MUMBAI, India — Rabbis from across Asia on Tuesday celebrated the reopening of a Jewish center that had been targeted by Pakistani gunmen who stormed through Mumbai on a 60-hour killing rampage in 2008.
The attacks on the Chabad center and other locations in the Indian financial capital formerly known as Bombay left 166 people dead. Among them were six people from the orthodox Jewish center, including Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife. Their infant son escaped in the arms of his Indian nanny, and the two now live in Israel.
Rabbi Israel Kozlovsky, who now runs the Mumbai center, said the rebuilt six-story Nariman House would house a $2.5 million Jewish Museum as well as Mumbai’s first memorial to those killed in the attacks, which also targeted a train station, a popular tourist cafe and the luxury Taj Mahal hotel.
The building’s memorial includes a recreation of the slain rabbi’s home and videos about Jewish culture, according to the lead designer, Nick Appelbaum.
Since the terrorist attacks, the Chabad center conducted spiritual services and social outreach from temporary locations in the city.
Reconstruction had been delayed while Holtzberg’s parents briefly fought the New York-based Jewish group in a Mumbai court over who would control and redesign the property. The property title lies with the Chabad of India Trust, which Gavriel Holtzberg had helped set up in 2005. The two sides dropped the case in 2011, with the organization assuming stewardship.