Gavriel Holtzberg

After Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg married, they subsequently moved to Mumbai to serve as Chabad emissaries and open the first Chabad House in Mumbai. Under his leadership, the Chabad organisation acquired Nariman House. He ran the synagogue in addition to him and his wife being directors of the Mumbai Chabad headquarters. He installed a kosher kitchen and a mikvah at Nariman House, and taught the Torah, offered drug prevention services and ran a hostel there. They led Shabbat meals every week at Nariman House with between 50–60 people and 30–40 people per night during the week, where they hosted Jews from all walks of life, including notable figures such as Sir Martin Gilbert and Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, to humanitarian workers, business people and Israeli backpackers visiting India.

On 26 November 2008, Nariman House was attacked during the 2008 Mumbai attacks and the Holtzbergs were taken hostage. Sandra Samuel, a maid at the house and the nanny for their 2-year-old son, Moshe, managed to escape with the boy. As the siege began, Samuel locked the doors and hid in a room. She heard Rivka screaming "Sandra, Sandra, help, Sandra." The gunmen reportedly went door-to-door, searching for targets, so Samuel unlocked her door, but they did not find her. She then ran upstairs to find the Holtzbergs shot and lying on the ground with their son crying over them, so she picked him up and ran to the exit. The Holtzbergs and other hostages were reportedly tortured.

In December 2008, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd told more than 1,000 people at a memorial service at the Yeshiva Centre in New South Wales that Holtzberg and his wife had “devoted their lives to acts of goodness and kindness and compassion for others ... but they lost their lives in a senseless act of hatred. In the face of this terror we must not bow to fear. We must respond by spreading our own message of tolerance and respect for people of other backgrounds and other beliefs.” Federal Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull and U.S. Consul-General Judith Fergin also spoke at the memorial service. A representative from the Indian Consulate was also present.

In an article published in 2006, Holtzberg said he understood the nature of the Israeli traveler's needs saying they "need relief" from the army, from work, from real life. He added that "they come here to do everything the army didn’t allow them to do. Their shoes had to be polished and tied – here they wear sandals. They had to cut their hair – here they grow their hair long."

The Holtzbergs married in 2002. Their firstborn son, Menachem Mendel, was born a year later, afflicted with Tay–Sachs disease. He died of this disease at the age of 3. Their second son, DovBer, was born with the same ailment and was institutionalized in a pediatric long-term care facility in Israel under the care of his grandparents. He died at the age of 4 in December 2008, one month after his parents' murder. Their third son, Moshe, was born healthy and lived with them in Mumbai. They lived together on the fifth floor of the Chabad House. It was revealed by her father during her funeral that Rivka was five months pregnant with her fourth child at the time she was slain.

Gavriel Noach Holtzberg (Hebrew: גבריאל נח הולצברג ‎; 9 June 1979 – 26 November 2008 (29th of Cheshvan 5769)) was an Israeli American Orthodox rabbi and the Chabad emissary to Mumbai, India, where he and his wife Rivka ran the Mumbai Chabad House. He was also a religious leader and community builder for the local Jewish Indian community, and led the Friday-night Shabbat services at the Knesset Eliyahoo synagogue. Holtzberg and his wife were murdered during the 2008 Mumbai attacks perpetrated by Islamic militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba.