Nighttime Parade Celebrates Completion of Mumbai Torah

With the fathers of Rabbi Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg – the slain directors of the Chabad-Lubavitch center in Mumbai, India – leading the way, thousands of the couple’s fellow emissaries answered tragedy with Jewish pride Thursday night, parading a newly-completed Torah scroll down a central Brooklyn, N.Y., thoroughfare.

Written with the support of Chabad-Lubavitch emissaries around the world and members of the Jewish community in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, the new Torah is destined for a reopened Chabad House, which terrorists stormed during last year’s attacks in the Indian financial capital. An inscription on the Torah’s cover dedicates the holy scroll to the memory of the Holtzbergs and the four other Jews who were murdered alongside them at the Chabad House.

In his remarks to conference attendees at the Oholei Torah yeshiva before a procession accompanied the scroll two blocks down Eastern Parkway to Lubavitch World Headquarters, Rabbi Shimon Rosenberg, Rivka Holtzberg’s father, told the assembled rabbis that, in keeping with Jewish law and Chasidic practice, unbounded joy was the only proper response at such an occasion. Almost a year after the attacks, Rosenberg said that he was “certain that Gabi and Rivky would want us to add light” to their Mumbai home.

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“Everybody knows the lofty nature of a Torah completion,” explained Rosenberg, who flew in from Afula, Israel, for the occasion and the Nov. 11-15 annual International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries. “But particularly given the holiness here during the conference, I am sure that Gabi and Rivky are joining, right now, in this celebration.”

Before the festivities began, many attendees had tears in their eyes watching Rosenberg and Rabbi Nachman Holtzberg, Gavriel Holtzberg’s father, fill in the last letters of the Torah scroll. The somber mood continued as Holtzberg led the gathering in the singing of a Chasidic melody composed by a forbear. But after the scroll was lifted for all to see, the room bounded with energy as men struggled to dance in place, and as space opened up, began dancing in circles.

Rabbi Nachman Holtzberg, left, father of slain Chabad-Lubavitch emissary Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, shakes the hand of religious scribe Rabbi Moshe Klein after filling in one of the last letters of the Torah scroll destined for his slain son’s reopened Chabad House. (Photo: Boruch Ezagui)

The crowd spilled out and headed downstairs toward the street, where a glowing parade float – topped with a brightly-lit crown – and traditional canopy to shelter the Torah were waiting.

Such a display of happiness and Jewish pride is exactly what the present times demanded, explained Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, vice chairman of Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch, the educational arm of Chabad-Lubavitch, and an administrator of the conference. He noted that throughout the opening days of the conference, attendees filled in some of the more than 600,000 letters that comprise the Torah scroll.

“Each letter in this Torah scroll is written by an emissary or member of the worldwide Lubavitch community,” he said during a short speech at the yeshiva. “This Torah represents cities, states and countries. In essence, this is written by the entire Jewish people.”

When the terrorists stormed the Chabad House, they weren’t just looking to harm one center, Kotlarsky pointed out. They were fueled by an intense hatred for all Jews.

“We can’t say that a year has gone by and it doesn’t hurt,” he said. “But that they didn’t succeed, that we can say!”