Complaining that the Indian government was not giving them long-term visas, Rabbi Yaakov-David Leiter and his wife Sara, who were hoping to carry forward the legacy of Sara’s sister Rivka Holtzberg and her husband Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg at Chabad House in Mumbai, have apparently changed their mind and decided not to take up the assignment.

The Holtzbergs, who were running the Jewish centre of the ultra-orthodox Chabad-Lubavitch movement, ended up becoming the most high-profile foreign victims of the 26/11 terror attack. They and four other Jewish people they were hosting were killed by two Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorists who raided their building in a nondescript lane in the Colaba area. But their two-year-old son Moshe escaped miraculously with the help of his Indian nanny, Sandra.

The New York-headquartered movement had subsequently chosen Moshe’s aunt and uncle to move to Mumbai and continue providing visiting Jews a “home away from home” in the Indian financial capital. The Leiters, who live in the northern Israeli city of Safed, had applied for visas for themselves and their two children in February.

The choice of Sara and her husband was not difficult as her parents in Israel, Rabbi Shimon Rosenberg and Yehudit, were keen to preserve and build on the memory of Rivka and Gavriel as they were famous for their hospitality and kindness.

Besides, the Leiters are also associated with a similar but much larger Jewish centre called Ascent in Safed, which owns a former hotel with 85 beds, a synagogue and a Jewish library which act as a youth hostel, recreation centre and a place for religious retreats, and so had the necessary experience.

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