The city of Mumbai, India, was hit with a series of coordinated terror attacks, starting on Wednesday evening, the 29th of Cheshvan 5769, which left close to 200 dead and scores more injured.
One of the terrorists' chosen targets was the local Chabad House, known as the "Nariman House," operated by Chabad-Lubavitch emissaries Rabbi Gavriel Noach (Gabi) and Rivkah (Rivki) Holtzberg.
In the subsequent standoff, which continued until Friday afternoon, Gabi and Rivki and several other Jews in the Chabad House – Rabbis Bentzion Chroman and Leibish Teitelbaum, Norma Schwartzblatt-Rabinowitz and Yocheved Orpaz – were killed in cold blood. May G‑d avenge their murders.
Miraculously, the Holtzbergs' two-year-old child, Moshe, was saved by his nanny.
Link: Mumbai Terror Attacks
And these words with which I connect with you today… (Deut. 6:6)
Every day these words should be just as new for you as if they were given today. (Sifri)
How could the same mitzvah you did yesterday be new to you today? The same words of Torah as though you never knew them before? The same prayer as though you never said it before?
Through a simple meditation on what is happening when you do that mitzvah, when you study those words, when you pour out your heart in your prayer.
Contemplate that the entire universe is but a glimmer of G‑d’s infinite light. Yet, in this mitzvah, you hold the Creator Himself in your hands. As you learn His Torah, your soul joins with His very essence. In your prayer, you and He are alone as one.
It makes no difference that you feel nothing, that you are not awake to the glory of this moment, that the physical body does not allow you to perceive reality as it is. One day you will see this moment now from a place far beyond this coarse world.
But then it will be only a memory, a souvenir.
Now you have the real thing.
Because, says G‑d, today, in the moment of this mitzvah now, I, just I, beyond any name or definition, I connect with you.
And such a moment is a moment beyond time.