Just before boarding his first flight to India, Rabbi Chanoch Gechtman – back then, a rabbinical student on his way to assist Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg at his Chabad House in Mumbai – sat in on some sessions at the 2006 International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries.
In the room with him were a new crop of emissaries from locations around the globe whose focus was on developing new courses of Torah instruction for a variety of populations with Jewish educational experience ranging from nil to intense.
“The moderator spoke a lot about how the strongest influence one can have on a person is when one learns with him,” says Gechtman. “I decided that that would be my purpose. I would learn Torah with anyone who would stop by.”
Gechtman, 25, and his 23-year-old wife Leiky will soon find themselves back in Mumbai to teach Torah and then some. As the new directors of the city’s Chabad House, they will focus their energies on reinvigorating activities begun by Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg, and interrupted by their tragic murder during the November 2008 terrorist attacks.
It’s a mission the Israeli couple is approaching with apprehension, hope, and, they emphasize, humility.
“I still haven’t processed that they are not here,” Gechtman says of the Holtzbergs, whom he befriended during those six months in 2006, looking up to them as mentors – he studied rabbinical law under Gavriel Holtzberg – and role models. “The reality doesn’t fit. I can’t fathom that they are not alive; sometimes, it seems like they are people who live forever, that something like this can’t happen to them.”
When Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, vice chairman of the educational arm of Chabad-Lubavitch, emotionally introduced the Gechtmans to a crowd of Jewish leaders and ambassadors at the Living Legacy conference sponsored by American Friends of Lubavitch Wednesday, he drew an arc from the tragedy of less than two years ago to a burgeoning future for Jewish life in Mumbai.
“Rabbi Gavriel and his wife Rivka are of course, irreplaceable,” he said. “But now, there’s a rabbi who just got his visa on Friday and will be going there in a few weeks to continue their work and revive Chabad activities in Mumbai.”
Rabbi Yosef C. Kantor, who as director of Chabad-Lubavitch of Thailand also serves as a supervising emissary in India, was also optimistic.
“Gabi liked him and relied on him, and for good reason,” Kantor said of Holtzberg’s relationship with Chanoch Gechtman. “He’s a wonderful young rabbi. He’s personable, enthusiastic, organized and dedicated.”
Lifelong Dream
For his part, Gechtman, who grew up in the Israeli cities of Haifa and Migdal Ha’emek, the move is the fulfillment of a lifelong dream to lead a Chabad House in a far corner of the world.
“It’s like getting into a suit that is already big and you have to make yourself fit into the suit, rather than make the suit fit you,” he says.
Leiky Gechtman, whose experience includes teaching Hebrew to adults at the Rohr Chabad Center in Berlin and Jewish studies to children at the city’s Ohr Avner Chabad day school, agrees. She says that when Kantor called the young couple after the birth of their daughter to invite them to India, it was a total surprise.
“We didn’t think about it. It just suddenly came,” she explains. “It came from above.”
Growing up in the Israeli city of Gedera as the eldest daughter of Chabad-Lubavitch emissaries Rabbi Binyomin and Chana Karniel, Gechtman had early childhood experience she says has prepared her for a life of welcoming Jews from all walks of life into her home and being there as their friend, teacher, confidant, or whatever else they need.
“People would come over to our house suddenly,” she remembers. “There is a hospital nearby, so a lot of relatives of patients would come for Shabbat and stay with us.”
In Mumbai – the couple has already spent a considerable amount of time on pilot trips in the city – the Gechtmans have thrown open their doors to Israeli backpackers, businesspeople, locals and Jewish travelers. For their first Shabbat dinner, they welcomed 40 guests, some of whom remembered their host as the younger rabbinical student of four years ago.
Leiky Gechtman, meanwhile, has been maintain the women’s ritual bath when she’s in town, and will return with several plans for new Torah classes for young women.
She says that they’re departing on their permanent move with a network of support in place. They speak to Rivka Holtzberg’s parents, Rabbi Shimon and Yehudit Rosenberg, regularly, and they enjoyed a visit from Gavriel Holtzberg’s parents, Nachman and Frieda Holtzberg, who recommended the couple to Kantor.
Their parents, adds Gechtman, are also proud and hopeful.
“For my parents, the distance will be very difficult for them,” she explains. “But they’re happy. They think it is very much the right thing to do.”
When asked about the Chabad House’s history, she turns introspective.
“To step into shoes that are so big makes me apprehensive,” states Gechtman. “But we hope that the Chabad House will grow and blossom.”
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