Legend has it that Moses, the most important prophet of the Jews and a significant religious leader for Christians and Muslims too, was ordered by God to deliver the Hebrews from slavery during Biblical times. Moses is said to have fulfilled his task by leading the slaves out of Egypt through the Red Sea and received the 10 Commandments. Rabbi Shimon Rosenberg believes that just as the prophet emerged from the water, his two-year-old grandson Moshe, which is Hebrew for Moses, miraculously emerged unscathed from fire—the 26/11 terror attack on Chabad House in Mumbai in which Moshe’s parents Rivki and Gavriel Holtzberg were killed along with four other Jews.

The comparisons to divinity don’t end there. Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, the New York-based global chairman of the Conference of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, stops by in Afula in northern Israel on his way to Mumbai, carrying loads of goodies for the chubby little boy who now lives here with his grandparents. Among them is a stuffed-toy version and a holy scripture version of the Torah, the most holy of the sacred writings of Judaism, believed to have been authored by Moses. “When Moshe grows up, I want him to return to Mumbai,” says his grandfather. “And do what his father was doing, helping people without discriminating between them by their religion, colour or nationality.”

But like most two-year-olds would be, all that the golden-haired Moshe is interested in are the candies and lollipops Rabbi Kotlarsky has brought. He trundles around the quaint house, which is overflowing with toys, playing ball with cousin Malki and his grandmother Yehudit. He munches on fried crisps from a foil packet like they were going out of fashion, chews up lollipop instead of sucking on it, and is spoiled for choice when it comes to companions and toys. He has received toys, clothes and chocolates from the US, Europe and even Turkey, and is one of 30-odd cousins in the extended family of the Rosenbergs, which means there is no dearth of playmates.

Moshe’s other big love is watching Hebrew animation and children’s stories on DVD on the desktop computer in a makeshift playroom. One of the animations is the story of a family with two children. Moshe first observes the images from a distance, imitates some of the characters, makes faces at them, and when the father and mother in the animation appear on screen, he walks up to the computer monitor, touches the screen and says “Eema, Abba”, Hebrew for mom and dad. Otherwise, there are toy cars to take apart, wooden blocks to build a building, a toy saxophone to blow and a Hebrew storybook that is slowly getting converted into a scrapbook with his recent pictures that keeps him occupied. And two stuffed dolls, “Buba” and “Molly”.

Afula in Israel, where Moshe now lives, is no stranger to terror. A neatly-laid out new town of nearly 40,000 people, Afula in the Northern District of Israel, like most sites around the country, has Biblical connections. And in modern times, it has been a frequent victim of terror as it is located close to the West Bank.

But as in Mumbai, so here in Israel, the presence of his nanny Sandra Samuel is important to Moshe in all that he does. The frail 44-year-old who grabbed Moshe and fled Chabad House when there was a lull in the firing from the terrorists on the morning of November 27, has to always be within his sight. She disappears for a moment and he begins to wail, “Thandra, Thandra, Thandra, Thandra,” still unable to pronounce her name clearly, until she returns to hold him and console him. The anxiety of separation kicks in even if she is with him but shifts her attention to a conversation with a third person. “Thandra, Thandra,” he starts and waves his little arms at her until she stops whatever it is that she is doing and pays him attention. “Ninni coming?” she asks him, wondering if he wants to sleep.

Theirs is a fairytale bonding between a little-educated, poor Indian Catholic nanny apparently full of grit and fatalism—who took up the job for a few thousand rupees to run her house and stuck on as she found her employers to be loving as well—and a Jewish baby who has seen her by his side from his second week and probably considers her his second mother. Now, after 26/11, she is the only one left. Little wonder then that they are both possessive about each other.

“The first time I saw the Rabbi and Rivki, they were both dressed completely in black and I wondered who these people were,” Sandra recalls, referring to the Chabad custom of its followers having to wear mostly black. “I wasn’t sure about them until he said he was a Rabbi. I love Jewish people. They are special. In the Bible, God says he will bless the world through the Jews.”

Even the opportunity came purely by chance. Sandra was working elsewhere in Colaba when a friend who was working for the Holtzbergs asked Sandra to work in her place while she went away for a break. She never came back. That was in 2003, when Sandra joined the Holtzbergs as a kitchen-help to assist Rivka in cooking kosher meals for the hordes of Jewish guests stopping by at Chabad House. Two years ago, when Moshe was born, she switched to being his full-time nanny.

Sandra talks about her past in starts. She has a brother and a father in Chennai but hasn’t been in touch with them for many years. She ran away from home at 14 or 15, went to Goa and then to Pune, where she trained as an ayurvedic masseuse and worked for years. Then she moved to Mumbai and fell in love with the city, like millions others, as she worked for some 20 years as a maid in the houses of naval officers in the Colaba Naval Station. She even moved to Delhi briefly with the family of a naval officer but hated the city and returned. And the flight to Israel was not her first time on a plane. She had been taken to Spain for a week to accompany an elderly person she had been giving regular massages to. “I don’t want to go too much into my past,” she says, shaking her head. “The present is enough.”

The matter-of-fact attitude does not stop there. Husband John Samuel, a mechanic at an auto garage in Mahalaxmi and originally from Kerala, died of heart attack at the age of 52 in June this year. “But that is life,” she shrugs. Older son Martin, 25, is a graduate and works at a call centre in a Mumbai suburb. He has a Hindu girlfriend for the last four years and they are to marry soon and Sandra speaks to them over the phone almost every day. Younger son Jackson is 18 and is in class 11, although she can’t remember the name of the school he goes to. She stuck to her job because paying the house rent of Rs 3,000 was her responsibility. Life has become tough for her boys now as she isn’t in Mumbai to visit home two or three times a week and cook for them. "But they are grown up. They have to fend for themselves,” she says.

Her new-found fame as a public face, which comes with the added adulation reserved for a hero in Israel, is something she is yet to come to terms with. “Everyone tells me that I have done something extraordinary by rescuing Moshe. I don’t understand. Woh to mera farz tha na (wasn’t that my duty)?” she asks.

“When we arrived here from Mumbai, the Israeli prime minister, defence minister and so many important people were at the airport to receive us. India has seen so many terrorist attacks but victims there are not treated so well,” she says. Then she turns her anger towards security in Mumbai. “How many times has this happened in Mumbai now? I believe they had warnings…why didn’t they take precautions? I used to take Moshe for walks near the Gateway of India as he loved to see the horse-carriages and I remember that they did nothing at the Taj Mahal Hotel except stop cars outside.”

With life—as Sandra and Moshe knew it—in the quiet and peaceful lanes of Colaba having changed, those walks are unlikely to happen again. Ask her what she makes of it all and she says she is surprised by the suddenness of the change and that it is yet to sink in. But she tries to rationalise it with her own brand of philosophy. “Whoever struggles in life doesn’t get hassled easily by the blows it deals. I don’t take life too seriously. Whether I am famous or not, my life won’t change, will it?”

Moses the prophet would have probably approved of that.