There are Chabad Houses in far-flung locations such as the Congo and Vietnam. In all, there are about 4,000 husband and wife teams in at least 73 countries across the globe representing Judaism.
This amazing outreach campaign, first orchestrated by Schneerson and continued by his followers since his death in 1994, has made Chabad a more visible representative of the Jewish people than any other body, organization or entity – including the State of Israel.
With embassies in about 100 countries, Israel has representatives in more countries than Chabad. But the sheer number of Chabad Houses exceeds by far the number of Israeli embassies. And when a Jew plans a trip, he or she is more likely to go online and find out where the local Chabad House is than to locate the nearest Israeli embassy.
But this amazing global expansion, achieved in the last four decades, when Chabad under Schneerson began putting all of its significant energies into reaching out to Jews, has also made Chabad one of most vulnerable Jewish targets of global Jihad.
After all, what can be more visibly Jewish than a Chabad shaliach with a long beard, kippa and tzitzit. In fact, the very success of a Chabad shaliach depends on how accessible and visible he is.
As former Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh has pointed out, it was not coincidental that the "Deccan Mujahideen" terrorists targeted Mumbai’s Chabad House.
Amazingly, while there have been numerous anti-Semitic incidents at Chabad Houses around the world over the years, the only fatal terrorist attack on a Chabad institution was in 1956 – when Kfar Chabad was infiltrated by Arab terrorists. Five students and a teacher were killed.
But after Mumbai, perhaps Chabad and the State of Israel need to rethink security arrangements at Chabad Houses in India and in other sensitive locations.
In Europe it’s common to see local police and Israelis providing security to Jewish schools, synagogues and community centers.
Rabbi Menachem Brod, official Chabad spokesman in Israel, said Saturday night that beefing up security presented a dilemma.
"It’s clear that we don’t want our Chabad Houses to turn into barricaded forts," said Brod. "The whole idea of Chabad is that we are open and accessible to Jews traveling abroad. Besides, it is doubtful that security would have helped in this case. The hotels that were attacked had security."
Mumbai: There is evidence that Rabbi Gavriel Holzberg, his wife Rivka and their three friends died in a brutal manner during the Terror siege on Nariman House.
Photographs taken after the shootout give a vivid picture of the brutality unleashed on the Holzbergs and their friends after the terrorists took over the house on Wednesday. The photographs, taken by former corporator of the area Puran Doshi who entered the building soon after the NSG operation was over, speak volumes of the nightmare the family and their friends must have gone through before they died.
The Rabbi’s body was found in a room on the second floor, with his legs sticking into the hall where his wife’s body was found. Rivka’s body was found near the legs of the Rabbi. His legs had been tied with a belt. His wife’s limbs were, however, not bound.
Only the postmortem can shed light on whether the Rabbi or his wife had died first.
Two other Israeli girls were found dead with their hands and legs bound. They were lying next to each other. Another body was found in a decomposed state, indicating he was killed when the attack had begun. Photographs taken after the operation also show the bodies of the two terrorists, covered in blood, on the fourth floor.
