Amid heart-rending scenes, thousands of tearful Israeli mourners dressed in black and chanting hymns bid an emotional farewell to the six Jews
JERUSALEM: Amid heart-rending scenes, thousands of tearful Israeli mourners dressed in black and chanting hymns on Tuesday bid an emotional farewell to the six Jews who fell victims to the deadly Mumbai terror strikes.
Twentynine-year-old Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife Rivka, who ran a centre for ultra-orthodox Chabad-Lubavitch movement in the Nariman House, were among those killed when terrorists stormed the Jewish complex. An Israel Air Force plane brought the bodies here on Monday night, along with the couple's two-year-old orphaned son Moshe.
President Shimon Peres, Defence Minister Ehud Barak and opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu joined about 10,000 people who crowded outside the sect's headquarters in Kfar Chabad near Tel Aviv. Indian ambassador to Israel Navtej Sarna and members of the Indian community were present to share the grief.
Ultra-orthodox Jewish men, bearded and in long black coats and black hats, also packed Mea Shearim neighbourhood in Jerusalem for the funeral of 38-year-old Leibish Teitelbaum, a US citizen who lived in Jerusalem.
Notices in billboards and walls read "May God Avenge Them." Wailing mourners recited prayers from Book of Psalms.
Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, a Chabad official from New York, delivered a moving eulogy for the young Rabbi and his wife and said "We will answer the terrorists." He pledged to rebuild the Mumbai centre and name it after the Holtzbergs.
Emotions ran high as the Rabbi described Moshe, who was rescued by his Indian nanny from the clutches of terrorists, as the "child of entire Israel". Israeli TV stations had been repeatedly playing Moshe's heart-rending cries for his mother at a memorial ceremony in Mumbai.
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