Chabad House to be rechristened ‘Nariman Light House’

MUMBAI: Mumbai’s Chabad House in the Nariman House Colaba, one of the bloody targets of the 26/11 terror strikes, will be renamed as ‘Nariman Light House’ on the 10th anniversary of the attacks and 10 months after Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit, official sources said on Friday.

The present rabbi, Israel Kozlovsky, said the rechristening ceremony will be organised on behalf of the Chabad of India Trust on Sunday afternoon, the eve of 26/11 attacks, at the main Jewish social-cultural-religious hub in the fashionable Colaba, south Mumbai.

The event will mark the unveiling of a memorial on the Nariman House terrace, making it the only place in Mumbai to honour all the 166 victims of the terror strikes, besides plans to reconstruct the heavily damaged fourth-fifth floors will be announced by Rabbi Kozlovsky and other officials.

The Nariman House, housing the Chabad House, was one of the main targets of 10 Pakistani terrorists who sneaked in through the Arabian Sea route and disembarked at a Colaba fishing jetty, barely a stone’s throw.

Among the victims brutally killed in the indiscriminate firing and grenade attacks were the then Nariman House Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his pregnant wife Rivka, and two other Israelis, an American and a Mexican, all Jews, besides Indian security officials.

However, their two-year-old old toddler son, Moshe was saved by his Indian nanny, Sandra Samuels, and a few days later they were flown off to Israel.

On January 18 this year, Moshe, now a shy, bespectacled 12-year-old boy, joined Netanyahu and other dignitaries at the Chabad House, along with his grandfather, Shimon Rosenberg and grandmother.

It was the first-ever visit by any high-ranking Israeli dignitary to Chabad House, which reopened in 2014, and is now considered a ‘Living Memorial’ to the November 26, 2008 carnage.