Yes, I thought it was wonderful that there were Jews of many different denominations and affiliations attending Monday evening’s Mumbai memorial.
But I can’t help but feel that there was still a big elephant in the room that evening.
There is a general disdain for anything Lubavitch among the main-line Orthodox world. The fact that Lubavitch has its own factional differences with the question of the late Lubavitch Rebbe being cast as Moshiach by some, doesn’t help when one is attempting to put together a community memorial service like this one.
Usually when there is a life threatening event in Israel, there is a call for Tehillim or psalm groups in the Orthodox community.
It’s entirely possible that I missed that call this time around, but I don’t seem to recall any such call for Tehillim outside of the Lubavitch community.
I was glad to see that the Vaad Harabanim was listed as one of Monday’s event sponsors. Rabbi Moshe Heinemann sat on the dais and read words of Tehillim. And Rabbi Moshe Hauer, listed in the program as representing not only his own Bnai Jacob Shaarei Zion, but also the Vaad, delivered an incredible address.
So I’m hoping that what I saw on Monday evening was real.
By the end of the evening, I was crying, so much so that I asked a JCC staffer to let me exit through a back door of the facility, because I couldn’t talk to anyone else.
My tears were for a combination of reasons. The first was that the events bringing us together from Mumbai were emotionally crushing. I kept thinking about the young couple and their baby son. But I was also crying, because I was hoping beyond hope that it would be true what Rabbi Hauer was asking us, that we were all one people now. That it wasn’t an issue anymore of who was Lubavitch, and who went to Ner Israel or who was from Yeshiva University or whatever and wherever. And that made me cry, that it was actually a possibility that these two young deceased people, Rabbi Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg could help erase the cynicism, the judgment, the loshon hora and the divisions between our people. If it were true, then I was also crying tears of joy. But if it was just a show, just artificial concern by some or a chance to be seen, then these were tears of added pain.
Because if we haven’t learned now to get over our internal arrogance, how can we ever expect to face HaShem and ask him for a favorable eternal judgment?
This couple was our corbon, our sacrifice.
Maybe we can grow as a unified people in the spirit of am yachad now.
This is all I ask.
Nothing more