December 1, 2008
On December 1 an Israeli Air Force jet left India for Israel Monday, carrying 2-year-old Moshe Holtzberg, orphaned son of Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg, 29, and Rivka, who were among the slain in the Mumbai Chabad House attack, along with his parents’ remains and the Indian woman who rescued him, Sandra Samuel.
Six civilians were killed in the center in the three-day terror siege that ended Saturday morning, Foreign Ministry spokesman Andy David said. In all, more than 170 died in attacks on 10 targets across the Indian city.
Among the Jewish victims were two other Israelis: Bentzion Kruman, an American-Israeli from Bat-Yam, Yocheved Orpaz of Givatayim. The fifth and sixth victims were Rabbi Leibish Teitelbaum, a US citizen who lived in Jerusalem, and Norma Swartzblatt-Rabinovich, a Mexican Jewish woman who had planned to immigrate to Israel later this week.
The IAF jet left Mumbai on Monday, carrying Moshe, Samuel and the remains of his parents and the others killed at the Chabad House, the Foreign Ministry said.
Government officials planned a small ceremony upon the plane’s arrival at Ben Gurion International Airport late Monday, with funerals scheduled for Tuesday.
Moshe was accompanied on the trip to Israel by his maternal grandparents, Yehudit and Shimon Rosenberg, who were reunited with their grandson when they arrived in Mumbai on Friday.
The Foreign Ministry said the government would arrange official funeral send representatives to the ceremonies, as it does for victims of terror attacks at home.
Before the jet left for Israel, a memorial service for the Jewish victims was held in one of the largest synagogues in Mumbai on Monday morning. During the ceremony, Rivka Holtzberg’s father gave a tearful eulogy for his daughter and her husband, and praised Samuel for saving the boy’s life.
“With great resourcefulness Sandra saved the life of my grandson. Had she not [done this] he surely would have been murdered,” Shimon Rosenberg told more than a hundred family members and relatives of the victims, as well as members of the local Jewish community who attended the service.
The Israeli ambassador to India, Mark Sofer, also spoke during the event.
“The State of Israel will not sit quietly while Israelis and Jews are massacred just because they are Jews,” he said. “We will continue to work with India and with other countries in the world in order to prevent this kind of event from happening in the future.”
“This is a tragedy for India and a tragedy for Israel, but above all for the families,” Sofer continued, adding that this was not the time to weigh whether or not the international community is doing enough, but rather a time to think of the families.
“We, our Indian friends and the rest of the civilized world will continue to fight terrorism, until we win,” he said.
Also Monday, the Foreign Ministry announced that contact had been made with the last of the Israelis who were considered “missing” following the terror attacks in Mumbai, India which started last Wednesday and came to an end Saturday morning.
Six Jews have now been confirmed dead in the attacks which targeted, among other places, the Chabad House in the area, and which killed over 180 people.
Meanwhile, a spokeswoman from the Interior Ministry told The Jerusalem Post on Monday that no formal request had been made as yet for Samuel to receive either permanent or temporary residency in the State of Israel.
However, she added that Interior Minister Meir Shitreet was willing to find a solution that would allow the woman, an Indian native, to stay here, at least for the short-term.
November 13, 2008
Everything is possible
October 24, 2008
Nominations for the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize close on Friday, and among the entrants is a 98-year-old Briton, Sir Nicholas Winton, who transported 700 Jewish children to the UK before WWII.
The BBC’s Allan Little visited Prague to witness the legacy of a man known as the “British Schindler”.
In a school room in southern Bohemia, a class of teenagers sit mesmerised by a film about a young Englishman who came to their country a long time ago and did something so remarkable – brave as well as honourable – that 70 years later they petitioned the authorities to rename their school.
It is, now, the Sir Nicholas Winton School.
In the spring of 1939, the young Nicholas Winton cancelled a skiing holiday in Switzerland and, at the urging of a friend, went to Prague instead.
The city was full of people who had fled their homes in the wake of the Nazi occupation of the Sudetenland.
Nicholas Winton was particularly shocked by the condition of the children: many of them he found living in squalid – and freezing – refugee camps.
He resolved to do something about it.
With a group of others he drew up a list of children whose parents would agree to send them to Britain until the emergency – however long it was to last – was over.
When his list was complete there were 5,000 names on it.
He lobbied the Home Office in London. They said he could bring as many children as he liked, provided he could find foster families for them, and provided they went home when it was safe to do so.
The Winton group then advertised for families. “It wasn’t the ideal way to place children,” he told me, 70 years later.
“But if someone wrote to say they could take, say, a girl aged seven, then we sent some pictures of girls aged seven and said ‘choose one’.
“Not ideal, but it did work and it was quick.”
Father’s tears
He then organised a series of closed trains to take the children from Prague directly to Liverpool Street station in London.
Alicie Klimova was 11 in 1939. She took me back to the platform at Prague’s Masaryk Station, where she last saw her parents two months before the outbreak of war.
“The platform was full of children and parents” she said. “My parents did their best to keep on smiling, telling me it was so exciting that I was going to England.
“But at midnight when the train pulled out, my father couldn’t hold back his tears.
“I said ‘Daddy don’t cry – you’ll disgrace me!’ Of course I had no idea that we would never see each other again”.
When Alicie went back to Prague in 1945 she found that both her parents had died in Auschwitz.
Lost contact
The transports continued through the summer of 1939. The last one was due to leave on 1 September – the day war broke out.
There were 250 children on board, but the train never left the station. Most of them died in the Holocaust.
For 50 years Nicholas Winton, of Maidenhead in Berkshire, lost contact with the 670 children he had brought to Britain – and whose lives he had saved.
When he married he didn’t even tell his wife what he had done.
Then, when he was almost 80, some of his children began to get in touch. He found that the original group had grown to more than 5,000.
“Normally events that happened a long time ago diminish in importance as time goes on,” Sir Nicholas told me.
“This story is the opposite – it keeps on growing, because there are more and more people. They keep breeding, you see!”
September 4, 2008
Soon i will go to the seminar of Judaism and jewish history only for the weekend.
I have been there a couple of years ago to two of these kind of events.
At that time it was one of the few chances to meet with other young jewish people. This made them unique and gave them an ace which made the inconveniences easier to support.
Time has gone, the place where the event will be held has known dramatic changes(for the good), the ways to keep in touch with the other young jews have multiplied by one hand through the increase in the number of programs created for them and by the other hand through the internet, messenger, facebook and so on.
This seminar had as a strong point the concern for knowledge.The biggest part of it was dedicated to the study and discusion of topics related to tradition and history.
It is very interesting to see today how much succes will such a seminar have in the context of a broader line of events, from which the larger part of them being created having fun a the main subject.
Soon we will see.:)
September 4, 2008
Where?
JCC Bucuresti – Centrul Comunitar Evreiesc
str.Popa Soare nr.18 sect 2
Tel: 021-3202608, 021-3213940 (Romtelecom), 031-4056064 (RDS)
Contact: Iustina Grajdinoiu: 0728 45 7777
when?
8-9 september 18.00-22.00
Who?
Moshe Idel, one of the most eminent and influential scholars of Jewish mysticism in the world, will explore Kabbalistic and Hasidic notions.
Idel is the Max Cooper Professor of Jewish Thought at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and has also served as a visiting professor and research scholar at numerous universities and institutions in the United States and Europe. His numerous publications include Kabbalah: New Perspectives; Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah; Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics in Abraham Abulafia; Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic; Messianic Mystics; and Absorbing Perfections: Kabbalah and Interpretation.
Why?
Just as the decapolar Creator accounts for the cosmos in terms that resonate with “big bang” and atomic theory, by concentrating on the lower sephirotic sphere and its two “sides”, left and right, the Castilian kabbalists also revealed a bipolar, gendered God, consonant with the love that unites man and woman – and the people with their Lord. This is Moshe Idel’s theme in Kabbalah and Eros, but his findings extend beyond the kabbala and touch on the nature of Judaism. Starting with the prayer book’s striking kabbalistic formula that the liturgy is performed “for the sake of the union of the Holy One, blessed be He, with His Divine presence”, Idel analyses the mystic’s concept of love in a fascinating array of sources, and, more widely, its role in daily life: marriage and union are imagined as having “a tremendous impact on the upper worlds”. Hence Idel locates a widespread theurgical note in Jewish lore, albeit perhaps not the “magical” one he claims, but rather a subtle, life-enhancing variety of erotic mysticism, in some ways akin to and, as has recently been claimed, perhaps indebted to Tantrism.
August 20, 2008
Olympics: Shahar Tzuberi brings home bronze in Neil Pryde sailing
Shahar Tzuberi won a bronze medal in the Neil Pryde final race, Wednesday morning.
The 21-year-old by Wednesday morning was Israel’s last hope at the 2008 Olympic Games.
After a disappointing run for Israel in the Beijing Olympics, windsurfer Shahar Tzuberi finally gave Israelis a reason to cheer.
Tzuberi won the bronze medal at Wednesday’s Neil Pryde finals, Israels first medal at the 2008 games, after arriving in second place in the final race.
The 21-year-old finished the 10th and final race of the regular competition in fourth position on Tuesday and entered the decisive contest in fourth place overall.
Julien Bontemps of France led the Neil Pryde event on 45 negative points, with Nick Dempsey and Tom Ashley tied on 46 points right behind him.
On Tuesday, Tzuberi was in second position after the first half of the race, but when the wind picked up in the second half he dropped down two positions, which may be crucial when all is said and done.
“The race was very tough,” Tzuberi said. “The wind was weak, the way I like it, but Bontemps overtook me midway through the race.”
Of his chances to win a medal Tzuberi said: “If I do well in the medal race I could win any one of the three medals. If I finish first and one of my rivals comes in fifth, I will have a medal. Nevertheless, I’m not focusing on the other surfers, but on my own performance.”
The Israeli said the forecast for Wednesday is for weak winds and insisted that the competition is still wide open.
“I managed to close in on first position today and did my upmost,” he said.
Anybody at this level knows what they’re doing and everything will be decided on Wednesday,”
Ma’ayan Davidovich will compete in the women’s windsurfing medal race on Wednesday, but regardless of her result will still finish the competition in 10th place overall.
The 20-year-old ended the final regular race in 10th position and pipped Frenchwoman Faustine Merret by three points to book a place in the medal race.
Davidovich’s gap from ninth-placed Wai Kei Chan is, however, 22 points, and she has no chance of finishing any higher than her current position.
“My goal was to reach the medal race and I’m pleased I managed to do so,” Davidovich said.
