Everyone Wanted to Adopt Moshe

MUMBAI — The day baby Moshe was rescued during last year’s Mumbai attack and his picture was splashed by the media, the Israeli consulate here had its phone lines choked.

“Every phone was ringing — the calls came from across India. Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs — they all wanted to adopt Moshe. That was the singularly most overwhelming experience I have had in India so far,” said Mark Sofer, Israel’s ambassador to India, sitting in his sixth-floor suite overlooking the Gateway of India.

Sofer was in Mumbai to attend a ceremony at Nariman House, the seat of the Jewish Chabad that was one of the attack sites and where Moshe’s parents, Rabbi Gabriel and his wife Rivika, were killed.

Moshe was rescued by his nanny Sandra Samuel and Nariman House cook Zakir Qazi, both Indians. Samuel now lives with Moshe and his grandparents in Israel. The three-year-old believes his parents are alive in Mumbai.

“His link to India continues: the boy speaks fluent Hindi. It is the language in which Sandra communicates with him. His grandparents are very happy about it,” Sofer said.

Outside, on the Gateway square, a congregation of over 200 Muslim clerics from across Mumbai raised slogans against terrorism and waved the Tricolour.

“In no country of the world have people of such diverse faiths ever come together so selflessly to express their solidarity and love for a single Jewish boy. The gesture spoke volumes about this country,” Sofer said.

He added that those who thought that killing Jews on Indian soil would undermine relations between India and Israel were mistaken. “The state of Israel does not forget and we will ensure that nothing like this happens again,” he said.

Rivika’s father, Rabbi Shimin Rosenberg, attended an evening ceremony at Nariman House to mark the reopening of the restored Chabad, exactly a year after the terror attacks.

Rabbi Shimin had an unusual guest today — Rukhsana Kausar, the Kashmiri girl who shot dead a Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorist, came down to Mumbai to meet him in a mark of solidarity against terror.

At the renovated Nariman House, Moshe’s room, with its strewn toys and bullet marks, has been left untouched. The Chabad leaders, however, plan to move the centre to another site at a low-key location. Either way, it is certain that new security systems will be put into place.

“We are aware that David Coleman Headley, one of the Lashkar operatives who was part of the conspiracy, carried a book called How to Pray Like a Jew when he was arrested by the FBI in the US,” the ambassador said.

Israel and India, Sofer said, are working closely together through exchange of information, expertise and intelligence to bring the perpetrator’s of 26/11 in Pakistan to justice.

“Mumbai police chief D. Sivanandan was in Israel a few months ago to explore counter-terrorism training techniques we use back home,” Sofer said.