Chabad to rebuild Mumbai Jewish Center

The new head of the devastated Jewish center in Mumbai vowed this week to restore the facility that was taken over by Islamic gunmen two weeks ago.

The Chabad house was one of several buildings captured in the Nov. 26-29 attacks in India. A commando assault ended the two-day siege of the center, but six people inside the building — including Chabad Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg and his wife, Rivkah — were killed.

“We are staying at the same center and will rebuild it even nicer than it was,” said Rabbi Dov Goldberg, an Israeli who was sent to Mumbai with his wife and daughter from New York by the Chabad-Lubavitch movement.

“We will try and open it as soon as possible,” Goldberg said. “Meanwhile, we will have it in a temporary place. Our activities will not stop even for one second.”

The building served as a spiritual oasis for Mumbai’s small Jewish community, traveling Jewish backpackers and visiting businessmen, providing a synagogue and kosher food.

Meanwhile, Ynetnews.com reported that a leaflet distributed in Jerusalem by the anti-Zionist, ultra-Orthodox Neturei Karta group said the attack was God’s punishment for Chabad’s work with “Zionist” Israelis.

The leaflet criticized Chabad for hosting both religious and secular Jews without distinguishing “between good and evil, right and wrong, pure and impure, a Jew and a convert, a believer and a heretic,” Ynet reported. — ap

Jews, Muslims protest in Paris

Jews and Muslims marched through Paris to show outrage at the desecration of more than 500 Muslim and up to 20 Jewish graves.

The French Jewish-Muslim Friendship group organized the weekend march, which included local elected officials, imams and rabbis. About 100 people participated in the demonstration.

Between Dec. 7 and 8, on the eve of the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha, a suspected group of neo-Nazis sprayed racist slurs on military gravestones in a northern France cemetery. Muslim tombs were targeted twice in the same cemetery near Arras in the past two years.

The protest called for peace and underlined the links between Jews and Muslims. — jta