Tearful Israel Mourns 6 Victims of Mumbai Attack

In this photo released by Israel's Government Press Office, one of six coffins containing the body...

In this photo released by Israel's Government Press Office, one of six coffins containing the body of a victim from the attack on the Jewish Center in Mumbai, India is carried by Israeli soldiers at a ceremony after arriving in Tel Aviv, Israel, late Monday, Dec. 1, 2008. The bodies of six Jewish victims of the of the Chabad House hostage siege, including Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife Rivkah, arrived in Israel and were expected to be buried Tuesday. (AP Photo/GPO,Moshe Milner,HO)

(AP)

Thousands of grief-stricken Orthodox Jews prayed and wept Tuesday before the shrouded bodies of Israelis killed in Mumbai, joining the national mourning in a ceremony broadcast on TV and attended by Israeli leaders.

The six died when gunmen on a deadly three-day rampage through the Indian city struck Chabad House, the Mumbai headquarters of the Jewish Chabad-Lubavitch movement, last Wednesday. Six Israelis were among the 172 dead.

A crowd gathered at Kfar Chabad, the movement's Israel headquarters, to mourn Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg, 29, and his 28-year-old wife, Rivka. The two were outreach envoys dispatched to Mumbai as part of the movement's attempt to bring its brand of Judaism to Jews across the world, running an open house aimed mainly at Jewish travelers and merchants.

The couple left a 2-year-old son, Moshe, who was rescued by his Indian nanny. Rivka was six months pregnant when she was killed, a Chabad spokesman, Avraham Berkowitz, said Tuesday.

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The crowd of thousands at their funeral included Israel's president, Shimon Peres, the country's chief rabbis and other top government officials.

"We will answer the terrorists," Moshe Kotlarsky, a Chabad rabbi from New York, vowed, his voice shaking, naming his weapon — the teachings of God.

He pledged to rebuild the Mumbai center and name it after the Holtzbergs. Chabad operates thousands such outreach centers around the world.

The Holtzbergs' bodies — hers wrapped in a shroud, his in a prayer shawl — rested on benches on a dais nearby. Coffins are not used in Jewish funerals in Israel.

Their small son, who returned to Israel on Monday with the nanny and the bodies of his parents, was not present. At a tearful ceremony held at a Mumbai synagogue before their flight, the boy called out for his mother in a scene that was repeatedly broadcast on Israeli TV.

"You don't have a mother who will hug you and kiss you," Kotlarsky said, his eulogy alternating between Hebrew and English. But the community will take care of the boy, he vowed: "You are the child of all of Israel."