Mumbai's far-reaching impact

Dec. 29, 2008
dovid eliezrie

THE JERUSALEM POST

Jewish tradition tells us the first 30 days of mourning are the most intense. This week we mark end of this period since the terrorist attack against the Chabad Center in Mumbai. It's been a watershed event for world Jewry and Chabad. It will have a long lasting effect in diverse ways.

It has sparked an existential dialogue within Chabad. "Why have we become a target for the unfathomable." A few days after the attack, a group of Jewish security experts told me, "You guys are on the frontlines, it was only a matter of time." That's the practical perspective you would expect from security gurus. At a farbrengen held last week for California shluchim that question was at the core of the evening. Rabbi Ezra Schochet, rosh yeshiva, dissected the issue. The intellectual inquiry did not bring him, or us, solace. At the end he said, "We have a question, a question without any answer."

FOR MILLENNIA Jews have grappled with the same questions, seeking to pierce the mystery of divine providence. Shluchim were promised special blessings. Years ago a Chabad supporter suggested to the Rebbe in a private audience that he give more kudos to his shluchim. While the Rebbe showed appreciation, it was done in his classic understated style. Hassidim felt it an honor to serve the Rebbe's higher purposes. After hearing the question, the Rebbe's face took an austere look. He told the man, "They all have children."

Out of the close to 4,000 couples, you can't count on one hand those who do not have children. It's not uncommon in Chabad to find a childless young couples in business make a career change to become shluchim to benefit from this unique spiritual blessing. So how could we, who have had our lives so enriched with so many blessings, lose two of our best to evil is a question gnawing at our souls.

While we have no answer, most of us have taken consolation and inspiration from the Rebbe's message to Kfar Chabad in 1956 after five children and their teacher were killed by terrorists. "In your rebuilding you will find consolation." Last Thursday night the parents of Rabbi Gavriel and Rebbitzen Rivka Holtzberg returned to Mumbai to light the menora. Their message was clear terror will not deter us, only prompt us to achieve more.

Around the world many of us have undertaken new projects. Our community in Yorba Linda, California is writing a Torah scroll in their memory. Just down the freeway, the Chabad Center is placing a shaliah at University of California at Irvine, a hotbed of radical Arab activism. Across the world similar initiatives are being launched.

This tragedy touched a deep chord in the Jewish world.

FOR SOME 36 hours millions watched the drama unfolding. Jews were hunted down and killed for being Jews. Chabad was not attacked as a symbol of the West, as J. J. Goldberg attempted to claim in the Forward. Clearly there were more prominent Western targets in Mumbai. Islamic terrorists sought out Chabad as an objective. A nondescript six-story building tucked away in one the most demographically dense cities in the world. The terrorists searched and found the only rabbi living in the city. Chabad may have been the specific target, but it was an attack on the Jewish people as a whole. It impacted all aspects of the Jewish world. The six victims rooted in the world of Satmar, secular Jews, Zionists and non Zionists.

Sadly in death we were all united. It reminded us of our vulnerability as Jews. It wasn't too long ago that armies marched across Europe in search of Jews, now a force based on religious fundamentalism reaches out from the mountains of Pakistan with the same goals.

THE ATTACK was personal; for the untold numbers of Jews who know a Chabad shaliah, their friend was in mourning. Gabi's father had been my classmate in yeshiva, my son with Gabi himself. Chabad may have grown but we are all interconnected. Our personal pain of reached deep into every Jewish community in the world. Tens of thousands attended hundreds of memorials.

It accentuated a reality that challenges the status quo of Jewish life. Today Chabad is the largest Jewish organization in the world. It eclipses in size and scope all other Jewish groups. As Andrew Silow-Carroll of the New Jersey Jewish News noted, the event has "repositioned Chabad as the de facto Jewish vanguard, and made other Jewish groups acknowledge it." The attack has sparked and rekindling of the relationship between Chabad and other parts of the haredi world.

The schism has deep roots reaching back to split between hassidim and mitnagdim two centuries ago. In modern times it has been intensified for a variety of reasons. The messiah issue worried many. The haredi world responded to the challenge of modernity by erecting barriers. Chabad chose to engage it, look for the good and offer its contribution to all. While most haredim stepped back into their own world, Chabad reached out to others.

AT THE funeral, standing together with hassidic rabbis were President Shimon Peres and leaders of Israel's key parties. Their participation was reflective of Chabad's willingness to play a role in larger society while decisively maintaining Jewish principles. Mumbai was the catalyst for the haredi community to seek reconciliation. As the editor of Yated Ne'eman (different than its Israeli namesake) in the US, a paper that historically would not acknowledge Chabad, wrote in article lauding the Holtzberg's self sacrifice, "We are tribes of a same nation." Strangely it's the shluchim around the world who have laid the ground for this rapprochement. At the shluchim convention held in New York a week before the attack, leaders of Satmar sat at tables of shluchim they have become friends with during their business travels. In recent years even the most insular Lithuanian yeshivot have discovered the importance of outreach.

A few days after their passing, JEM, Chabad's producer of film and video released a hastily assembled memorial video on their lives. They had discovered a rare clip of Rivka Holtzberg talking about her life in Mumbai. Her warmth, charm and inner beauty radiate on the screen. One moment deeply touched me, when asked how can you have dozens for dinner every night, she responds in the typical Israeli, "Zeh kef - its fun." Her joy in giving to others was palatable. If only if each of us could capture a part of that enthusiasm and infuse it into our lives, how much better the world would be.

The writer is a Chabad shaliah in Yorba Linda, California. rabbi@ocjewish.com

The Torah: A Moral Compass

By Rabbi Ezra Schochet

For the Jewish people, the Torah is the moral compass that guides us through all difficult personal and ethical issues. Indeed, the most intimate and private parts of our lives are also subject to the direction of the Torah.

In recent years we have witnessed a social revolution in Western culture: the validation of homosexuality as an alternate lifestyle. Clearly this is not in consonance with the teachings of the Torah. Sadly, this assault on basic moral standards gained a beachhead in the Jewish community as well. Some see it as an issue of equality and compassion. This argument, however, carries no moral weight. The Torah unequivocally condemns homosexuality alongside incest and adultery.Our Torah enjoins us to treat all humans with dignity and respect, as all are created by G-d in His own image. The very same Torah also prescribes a code of proper behavior that defines and reflects human dignity, the violation of which would diminish and marginalize it. Hence derives the concept of "hate sin but love the sinner."

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach attempted to do exactly this ("Dr. Laura Misguided on Homosexuality," June 16) when he fell into an intellectual abyss. He seriously twisted the classic Jewish teachings. His absurd argument that the prohibition concerning homosexual acts is just a religious instruction and not a spiritual moral imperative is a distortion of Torah. By equating the biblical condemnation of homosexuality with ritual laws and norms for proper character traits, he willfully ignores and maliciously distorts explicit pronouncements of the Torah.

Proper character traits and interhuman relationships in the Jewish faith are built upon Torah principles and not just human wisdom that changes in each generation. The student of pirkei avot (Ethics of our Fathers) would know from the very first mishna that all ethics and morals originate at Mt. Sinai.

The prohibition of homosexuality is not only a ritual law for Jews like the precepts of the dietary laws or the Sabbath. Any simpleton reading this chapter (Leviticus 18:3) must come to the conclusion that a moral statement is being made by the Torah - not simply a violation "on religious grounds."

This prohibition is a universal injunction for all mankind, part of the fundamental moral principles. It is an integral part of the Noachide Code (Maimonides, Laws of Kings 9) the basic laws of society given by G-d to all of humanity.

Dismissing this (as Boteach and others do) does not represent the Jewish point of view, does not reflect a religious Jewish perspective.

The argument that homosexuality was as common as heterosexuality in ancient times is an absurd non sequitur. Paganism and incest were equally popular. Sould we defend these, too, in the name of history?The fact that homosexuals are so vociferous does not make them normative. Are we to accept adulterous behavior, in the spirit of compassion, as another alternate lifestyle for those who can't control their desires for a married woman?

Indeed, quite a few bear the challenge of homosexual tendencies. As individual humans they are entitled to the same rights and dignity as all others, and perhaps even extra compassion. That is altogether different, however, than granting acceptance to their lifestyles as legitimate alternatives. To celebrate their sexual preferences, let alone to expose schoolchildren to it, or to have society sanction their unions on a par with normative marriage is an indefensible aberration that destroys the moral fibers of society.

The attack on Dr. Laura Schlessinger skirts the real issues and throws out unwarranted accusations of homophobia.

Unlike her critics, Dr. Laura's position does not follow the latest fads to gain transient popularity. She follows her conscience as a religious person. For this she deserves to be applauded by all, including those critics who put pursuit of truth before personal agendas.

I am saddened that a former yeshiva student failed to acquire the most basic principle of religion: G-d and His revelation transcend popularity contests and political correctness. The truth will prevail, and the word of G-d will stand forever.

Rabbi Ezra Schochet is the rosh yeshiva and dean of the West Coast Talmudic Seminary, Yeshivas Ohr Elchonon Chabad, in Los Angeles.