victims of last week's terrorist attack on a Jewish outreach center in Mumbai, India, were laid to rest in Israel, the North Texas Chabad houses united Tuesday in Dallas to pray for the injured and mourn the deaths of their colleagues and friends.
Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife, Rivkah Holtzberg, operated the Chabad-Lubavitch Jewish center, called "Nariman House," in Mumbai. They were killed, along with four others at the center, during the standoff between Indian military forces and terrorists.
"Tonight the purpose is to pay tribute to the people that died and to comfort those who share in their pain, to resolve that this loss will inspire us to redirect ourselves to the work of spreading goodness and light in the world," said Rabbi Zvi Drizin of The Intown Chabad, who spoke at the memorial service at the Chabad of Dallas.
Chabad is a sect of Hasidism, a form of Orthodox Judaism.
The Holtzbergs moved from the U.S. to Mumbai in 2003 to serve the local Jewish community and tourists.
About two years ago, the Holtzbergs established the center, a five-story building in Mumbai's Colaba market. It was founded as a house of God, a learning center and safe haven for travelers in need of spiritual and emotional support far from home.
"These were amazing people who dedicated their lives to helping people. They are a beacon of light to all of us in times of darkness," Rabbi Drizin said. "Chabad is dedicated to goodness, and terror has no future."
A fund has been established to rebuild the center and to help the extended Holtzberg family care for the couple's orphaned children. Donations can be made through Chabad of Dallas or at www.chabadindia.org.
From The Jerusalem Post at http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1227702405874&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Dec 3, 2008 0:50 | Updated Dec 3, 2008 9:42
Chabad: Vengeance through kindness
The message from the funeral at Kfar Chabad on Tuesday was one of revenge - but not through violence. Rather, revenge that answers brutal, pointless Islamic terrorism with the light of loving-kindness.
Mourners pray over the bodies of Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife Rivka z"l, during their funeral procession in Kfar Chabad, Tuesday.
"I vow that we will avenge the deaths of Gabi and Rivki," announced Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, vice chairman of Chabad's educational arm, from New York, referring to Mumbai emissaries Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife, Rivka.
"But not with AK-47s, not with grenades and tanks. We will take revenge in a different way," Kotlarsky said.
"We will add light. We will add good deeds. We will make sure that there is not one Jewish man who does not put on tefillin. We will make sure that there is not one Jewish woman who does not light candles.
"And the Chabad House in Mumbai will be rebuilt and it will begin operating again," he said.
Kotlarsky said the rebuilt Jewish center in Nariman House would named after the Holtzbergs.
Thousands gathered in Kfar Chabad Tuesday afternoon to eulogize the Holtzbergs, who were murdered last week in Mumbai by Pakistani Islamists.
Prominent politicians were in attendance, including President Shimon Peres, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu, and several Shas ministers and MKs.
There were also several top officials of Chabad's leadership, such as Rabbi Avraham Shemtov, head of Agudas Hassidei Chabad International, the movement's umbrella organization.
No one better symbolized the type of revenge promised by Kotlarsky than the Holtzbergs' two-year-old son Moishe, who was miraculously saved by the Holtzberg's Indian employee, Sandra Samuel.
"Rivki, Gabi you were loved in your lifetime and in your death," said Rabbi Shimon Rosenberg, Rivki's father, who turned to the bodies of his daughter and Gabi, which lay on wooden benches wrapped in shrouds.
"I promise that your shlihut [mission] will not be cut short, that your home will not be destroyed.
"The despicable murderers went into the rebbe's house to destroy it, but it shall not fall," Rosenberg said. "The child Moishie will be the rebbe's shaliach [messenger] and we will look after him. This Hanukka he will light a menorah in the Arc of Victory in Mumbai, and this will symbolize your shlichut. From here, from Kfar Chabad, the cry, 'Until when, until when' will spring forth. Rivki and Gabi, we love you!"
Kotlarsky added: "Moishe, you have no mom and dad who will take you in their arms. You have no one to hold and kiss you. You will be the child of all of Israel."
A new dimension of the Holtzberg tragedy was revealed by Rosenberg, who told the crowd, estimated at more than 15,000, that Rivki was five months pregnant when she was murdered.
"They killed three people, not two," he said.
Rosenberg and his wife have indicated that they will take over the Chabad House mission in place of their slain daughter and son-in-law.
Tel Aviv Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, a survivor of Buchenwald who lost both parents as a child, mentioned Moishe as the "beacon of light who will continue his parents' work."
So did Kotlarsky, who said, "Little Moishe, [you] will return to the Chabad House when you are older. That will be your house, a place where you will find comfort and continue your parents' work."
In addition to the disciples of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the last Lubavitcher rebbe, there were dozens present, perhaps more, whose lives were touched by the two young Chabad emissaries.
There were smartly-dressed diamond merchants, long-haired hippy backpackers, businessmen, kashrut supervisors, and many others who, due to a myriad of circumstances, had ended up as guests of the Holtzbergs and enjoyed their hospitality.
Whether it was kosher food, aid to Israelis who wound up in Indian prison for drugs, prayer with a minyan or just a bed, the Holtzbergs were there for travelers passing through Mumbai, said the many eulogizers, who included Chief Rabbis Yona Metzger and Shlomo Amar.
Still, the vast majority of mourners who came to accompany the Holtzbergs on their last journey were members of the Chabad movement, a vast and rapidly growing organization with representation in at least 73 countries, including potentially dangerous locations in North Africa, the former Soviet Union and India.
About 4,000 couples are Chabad emissaries, making Chabad the largest Jewish outreach organization in the world.
Chabad is not without its schisms, including an ongoing, occasionally violent, theological debate regarding the status of Schneerson, who died in New York in 1994, with some claiming that Schneerson is still "alive" and will soon reveal himself as the messiah.
This theological split was evident in Kfar Chabad's synagogue Tuesday. Hundreds filed into the house of prayer after the funeral procession departed for Jerusalem. At the conclusion of the afternoon Minhah prayer, some declared, "May our master, our teacher, our rabbi the anointed Messiah-king live forever," while others refrained, looking on wryly.
Among the sea of black hats surrounding the eulogizers there were yellow and black flags with a picture of a crown and the word "Messiah" printed on them in English, Hebrew - and Arabic.
But at the Holtzberg funeral the theological rift was temporarily forgotten.
Kfar Chabad's rabbi, Rabbi Mordechai Shmuel Ashkenazi, called on Chabad followers to use the tragedy as a means of fostering unity.
"There is one rebbe, one God and Chabad, and we all are working to prepare the world for the messiah," he declared.
Tens of thousands attended the Holtzbergs' funeral on Tuesday night on Jerusalem's Mount of Olives, overlooking the Old City.
The four other victims of the Mumbai bombings flown to Israel - Bentzion Chroman, 28, Leibish Teitelbaum, 38, Yocheved Orpaz, 60, and Norma Shvarzblat Rabinovich, 50 - were buried separately at cemeteries in Jerusalem, Bnei Brak, Petah Tikva and Tel Aviv.
From The Harvard Crimson at http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=525674
Harvard Remembers Rabbis
Published On Wednesday, December 03, 2008 1:17 AM
By LAURA G. MIRVISS
Contributing Writer
Just 12 weeks ago, Peter N. Ganong ’09 paid his second visit in two years to the Chabad House in Mumbai, where he enjoyed a warm Sabbath meal and services. The atmosphere was exceptionally welcoming: the floor was covered with toys that belonged to the toddler of a young rabbi, Rabbi Gavriel, and his wife, Rivka Holtzbergand.
The couple was killed in last week’s terrorist assault on Mumbai, which left 171 people dead.
Last night at Harvard’s Chabad House, a community center for the Jewish Orthodox movement, Ganong delivered an emotional eulogy.
“He and Rivka ran a home away from home with the most devoted followers,” he said in his remarks.
Ganong, who describes himself as an observant Jew, traveled and conducted research on economic development in India for the last two summers.
Ganong said that he enjoyed visiting Chabad houses on Shabbat, where he could attend services and connect with the local Jewish community.
“These are outstanding places,” he said. “There is a network that makes it possible to be an observant Jew anywhere in the world.”
Ganong is among an increasing number of people who believe the Chabad House attacks were carefully targeted.
He remembered Mumbai’s Chabad House as being extremely inaccessible—it sits in a narrow, dark alleyway in the midst of the vast tourist city.
Ganong is one of at least half a dozen Harvard students who visited Mumbai and came in contact with Rabbi Gavriel and his family.
Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi, the director of Chabad at Harvard, frequently connected students to the Chabad in Mumbai and, as a result, got to know Rabbi Gavriel personally.
“They embraced and loved every person they came in contact with on any level,” Gavriel said.
He described the family as unfailingly generous people who were equally willing to provide spiritual guidance as they were to aid a traveler who had lost a passport, missed a flight, or just needed a meal or a place to stay. “They were there to serve,” he said.
Zarchi said that after he first heard about the Mumbai attacks he and other Chabad members immediately thought about their brethren in the city.
Soon after, the news from the city began to trickle in, and both Rabbi Gavriel and Holtzbergand were unreachable by cell phone.
In the midst of the crisis, Rabbi Gavriel had made a final call to the Israeli Embassy and said in Hebrew, “The situation is not good.”
Students and faculty members gathered last night to mourn the rabbi and his wife, as well as the nearly 200 other victims of the terrorist attacks last Wednesday.
The event, co-sponsored by Chabad and Hillel, was the second in two days held in honor of the victims.
Over 100 people gathered in Longfellow Hall on Monday night to grieve those who had died and to discuss how Harvard can help the victims and their families and promote peace.
That event was sponsored by the South Asian Initiative at Harvard.
Anjali Adukia, a student at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education who helped coordinate the event, said that she was especially encouraged by the diversity of the turnout, particularly the large presence of Pakistani students.
“You could never walk away from an event like this and say that Indians and Pakistanis don’t care about each other,” she said. “At the end of the day, we are just two trees that formed at the same base.”
Adukia has already set up an online group to coordinate relief efforts, including a fundraiser for murdered hotel workers who were the “breadwinners” for their families.
Executive Director of Harvard Hillel Bernard Steinberg urged students to participate in a vigil tomorrow night at 10:30 p.m. at Memorial Church, led by the South Asian Association. “When students organize grassroots events, that is Harvard,” he said.
I'm very bothered by the way people write what our responce should be - increase in good deeds, etc., it's all fine and good, but no one speaks of the most common sence and practical thing - that all chabad shlichim and wives (and all jews if possible) should be armed and trained well in combat! I think R' Bar Tzaddok does justice to it here: http://koshertorah.com/PDF/armedfaith.pdf (especially page 4, where he suggests how it's to be done).
ReplyDeleteHershel, may be you're the right person to breach this topic?
In the Wake of Mumbai: An Agnostic Jew Considers Chabad
ReplyDeletehttp://pajamasmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2008/11/30/in-the-wake-of-mumbai-an-agnostic-jew-considers-chabad/
Like many agnostic Jews, I have my own experience of Chabad.
I first encountered them years ago on Los Angeles’ LaBrea Avenue, when a rabbi from one of their “Mitzvah tanks” (mobile vans) stopped me on the sidewalk. He asked if I was Jewish and, if so, when was the last time I had “laid tefillin” (put on ritual phylacteries). Frankly, I couldn’t remember if I ever had and recoiled from the invitation. I was again accosted by one of their number – with the same invitation - in front of the Western Wall in Jerusalem. This time I let him do it. Hey, when in Rome….
But this all meant little to me beyond minor cultural/anthropological interest until I again met some Chabadniks in LA who were helping substance abusers. For scraggily bearded “whackos” dressed in weird hats and ill-fitting Eighteenth Century Polish business suits they seemed to be going about it in a surprisingly sympathetic and even modern way. Later – I was then researching my novel about Jewish fundamentalism Raising the Dead– I joined a study group led by a Chabad/Lubavitcher rebbe in Westwood. Most of the members were from the music business, cool characters in trendy haircuts out to find God (or G-d, as they would have it). These dudes and dudettes – guilty perhaps about living lives of sex, drugs and rock & roll - were on the edge of self-parody, but the rabbi was able to engage with them on their “groovy” level and his own spiritual one simultaneously. I was impressed. (It is important to remember about Lubavitchers that they are rather different from other Hasidic sects that tend to be insular. The Chabadniks emphasize outreach, not just to Jews but to all in need.)
Still later, my wife and I, though both agnostics, thought we should do something for the Jewish education of our five-year old daughter, for cultural reasons at least. Most of the Sunday schools we investigated, however, were pretty pathetic and scarcely educational enterprises until we discovered “Chabad of Mt. Olympus.” We giggled at the humorous name, which derived from the location of the rabbi’s house in an aging Los Angeles tract development, but we enrolled our daughter in the school. It was a good experience, even if we had to put up with a lot of atrocious food at various Passover events, etc. (Cuisine is not Chabad’s long suit.) But the school was educational. Trailing behind my daughter, I learned a few things about my tradition myself, and yet nothing was ever imposed on me. I wasn’t even really proselytized.
And that’s the point. Chabadniks really are religious Jews in the best sense. Whether we admit it or not, Reform Jews from my background are hardly religious at all. It’s more of a social club. There’s nothing wrong in that, of course, as long as you are honest about it. But it should give a hint why the Chabadniks are more mainstays in the War on Terror than Reform Jews whose values and views often veer more towards John Kerry than Moshe Dayan.
Which leads me to the topic of the hour – Mumbai. It’s clear the young Lubavitcher couple murdered by the terrorists, Rabbi Gavriel Holzberg and his wife Rivka, were the finest of human beings. They were dedicated to promoting goodness in the world in the deepest spiritual sense. They wished only the best for all humanity and also did their best to encourage it, in fact gave their lives for it. You don’t have to believe in G-d or even God to understand that. Their horrifying deaths reminded this agnostic that there is indeed something called evil in the world.
So now what do I do? What, indeed, do we all do?
SDR, I agree that it's "nice" that the media is giving "positive" attention (though I would stop short at calling that a "positive fallout"), but on the flip side it also alerts every terrorist cell in the world that they can achieve outstanding media coverage (and thus "success" in their eyes) by attacking their local Chabad house. Think about it - why did they not attack the Israeli Consulate in Mumbai? Quite simply because they would be shot dead before they can do any real damage. Chabad Houses on the other hand are full of Jews and are completely unprotected. David has a point, we are now a known easy target for every terrorist cell in the world and we'd better start thinking about measures to make our Shluchim less attractive targets. I hate that we even have to think this way, but it's a reality.
ReplyDelete"but it's yet another step closer to the geulah."
ReplyDeleteSDR
Can you explain what you are trying to say????How is this another step closer?
I check out the site daily
ReplyDeleteVERY NICE. At least somebody answered...
ReplyDeleteTrue to form Lubavitch managed to turn this tragedy into a media circus.Three (!)hespeidim from American heads of Lubavitch ???Meylah,Kotlarsky I understand.Long list of "other" people that were not shayach.
ReplyDeleteInteresting that the minhag of Lubavitch not to be maspid was mentioned , so they just called "hesped" another name.
This is just an observation, not meant to chas vesholom trivialize the tragedy, but again a more Yiddishe ceremony would be more appropriate
Chaim
ReplyDeleteit seems like it was WHO was maspid that bothered you, not the fact that there were hespedim....
boruch,
ReplyDeleteWhat I'm saying is that essentially all of the atrocities of Klal Yisroel are a hemshech of the Churban Bais HaMikdash and ensuing galus and the ultimate geulah BB"A.
I was not bothered by WHO was maspid, I was bothered by the excess and media circus aspect.
ReplyDeleteYou weren't.
That's ok.I was just stating my opinion.If you only allow people who agree with you to post ,I''ll go elsewhere.
Chaim'l
ReplyDeletedid I not allow you to post here?
did I say I disagreed?
I was also disappointed with the Levaya, but for different reasons. The media came on its own, there was no need to call them.
Ok.
ReplyDeleteWhy were you disappointed?
When I said "media circus" I meant that it was clearly set up for media exposure and less about traditional Yiddishe mourning.
All you need to do is see what the levayas of the other kedoshim looked like.
Also, there was no need for such a dragged out process with so many maspidim who clearly had little to do with the niftorim.
Just my thoughts
Was anybody bothered by the CONTENT of some of the hespedim? I couldn't believe what I was hearing but maybe I am just not used to how Lubavitchers speak.
ReplyDeleteI beg to differ on the "clearly set up" part of your statement.
ReplyDeleteI think the emcee and the announcements, and the "kibbudim," and the text of the speeches were what was wrong. The fact that an old senile fool like Peres was asked to speak, and that Rabbi Lau, for all his qualities was there performing.
there's more...
they forgot (the maspidim) that they weren't at a farbrengen. nu, nu.
ReplyDeleteBasically we agree.
ReplyDeletePeres is not senile, but should not have addressed the oilom.There should be no place for a secular person speaking at a levaya of kedoshim.
But, see, it was set up this way..
set up? by whom? since when does Chabad care about Peres? maybe it was YD Grossman that did it?
ReplyDeletefind out.
besides, Peres definitely IS senile...
:-)
Peres is the President of Israel and was obviously invited by Lubavitch officials to speak.There was more than a touch of a secular Israeli ceremony.
ReplyDeleteLkwd Guy,
Could you, respectfully, tell me what you found unusual about the content?
obviously? says who? maybe he invited himself?
ReplyDeletewhich officials exactly?
Do you think he just anounced he is going to speak?
ReplyDeleteDon't think so.
Lets not get bogged down in that detail, though.
ok, no bogging down. I promise.
ReplyDeleteHershel,
ReplyDeleteWhy you coming down on Grossman, I thought he was pretty sincere?
Kotlarsky did pretty well for a guy that can't speak. Yudel looked REALLY tired, although keep in mind he just got up from shiva himself last week. Shemtov I didn't get with at all. I guess he was there to deliver Bush's letter.
BP
ReplyDeleteI had no problem with Grossman's speech.
The others? (K, K, and ST) beh.
unfortunate post title more like.
ReplyDeleteושכב עם אבותיו בהר הזתים
or
לִקְדוֹשִׁים, אֲשֶׁר-בָּאָרֶץ הֵמָּה;
Could you, respectfully, tell me what you found unusual about the content?
ReplyDeleteMostly the crying out to the rebbe.
"Mostly the crying out to the rebbe."
ReplyDeleteI also (not used to hearing Lubavitcher speakers) found this odd and troubling.
what time on the video do these appear?
ReplyDeleteThis levaya was not a levya from a chasdishe yid that u r not maspid because of bitul.. Chanufa.. Its a int"l event a mini churban habayis its a war of a billion people against klal yisroel its not a shtibel levaya.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I was awed by her father's cry of Hatzur Tomim Po'oloi, etc. Incredible.
ReplyDeleteI don't have the time or the inclination right now to go through the whole video again. Here are the first few that instances that I noted:
ReplyDelete24:50 - 25:35 and again at 27:25 - 28:00
As I mentioned before, it may have seemed so jarring to my ears because I am not familiar with Chassidus b'chllal and Chabad Chassidus b'frat. Perhaps someone can enlighten me. Is this a normal way of speaking within these circles?
"Mostly the crying out to the rebbe."
ReplyDeleteMy dear friend,
When my heart is pained, I cry out to my father. And Er Iz Shoin In Der Oilum Hu'Emes Mer Vi Fertzig Yur!
Tzig - You make me feel better. Given the extent of this horrific tragedy, I felt uncomfortable criticizing aspects of the levaya (particularly Peres speaking). I am happy to see that you, a Lubavitcher, in part agrees.
ReplyDeleteHowever, as a non-Lubavitcher (or maybe anti-Lubavitcher), I squirmed in my seat when Rabbi Rosenberg asked the Rebbe to be megaleh himself.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought they should not have allowed Peres to speak. (And yes, I think he asked; they should not have made a public fuss, but quietly have told him no.) And I have little patience for Lau's performances at the best of times — and this was not the best of times. The current chief rabbis, I wouldn't have asked them to speak, but if they asked I'd have let them, and of course if one does then so must the other, shelo lehatil kin'oh bemaasei bereishis.
ReplyDeleteBut the most heartrending speech was the impromptu one that R Nachman Holtzberg gave, right at the end, in Yiddish. I assume he wasn't on the roster of speakers because he's not a rov or a public speaker, and couldn't give a 10-minute prepared speech on demand. But when he came up he spoke directly from the heart, and it went directly into my heart, and I'm sure into many more. The fact that it was unpractised and unpolished, and that it was so short, made it that much more powerful.
As for R Rosenberg's speech, I don't understand what problem people have with it. He said that he expected the niftorim to meet the Rebbe when they come before the Kisei Hakovod: nu, don't you think that's so? Unless you believe the Rebbe is not to be found in the Next World, presumably because he's skulking in some secret chamber, it stands to reason that they will meet him. And when they do, he told them to say that just as their son needs his mother, we all need our father, and one way or another he needs to come back quickly. Again, what's your problem with this? You don't believe in techiyas hameisim?
I am not a fan of Pereses views but chabad is not Reb
ReplyDeleteArelech chassidus its a big tent for Klal Yisroel as a whole, in every shape or form and they should not hide it, since its the Rebbes view and obviously the view of the Kedoshie Mumbai, Peres spoke like a jew a Maamin Bashem this is as important as putting on tefilin since tefilin is also emuna. If you have a extreme lefty President talk in such a fashion its a kidush hashem on a big media scale, no matter what you think in your sinister mind that it was political but chassidus tells us that even Peres has a pure soul. If Hirshel doesnt think that way, thats a sign that he lost it, and its time for him to recharge on his chasidishkiet.
The photo of one of the fathers, I persume, grasping a shrouded body haunts me. I wake up in a cold sweat and that what I see. I can't get it out of my head
ReplyDeleteThe man holding the body is NOT a father. he's an Ish Chevra Kadisha.
ReplyDelete>>"Mostly the crying out to the rebbe."
ReplyDeleteI felt the same way. And the calling out in their belief in the Rebbe, too.
There is no equivalent to this among other Chassidim or Roshei Yeshiva. No one is doubting that Chabad is unique, different. But is the manner in which Chabad differs so markedly from everyone else a good thing?
I'm no expert on Breslov, but I think that they go much further with their daily hisbodedus, where they cry out to the Rebbe to shlep them out of their rut.
ReplyDeleteever hear of:
!נחמן! קצתי בחיי
Breslove does not even come close. Please. Besides, Likutei Moharan is so deep.
ReplyDeleteSorry to bring it up in a tragic post, but Lubavitch has serious hashkapha problems. Other Jews, Chassidim and Misnagdim, cry out to Hashem. Only Lubavitcher's cry out to the Rebbe.
ReplyDeleteI just can't understand how people that learn Chabad Chassidus, which is based on the התבוננות איך שהקב"ה ממלא כך עלמין וסובב כל עלמין וכו', can pray to a בשר ודם. Lubavitch today is far removed from all that Chabad stood for. I'm sorry to say that this is definitely the result of the הדרכה of the last Rebbe. שויתי ד' לננדי תמיד was replaced with שויתי הרבי.
I'm sorry to say this Ailimisher, but you spoke from your rear now. Plain and simple. You really think that a Lubavitcher wakes up in the morning and davens to the Rebbe? He thanks the Rebbe for giving him another day?
ReplyDeleteSome people will believe anything!
Hirshel,
ReplyDeleteYou know very well that a Lubavitcher thinks more about the Rebbe than about Hashem. Sure he davens to hashem, but does he internalize it? Does it go into the פנימיות, as you guys put it? And I mean relative to other Jews.
All of the good will that Lubavitch had from Mumbai was lost when the mass public was exposed to how Lubavitchers really speak, "the Rebbe controls the world" (Cunin), etc. People were truly shocked.