Moshe Holtzberg doesn't know about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He doesn't know about India-Pakistan relations. He doesn't know about terrorism.
At two years old, Moshe is too young to understand the brutal slaying of his parents by terrorists. All he knows is that he misses them.
At a memorial service in Mumbai yesterday, baby Moshe cried out for his mother. "Ima, ima, ima!" - the Hebrew word for mommy - echoed through the synagogue. His downy, blonde curls stuck to his damp cheeks as his face crumpled in pain. A plastic toy basketball was clutched fiercely in his chubby, pink fingers.
Moshe became an orphan last week when his parents, Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife Rivka, were murdered during a terrorist attack that shocked the world. They were two of nearly 200 people killed in Mumbai after a small group of heavily armed terrorists raided the Taj Mahal Palace, the Trident-Oberoi hotel and the Chabad Center.
Throughout their short time on Earth, Gavriel and Rivka touched thousands of lives. Several years ago, the couple left their comfortable home in New York to open a Chabad Center in Mumbai in order to serve the Jewish community in India.
Each night, dozens of guests flocked to the Chabad house to have dinner with Rivka and Gavriel. The visitors tended to be an eclectic mix of tourists, foreign businessmen and local Jews. Besides being the only establishment in Mumbai that served kosher meals, the Chabad Center also provided free lodging, Internet access and Torah classes to their guests.
The Holtzbergs' lives were devoted to helping others, often at the expense of their own comfort.
"On my last Shabbat in India, I slept in [Rivka and Gavriel's] home, the fifth floor of the Chabad house. I noticed that their apartment was dilapidated and bare…the paint peeled from the walls…yet, the guest quarters on the two floors below were decorated exquisitely, with American-style beds, expansive bathrooms, air conditioning…and marble floors," wrote visitor Hillary Lewin on the Chabad Web site, describing the selflessness of Rivka and Gavriel.
Sadly, the guest quarters of the Chabad house can no longer be described as "exquisitely decorated." Last week's terrorist attack left the Chabad Center's walls riddled with bullet holes and black with smoke from explosives. Broken furniture, glass and debris cover the floors, and the window frames dangle outside of the building like broken teeth.
But even in the midst of such great destruction, we found a reason to hope.
It was in the middle of one of these gutted rooms where Sandra Samuel, the family's nanny, rescued the Holtzbergs' two-year-old son Moshe last Thursday.
Samuel had barricaded herself in a lower-level room when the Chabad house was raided by terrorists the night before. Once the sounds of gun fire and explosions ceased the next day, Samuel heard the soft sobs of a child upstairs.
Risking her life by leaving her hiding spot, Samuel found baby Moshe crying over his parents' bodies, his pants wet with their blood. His tiny hands grasped a dirty, cloth doll.
Miraculously, Samuel was able to grab Moshe and escape from the house, even as the terrorists still patrolled the roof of the building.
Samuel's courageous rescue of the child was a greater blow to the terrorists than any weapon our military could build. Her selfless act of love, in the face of such evil, gave hope to millions of good people who were demoralized by the attack.
It's these good deeds, like Samuel's, Gavriel's and Rivka's, which we should all be emulating. By taking this type of action we can fight the feelings of despair and hopelessness that haunt so many people after a terrorist attack.
Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky put it best.
"I vow that we will avenge the deaths of Gabi and Rivki," he said at the couple's funeral in Jerusalem on Tuesday. "But not with AK-47s, not with grenades and tanks. We will take revenge in a different way. We will add light. We will add good deeds. We will make sure that there is not one Jewish man who does not put on tefillin. We will make sure that there is not one Jewish woman who does not light candles."
This is how we will honor the lives of the Holtzbergs and the 186 other victims of the Mumbai attack. Simply by doing good deeds, by living happily, charitably and freely, we will show that our love of life is stronger than the terrorists' love of death.
Alana Goodman is a Collegian columnist. She can be reached at agoodma@student.umass.edu.
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