MONTREAL — A 90-minute interfaith vigil for the victims of the Mumbai terror attacks filled the Gelber Conference Centre on Dec. 1 with 250 people – mostly Jewish – who were united by grief, outrage and shock.
Dalgit Singh, right, of the Indo-Canadian community lights a yahrzeit candle with Joseph Gabay at the Montreal vigil for the victims of the Mumbai terror attacks.
With the flags of Quebec, Israel, Canada and India as their backdrop, representatives of the Jewish, Indo-Canadian and Muslim communities expressed profound sorrow over the terrorist murder of almost 200 victims.
“We know who did this,” Dalgit Singh, president of the Indo-Canadian Association, told the audience.
Most of the vigil – organized by Canadian Jewish Congress, Quebec region (CJC-Q) – focused on Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, his wife Rivkah, and the four other Jews who perished at the city’s Chabad centre, which was run by the couple.
Speakers also made special mention of the two Montreal victims, Dr. Michael Moss and Elizabeth Russell. In the hallway, the public lit yahrzeit candles, casting an almost hallowed glow on a placard bearing photos of the young, smiling Chabad couple.
A list of all the victims lay underneath, and during the vigil, Singh also lit a yahrzeit candle with Joseph Gabay, a former president of CJC-Q.
“It was a shock, just impossible,” Rabbi Zushe Silberstein of the Chabad-Lubavitch community told The CJN.
The shock seemed more profound during the vigil itself. A gasp by the audience was audible when Rabbi Moshe New, head of the Montreal Torah Centre (MTC), disclosed that Israeli intelligence had told Chabad officials that the Holtzbergs were found bound with telephone cord, and that they “had not seen before such signs of torture.”
Speakers from all the communities were united in condemning the three days of terror.
Rabbi New said Chabad, in keeping with the example set by the Holtzbergs, would remain resolute in being “lamplighters” for the Jewish world.
“There are no words, there are no answers,” said Rabbi Asher Jacobson of Chevra Kadisha-B’nai Jacob Congregation, who said he had crossed paths with Rabbi Holtzberg while growing up in Brooklyn and attending the same yeshiva and summer camp.
Imam Isheq Fonseca, who was not born a Muslim and hails from the Punjab region on the India-Pakistan border, expressed “sincerest feelings of remorse” for what happened.
“I am a man of peace,” he said, stressing that genuine Islam embraces peace and all humanity.
Among others who spoke were Liberal MNA Lawrence Bergman, who conveyed condolences from Premier Jean Charest; Federation CJA president Marc Gold; pharmacist Victor Sumbly of the Indo-Canadian community; Vered Elron, representing her husband, Israeli Consul General Yoram Elron; Beth Israel Beth Aaron spiritual leader Rabbi Reuben Poupko; and Mount Royal MP Irwin Cotler.
“We all come together in the sharing of grief and remembrance,” Cotler said.
The Chabad community was to hold its own public memorial service Dec. 3 at the MTC, with participants to include Rabbi Yonasan Binyomin Weiss of the Jewish Community Council of Montreal and members of the Belzer community.
