Weekly Chasidic Story #627 (s5770-12 / 14 Kislev 5770)

Echoes of Abraham

"After terrorists murdered our spiritual guides, Rabbi Gabi and Rivky Holtzberg, one year ago, I left my position as Director of the ICU Medical Center at British Kennedy in Mumbai, India."

Connection: Weekly Reading (last week) - Rivka takes her father's idols

 

Echoes of Abraham Our Patriarch

In a powerful echo of the Biblical story of the patriarch Abraham, a Mumbai doctor smashed his father's idols and eventually decided to become a Jew in the Land of Israel.
Dr. Aharon Abraham, left his position as Director of the ICU Medical Center at British Kennedy in Mumbai, India after terrorists murdered his spiritual guide and his wife, Rabbi Gabi and Rivky Holtzberg one year ago.

Abraham was born Vagirds Frads to a Hindu cleric who worshipped idols, and a mother who prepared food for them. Like the Biblical Abraham, young Vagirds could not understand how his father could honor a man-made statue, nor why his mother would cook for them. "Sometimes I ate it in secret," he confided in a recent interview.

Unlike the patriarch, however, he waited until after graduating high school to confront his father, asking how he could believe "such nonsense." But when there was no reply, his anger led him to take a hammer and smash the idols, exactly as Abraham had done. "The gods are angry!" his father shouted at him, he recounted, and recalled his reply: "If they're angry, let them do something about it. Or they can reconstruct themselves."

It was while studying medicine at the University of Mumbai that he first read a Bible, given to him by Christian students. He was deeply moved by the Book of Psalms, and amazed to read the story of Abraham and many others. "A new world opened before me," he said.

The woman he married, a nurse, was equally interested in his Bible studies, and after their wedding the couple changed their family name to "Abraham," to honor the patriarch. Vagirds became Aaron, because "the priest was a wonderful person, full of glory," he explained.

Eventually the couple decided to become Jewish and underwent a Reform conversion. But then he met Rabbi Gabi and Rivky Holtzberg, Chabad emissaries to Mumbai, in connection with medical treatment for their two older children (not Moshe-Tzvi, the survivor of the heinous terrorist attack -- ed.) and soon thereafter began studying Judaism in earnest with them.

"Our whole life revolved around the Chabad House," said Abraham. "It was the only place where we could get kosher food. Gabi and Rivky were our guides, we did not move without them. We began a process of true conversion and found the extraordinary beauty of the Torah commandments."

It was the brutal murder of the Holtzbergs and their four guests at the Nariman Chabad House that changed their lives forever, however. "They took away my Master, my teacher. There was nothing for us in India anymore. But what we learned from Gabi and Rivki will accompany us and our children forever."

On Rosh Chodesh Kislev (Nov. 18, 2009), on the first anniversary of the brutal murder of their friends and spiritual guides, Gabi and Rivky, the couple completed their conversion and remarried in a truly kosher Jewish ceremony at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hevron.

The couple's three children also have new names as well: Sarah, Shmuel Gavriel, and Sharonah Rivka, in memory of the matriarch Sarah, wife of Abraham, and to forever keep alive the memories of Gabi and Rivky Holtzberg.
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Compiled by Yerachmiel Tilles from an article in Sichat HaShavuah #1193, and a follow-up article the next week in israelnationalnews.com by Hana Levi Julian (Kislev 2, 5770, 19 November 09)


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Yerachmiel Tilles is co-founder and associate director of Ascent-of-Safed, and chief editor of this website (and of KabbalaOnline.org). He has hundreds of published stories to his credit, and many have been translated into other languages. He tells them live at Ascent nearly every Saturday night.

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