One month after their children perished in the Mumbai, India, terror attacks, the parents of Rabbi Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg – whose bodies were recovered along with those of four other Jews at the Chabad House they directed for more than five years – will light a Chanukah menorah at the Gateway to India monument.
Rabbi Nachman and Freida Holtzberg of New York and Rabbi Shimon and Yehudit Rosenberg of Afula, Israel, and several of the fallen emissaries’ siblings will participate in the lighting ceremony, along with Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, vice chairman of the educational arm of Chabad-Lubavitch. Another lighting ceremony will take place the same night at the Chabad House, which was severely damaged in the terror attacks and the ensuing military response.
For several years, the Holtzbergs erected the very same menorah at the monument, now suspected by investigators as the point of entry for the 10 Islamist terrorists who brought life in Mumbai to a standstill for three days in late November. Just days after the attack, both sets of parents pledged at their children’s funeral in the Israeli village of Kfar Chabad that the menorah would once again be lit.
The Thursday night lighting will take place on the fifth night of Chanukah, which the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory, taught as having a special spiritual significance. Beginning on the fifth night, the lit candles of a menorah outnumber the unlit ones, thus illustrating the power of light to overcome darkness.
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