Chabad Movement Vows to Continue Work of Couple Killed in Attack

[Coventina]

Source: New York Times

For many Jews, they are homes away from home: Chabad Houses, welcoming outposts in foreign lands or across the United States, places to drop in to celebrate Hanukkah, Passover or weekly Shabbat dinners.

Almost always, the Chabad Houses are run by young couples, emissaries of the Chabad-Lubavitch denomination, a Hasidic faith with its headquarters in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, whose adherents believe that secular Jews ought to become more observant.

Two of those emissaries were killed when their Chabad House was among the buildings attacked by terrorists in Mumbai last week. In their deaths, the couple, Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, 29, and his wife Rivka, 28, drew a spotlight on the Chabad faith (the terms Chabad and Lubavitch are used interchangeably) — and to the emissaries’ growing presence around the world.

The number of Chabad Houses has mushroomed in the last decade, and now more than 4,000 husband-and-wife couples run them in 73 countries.



Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/01/world/asia/01lubavitch.html?ref=asia

[Coventina]

1. After Mumbai attacks, Israel debates protection for Chabad Houses

Reporting from Jerusalem -- It sounds like a counter-terrorism official's worst-case scenario: how to protect a global network of lightly guarded (at best) sites, all filled with unarmed civilians and publicly identified as prime targets.

That's the issue being debated in Israel in the wake of the last week's terrorist rampage in Mumbai, India. Among the targets was the Nariman House, a hostel and religious center run by Chabad Lubavitch, a New York-based ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect that operates hundreds of such facilities around the world.

"It's clear that we don't want our Chabad Houses to turn into barricaded forts," said Rabbi Menachem Brod, official Chabad spokesman in Israel. "The whole idea of Chabad is that we are open and accessible to Jews traveling abroad."

The concern has left Israeli officials fending off charges that they should do more to protect the buildings, which serve as outposts for ultra-Orthodox Jewish culture.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-targets1-2008dec01,0,5881191.story

on edit: forgot the link