Light from the Darkness

Rivka Holtzberg never intended to be a modern-day Jewish heroine. She lived her life simply in Mumbai, India, surmounting incredible daily difficulties to live the life she had chosen as Chabad emissary. Her reward was the satisfaction of one Jew at a time, taking on one mitzvah at a time. For her, that was worth everything she endured. Modest and unassuming, with an ever-present smile lighting up her face, she would have been happy to spend the rest of her life in the sweltering, disorderly India. Instead, her name has become a household word, her example held up by women around the world since she and her husband Gavriel were murdered at their post, when terrorists stormed Nariman House on November 26, leaving their two-year-old son Moshe crying “Ima” at the funeral of both his parents.

The heady smells of turmeric, fenugreek, and cumin, and other less pleasant odors, would assault Rivka Holtzberg as she navigated her way through the narrow winding streets, crammed with tiny jewelry and tailor shops, on her way to the open-air market. She needed to walk carefully, to avoid stepping on the old men and woman lying in the gutter starving, the untethered goats nibbling at piles of garbage, and the cows venerated by the people.

Her pale skin and western dress were out of place among the dark-skinned Indians mostly wearing saris, carrying their purchases on their heads, but being different didn’t faze Rivka. She was here to spread light in the darkness of Mumbai, India, to feed the bodies and souls of the searching Israeli backpackers.

She would stand in the kitchen in her Chabad house, working cheerfully with her small Indian staff as she cleaned and plucked 200 chickens each week and baked hundreds of loaves of bread, preparing fresh breakfast and a full dinner buffet each night for the thirty or forty travelers that might stop by. She would serve 800 meals a week, and refused to accept payment from her guests.

"They were magnets," said Rabbi Yosef Chaim Kantor, the Chabad shaliach in Bangkok, Thailand. "When you were with them, you felt like you were in a different time and space. That is why people loved coming to be with them. Their home was an oasis in Mumbai."

Rivka spent a great deal of her day cooking, related Efraim Nass, a long-time visitor to the Chabad house in Mumbai. But whenever people came to the Chabad house, she would stop whatever she was doing and run to greet them. "What would you like to do first?" she would ask, "Rest, wash up or eat?" If they were shy and demurred, she would simply show them to the computer room, where they could access the internet in a Jewish environment. She would offer to do their laundry and would place a heaping plate of food in front of them. While she showed her guests around, she spoke to them, getting to know them and figuring out how she could best help them. Her guests returned her warmth and confided in her, talking with her late into the night.

She had a quip for everyone. "You're too skinny," she laughingly told one woman. "I can't just make you two eggs. You need to eat at least three." And she went into the kitchen to whip up a fresh batch of scrambled eggs.

Rivka didn’t only take care of the guests who came to her Chabad house. She would bring packages of food to Jewish women in prison and spend time visiting them. If someone called and said they needed food and did not know how to find her Chabad house, she would immediately pack them a box of food, and send it by taxi, no questions asked.

Rivka hosted a minimum of fifty to sixty guests every Shabbos. Many would find their way to their door, having found out about the warm hospitality through word of mouth. But Rivka and Gavriel weren't content with that. Gavriel would make the rounds of all the hotels and hostels frequented by travelers and ask to see the guest book. He would then call the room numbers of all the names that sounded Jewish and invite them for the Shabbos meal.

Gavriel would return home triumphant. "Rivka, we're going to be having seventy guests for Shabbos," he would announce. Rivka would smile broadly at the thought of all the guests, but question her husband about where he had gone, making sure he hadn't left any hotels or hostels out. She was not content unless she was sure that every effort had been made to reach every Jew in Mumbai. Although she could have easily used Gavriel's help, she would encourage him to go out again and bring home even more guests.

The Holtzberg’s Shabbos table was the highlight of the week. Gavriel and Rivka were eager to create a communal feeling among the diverse group of backpackers, businessmen, ex-convicts, diplomats, and diamond dealers. “Gavriel insisted that everyone go around the table and say a few words to the group, giving guests four options: either delivering words of Torah, relating an inspirational story making a commitment to take on a mitzvah, or leading a song,” said Benjamin Holzman, a frequent guest of the Holtzbergs’.

Hillary Lewin, a Yeshiva University graduate who spent five weeks with the Holtzbergs in Mumbai, related that Rivka once told her that there was one holiday where they had no guests. It was just Rivka, Gavriel and Moishie. “I expected her to say how relieved she was not to have guests, but she told me it was, in fact, the only lonely holiday they ever spent in India.”

She also relates that, “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. They had only a sofa, a bookshelf, a bedroom for Moishie, and a bedroom to sleep in. The paint peeled from the walls, and there were hardly any decorations. Yet the guest quarters on the two floors below were decorated exquisitely, with American-style beds, expansive bathrooms, air conditioning (a luxury in India), and marble floors. The juxtaposition of their home to the guest rooms was just another example of what selfless, humble people Rivka and Gavriel were. They were more concerned about the comfort of their guests than their own.”

There were no shortcuts in Mumbai. Rivka could never decide that this week would be a lazy one and cut corners by buying ready-made food. There was nothing ready-made in India. Milk needed to be brought from a farm and boiled, chickens needed to be slaughtered, spices were brought fresh and dried and ground by hand, and flour needed to be sifted before it could be made into homemade bread and cake. These were tasks that Rivka did willingly, day in and day out, with a smile on her face.

"In all the five years that I visited — and I was there often — I never once saw Rivka get angry," related Efraim Nass. "Every bone in her body spoke kindness, and she lived for that purpose. She was giving 24/7, 365 days a year. I think she accomplished far more in her twenty-eight years than many people accomplish in seventy or eighty years."

He remarked that Rivka’s voice seemed to be perpetually hoarse, probably from lack of sleep and overexertion. She was up from early in the morning to late at night, constantly tending to the needs of the people there. Her only relaxation was to speak on the phone to friends and her family in Israel.

Rivka Holtzberg's uncle, Rabbi Yitzchak Dovid Grossman, compared the couple's work to that of our forefather Abraham. "Like him, you built a hospitality center," he said, "not for yourselves, but so that any Jew could enter and find a warm place. How many times have I heard Israelis say they went to India to find themselves, and they found a mother and father — Gavriel and Rivka."

Our modern-day heroine brought light where before there was only darkness. The forces of evil and darkness snuffed out her life, but her good deeds will always be remembered and perpetuated, just as the miracle of Chanukah is never forgotten.

Although Chanukah is associated with the pure light of the gleaming menorah, it was preceded by a darkness that seemed never-ending. Daily, Jews went to their deaths for trying to keep Torah and mitzvos. Women continued to bear children and secretly circumcise them, knowing that if caught, mother and newborn child would be thrown from the city walls. There was Chana's anguished cry to G-d as she stood over the bodies of her seven slain sons. To save the Jewish people, Yehudis, a noble and pure woman, had to put her innocence in dire danger.

Darkness everywhere. Anguish marring the noble faces of the Jewish nation as the angels cried out, "Zu Torah v’zu s’chorah – is this Torah and its reward?" looking at a world that had gone black. Yet, from the depths of the pain and the suffering, the Chanukah lights spread their warmth. The seeming senseless suffering and tragic sacrifices of the Jewish men and woman became shining lights of heroism, lighting up the tapestry of Jewish history with their greatness.

Almost two weeks after the unfathomable tragedy that claimed the life of his parents, Moishie Holtzberg has begun to smile. He is his mother's child, who was able to smile even in midst of dealing with the Tay-Sachs that claimed the life of her oldest son and left another critically ill in a palliative care facility in Israel. Despite everything, she was always able to keep on giving. Moishie’s heart-wrenching cries for his parents still occasionally fill the air, but by smiling and playing, Moishie is unwittingly carrying on his mother's legacy of transcending pain.

Rivka and Gavriel's murders darkened an already bitter exile. But in the past week alone, thousands of lights have begun to twinkle as a result of the darkness. Thousands of women have begun to light Shabbos candles; men, women, and children have taken on extra mitzvos; new Chabad centers have been established in their honor. And of course, the Chabad House in Mumbai is being rebuilt, meals are being served, and minyanim are being held at a different, nearby location in the meantime.

Rivka left family, friends, and a comfortable life to live in Mumbai for one purpose only: to bring the light of Judaism to those who had not yet experienced its warmth. And even with her death, the love and kindness she spread in her lifetime continue to ripple and spread, as thousands are drawn closer to Judaism because of the tragedy. If we find the strength and goodness within ourselves to truly and graciously welcome the next guest who comes into our home, and to fill his or her needs as Rivka did, we honor her in the best way possible, as she would want.

Like the Chanukah lights which came from the intense darkness, the light of Rivka and Gavriel continues to spread.