A voice from the past: Remembering Gavriel Holtzberg

With all eyes focused on Gaza this week, The Big Lipowsky would like to bring people’s focus back to Rabbi and Mrs. Holtzberg for just a moment.

The Holtzbergs were the Chabad emissaries murdered by terrorists at the Nariman House in Mumbai in November. Editor Rebecca Boroson wrote an editorial in this Friday’s Jewish Standard about a new revelation about the motives of the terrorists.

I have my own personal story that I only remembered yesterday while wandering through some Indian grocery stores in New York City. I was looking for some spices and saw a few items marked by the Kosher Inspection Service of India. Then it hit me. I had written to the Rabbi Holtzberg last year asking about this hechture. I just went back through my e-mail and found the response from him dated January 2008.

It’s sort of eerie seeing the name Gavriel Holtzberg in my mailbox. Even more so, just three e-mails below Rabbi Holtzberg’s in my archives is an e-mail from somebody telling me his mother, a dear friend of many years, had passed.

The Big Lipowsky

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