Friend mourns Chabad rabbi,his daughter fights terror

“In accordance with the Hebrew calendar,Rabbi Gavriel and Rivka’s death anniversaries were observed on November 4. Their son Moshe,who is now seven years old and lives with his mother’s parents Rabbi Shimon and Yehudit Rosenberg,was driven down from Afula to the Mount of Olives by his grandparents,” Abraham said.

“Gavriel’s parents were also there,as was Moshe’s nanny Sandra. My wife and I also drove down to the cemetery,and we all prayed together.”

After his two mentors and spiritual guides were killed in the attack,Abraham — who had been named Bhagirath Mohandas Prasad by his Hindu parents — migrated to Israel with his family in November 2009. He now lives in Kiryat Arba,an Israeli settlement on the outskirts of Hebron in West Bank.

In Mumbai,Abraham was an intensivist at Breach Candy Hospital,and had become the Holtzbergs’ family doctor. Since receiving a licence to practise in Israel in 2010,he has been working with the general intensive care department of a hospital in Tel Aviv.

“After Gabi and Rivka’s deaths,there was nothing left for us in Mumbai. Since we were practising Judaism,it made sense for us to migrate to Israel,where we have been readily accepted,” Abraham said.

Having followed the Jewish faith devoutly for over 15 years,Abraham had been struggling to arrange a formal conversion in India. On the Holtzbergs’s first death anniversary,Abraham and his wife Ruth Malka (originally Rani),50,were formally converted to Judaism,and remarried in a Jewish ceremony at the Cave of Patriarchs in Hebron.

The couple’s son Samuel,22,recently completed a two-year conscription with the Israeli Defence Force,and now hopes to study law in the US. Their elder daughter Sarah,19,is Israel’s Thai boxing women’s champion,and won gold for the country at a championship in Thailand in July. She has enlisted for National Service,and is currently posted at a control room monitoring telephone intercepts.

“Sarah is posted at a very strategic place under the army. Her work entails monitoring telephone intercepts at a control room,to pick up any suspected terrorist activities so that they can be foiled. Since we have seen,first hand,the suffering terrorism can wreak on people,I told her that if she participates in such a service,it is one of the biggest tributes she could pay to our lost friends,” Abraham said.

His younger daughter Sharon,14,is in Class 9 at school.

Memories of his friend Gavriel come flooding back whenever Abraham visits Moshe at the Rosenberg home in Afula in northern Israel. “I meet Moshe twice a month. He is a healthy and happy boy,who has a team of psychiatrists,paediatricians and social workers to look after his development. He has been immunized according to the Israeli health ministry’s protocols. When he was around four years old,he had once said he wanted to go to his Abba’s house. His resemblance to his father is extremely strong,and I feel like I am meeting Gavriel every time I meet Moshe,” Abraham said.

“He (Moshe) is a very sweet and intelligent kid. He is in the second grade at the Chabad School in HaEmekin Afula. He has learnt almost all the prayers,and prays every day. He has his own small desk to keep his prayer. Most of his time goes in reading and learning the Torah. He loves his parents very,very much. During his prayers,he asks God to bring his parents back,and that they should never leave him again. He also requests the Rebbe of Chabad to pray for the same thing.”

During his visits,Moshe,Abraham said,plays football and computer games based on religious aspects with him,and points out all that has changed in the house since his last visit. “Sometimes,he plants saplings. He has a lot of different types of toys. He is very good with all his cousins and plays with them.”

Moshe’s Indian nanny Sandra Samuel,who fled with him as a baby in her arms from the terrorists at the Chabad Centre in Nariman House,works at a centre for children with special needs,and meets him every weekend,Abraham said. Sandra has been granted Israeli citizenship.

Abraham’s close bond with the Holtzbergs began when their son DovBer was admitted to Breach Candy hospital,and Abraham watched over after the wheezing boy all night so that the Rabbi could go back to the Chabad Centre for Shabbat.

“The Holtzbergs had three sons. Their first-born Menachem Mendel,and second DovBer,whom we called Mendy and Dovi,had Tay-Sachs disease. Mendy died when he was three,and Dovi died about a month after the Mumbai attack,” Abraham said.

He said he plans to visit Mumbai in March 2014 to renew his registration with the Maharashtra Medical Council.