Volunteer rescuers continued to make their way to Manali, India, by week’s end as search teams prepared for Day 5 of their intense efforts to find missing 24-year-old American-Israeli backpacker Amichai Shtainmetz, who has not been heard from since July 22.
Two Chabad-Lubavitch rabbinical students are helping the search, coordinating volunteer efforts and working with area Jewish centers to supply the dozens of people combing the mountains around Kosol. From his base at the Chabad House in Manali, Rabbi Levi Pekar – who is in the region as part of the summer rabbinical visitation program run by Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch, the educational arm of Chabad-Lubavitch – dispatched jeeps with volunteers headed to the search area, several hours away.
On Friday morning, two jeeps left the Chabad House with fresh-baked challahs and other food to last the rescuers through Shabbat.
Speaking with JTA on Thursday, Shtainmetz’s grandfather, Sol Shtainmetz, expressed concern and bewilderment at the disappearance of his grandson, who set out on a hike last week.
“He went with a friend, and the friend went one way and he went the other, and that was five days ago,” said the grandfather. “He had a cell phone.”
He added that, aside from the phone, Shtainmetz had taken his tefillin and a few other items.
Helicopters under the command of a professional search and rescue squad with the Harel insurance company joined the search on Thursday, but crews were limited in their ability to help by dense foliage. Trained dogs have been aiding efforts since Wednesday, but searchers speculated that recent rainstorms have likely washed away the missing hiker’s scent trail.
Rabbi Yehuda Kirsch, who joined a search team of nine volunteers and one Indian tracker, stated that “the only way we are going to reach the places we need to search is by foot, and it is going to continue to be a difficult search.”
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