Chabad of Stamford Mourns Couple Killed in India

STAMFORD, CT — The Chabad community in Stamford assembled Tuesday to remember and pray for the couple from Brooklyn who were killed in last week’s terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India.

Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg and his wife Rivkah were among the nearly 200 fatalities. The couple, members of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect, ran the Chabad center in Mumbai. The Holtzbergs moved to Mumbai from Brooklyn five years ago to serve as emissaries, providing a sense of community to Indian Jews as well as traveling Jews.

Holtzberg friend Rabbi Yisrael Deren, of the Stamford Chabad Center, says the couple sacrificed much to help the Jewish community in India. Deren says he’s passing on a message of hope and peace to his followers in the wake of the attacks.

“You can’t fight terror with armies and with guns,” Deren says. “We can make the same difference in the world that [the terrorists] were able to make in an evil way. We can do incredibly more with good.”