Orphaned Son of Mumbai Terror Victims Leads Chabad Prayers

Image by Getty Images
Moshe Holtzberg, the orphaned son of the Chabad House directors in Mumbai, India, killed by terrorists in 2008, was scheduled to lead thousands of Chabad-Lubavitch emissaries in the recitation of psalms.
Moshe, who is nearly 9 and lives with his grandparents in Afula, Israel, was scheduled to lead the recitation on Sunday night in New York at a gala dinner concluding a week of programming as part of the annual International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries.
Moshe’s nanny, Sandra Samuels, escaped from the Nariman Chabad House carrying 2-year-old Moshe in November 2008 after it came under siege. Four other Jewish victims were killed, including Moshe’s parents, Rabbi Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg.
The attacks on several Mumbai sites over four days by an Islamist Pakistani group, including two hotels and the train station, left 166 dead and hundreds injured.
Samuels was given permanent residency status in Israel to be with Moshe after the attack.
“He is said to be a happy, healthy boy,” according to Chabad.org.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
