Throngs of mourners on Tuesday packed the funerals of the six Jews killed in last week's murder spree in India, turning the narrow alleys of one Jerusalem neighborhood into a sea of black coats and hats and drawing thousands to an anguished ceremony in the community whose Mumbai headquarters was targeted.
The six died after gunmen struck the Chabad House, the Mumbai headquarters of the ultra-Orthodox Lubavitch movement, last Wednesday. After a two-day standoff, four Israelis, an American Jew and a Mexican woman were dead. The woman had planned to move to Israel this week.
A huge crowd gathered Tuesday outside the red-brick Israeli headquarters of the Chabad movement, whose emissary to Mumbai, Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg, 29, was murdered along with his 28-year-old wife, Rivkah. Those in attendance included President Shimon Peres and a slew of other dignitaries.
Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, a Chabad official from New York, delivered an impassioned eulogy, describing the young couple as dedicated people who would stop at nothing to help a fellow Jew.
"We will answer the terrorists," he vowed, his voice shaking. "We will not fight them with AK47s. We will not fight them with grenades. We will not fight them with tanks.
"We will fight them with torches!" he cried, referring to God's teachings.
He pledged to rebuild the Mumbai center and name it after the Holtzbergs. Chabad operates thousands of such outreach centers around the world.
The Holtzbergs' bodies _ hers wrapped in a shroud, his in a prayer shawl _ rested on chairs on the dais where the eulogies and prayers were delivered.
The couple left behind a 2-year-old son, Moshe, who was rescued by his Indian caretaker. He returned to Israel on Monday with the nanny and the bodies of his parents. In an emotional scene before their flight Monday, the boy repeatedly cried for his mother at a tearful memorial ceremony at a Mumbai synagogue. The scene was broadcast repeatedly on Israeli TV stations.
"You don't have a mother who will hug you and kiss you," Rabbi Kotlarsky cried out during a eulogy that switched back and forth between Hebrew and English. But the community will take care of the boy, he vowed: "You are the child of all of Israel."
The only other surviving member of the family, Moshe's brother, has Tay-Sachs, a terminal genetic disease, and is institutionalized in Israel. The Holtzbergs' eldest son died of the disease.
The Holtzbergs had lived in Israel and Brooklyn before they moved to Mumbai in 2003. Rabbi Holtzberg also had U.S. citizenship.
Addressing the crowd, Peres called on the world to unite in the fight against terrorism. He singled out Iran, which supports anti-Israel militant groups and whose president has called for Israel's destruction.
"If the entire world doesn't join together as one man and say 'enough!,' then the world is in danger. This is a plague that is difficult to stop," he said.
In addition to Peres, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel's two chief rabbis were among the thousands who attended the nationally televised ceremony.
Most of the people who came were bearded men in the black suits and black fedoras of Chabad members. Women gathered behind a yellow metal partition, in accordance with the Jewish custom of separating the sexes during prayer.
The grimness of the funerals was deepened by the conviction that the victims were struck because of their religion.
"It's a very difficult feeling because we know this was targeted against us," said Eliahu Tzadok, 41, who attended the funeral of another victim, 38-year-old Leibish Teitelbaum, in Jerusalem. "It's a continuation of acts against the Jewish people when the Jewish people did nothing to deserve it."
Teitelbaum, a U.S. citizen who lived in Jerusalem, was in Mumbai last week supervising the preparation of kosher food.
Several thousand ultra-Orthodox mourners, most of them bearded men with sidecurls garbed in long black coats and black hats, packed the main square, narrow alleys and rooftops of Mea Shearim, a large religious neighborhood in Jerusalem, for his funeral.
Death notices plastered the neighborhood's billboards and walls, reading "May God avenge them." Loudspeakers blazed with the sounds of weeping, wailing mourners reciting prayers from the Book of Psalms.
Teitelbaum belonged to a prominent family in the small, ultra-Orthodox Satmar sect, which is ideologically opposed to the state of Israel.
His family informed the Israeli government that they wanted no state involvement or symbols at his funeral, an official in the government ministry in charge of state ceremonies said Monday. But when Teitelbaum's casket was taken off the plane from Mumbai, it was draped with an Israeli flag.
Shmuel Poppenheim, who studied with Teitelbaum in his youth, told Israel Radio that "disturbed his family very much." There were no Israeli flags or government representatives at the funeral.
A fourth victim, 50-year-old Norma Shvarzblat Rabinovich of Mexico, had planned to immigrate to Israel to join two of her children who had already moved here.
She had spent the past few months touring India , and had planned to fly from Mumbai to Israel on Monday _ the 18th birthday of her son, Manuel _ before she was killed, according to the Israeli Foreign Ministry Web site.
The two other victims were Yocheved Orpaz, 60, who had been traveling in India with a daughter and grandchildren, and Bentzion Chroman, 28, who like Teitelbaum, was a supervisor of kosher food.
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