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The next morning was Sunday. Mendy Kessler went to meet with a real estate agent, to talk about a potential rental property. Kessler and Sputz were growing exhausted; they knew the places they wanted to rent, but they needed approval from their boss, Rabbi Yosef Kantor of Thailand, due to arrive later that week to survey the potential sites. Kantor would also approve a budget for work on Nariman House, and Levi Jurkowicz hoped to be given something to do. Perhaps most important, Kantor would bring kosher meat from Bangkok. Everyone was waiting for Kantor.
While Mendy Kessler met with the real estate agent, Menachem Sputz went to a small synagogue nearby to give a Torah lesson to a group of young Bene Israel men. Fifteen of them sat on a bench at the side of the sanctuary, with a small table for Menachem placed before them. Shmuel Avraham, Dr. Aaron Avraham’s teenage son, was among the assembled.
Shmuel is a strong-looking boy of seventeen who has inherited his father’s brooding intensity, though he’s eclipsed the doctor’s height and width. A boxer and football player, Shmuel dreamed of moving to Israel, to join the army, and then to America, to become famous at something, though he wasn’t sure what. Like his whole family, he loved and admired the Holtzbergs with a feeling that went beyond friendship.
Sputz felt dizzy and ill, probably from not eating enough and working constantly, but he retained his good humor as always. “Boys, good morning, good morning,” he told them. Some of the students were older than Menachem, and a few were even married, but he was the rabbi, so they were boys to him. “Listen, where is everyone? It looks like every time we get a new member, we lose five old members.” The students laughed. Every few moments the sound of cheering and applause filtered in through the window, from a courtyard across the street, where men were playing cricket.
Before Sputz could begin discussing the week’s Torah portion, the students raised questions of their own. “Does Judaism say that a criminal must be killed if he breaks the law?” asked Shmuel Avraham.
“Ah,” said Menachem Sputz, “this is a very complicated question.” He launched into a manifold answer, which could be summed up as “yes, but only if a grand ancient rabbinical court of seventy-one rabbis, which doesn’t exist anymore, can unanimously agree on the guilt of the accused, and this hasn’t happened in the last two thousand years or so.”
“Ultimately,” Sputz said, “we are a peaceful nation, and our Torah says ‘do not kill.’ Who gives life and who takes it away?”
“Hashem,” answered the students.
Sputz nodded. “Hashem says we are here for a reason. We have a mission that only God knows. I live in New York—why am I here? There is no reason that I am here today, while Gavi is not. Nobody has an explanation, and if you do have an explanation, then don’t try to tell me, because I won’t listen. Only hashem knows. Nobody lives an extra minute longer than he is meant to, and Gavi’s minute came.” Some of the boys were looking at the floor, others at the ceiling, a few at their books. Shmuel was staring intently at Menachem. It was silent for a moment, until a cheer from the cricketers intruded through the open window.
Finally, with the pressing questions out of the way, they returned to the text. Not long afterwards, the class concluded with afternoon prayers, including the Mourner’s Kaddish, recited with the Holtzbergs in mind. Despite its name, the kaddish doesn’t mention death at all. It begins with the words, “Exalted and hallowed be his great Name,” to which the young men responded, “Amen.” It continues, “May His great Name be blessed forever and to all eternity. Blessed and praised, glorified, exalted and extolled, honored, adored and lauded be the Name of the Holy One, blessed be He.” Again, the students replied, “Amen.” It concludes with a prayer for “abundant peace.” Nowhere does it question God’s mercy.
Then the young men got into their cars or climbed onto their motorcycles; they were bound for Nariman House, where they would help Menachem, Mendy, and Levi pack up the family’s belongings, and perhaps get rid of the awful freezer.
—
Outside Chabad House, Menachem Sputz greeted the police, who were seated as always in their lawn chairs, slumped over their antiquated bolt-action rifles. They nodded in the distinctive Indian manner, a good-natured wobble. Sputz led the students inside, through the courtyard and up to the first floor.
Imagine a water balloon thrown at a wall. The sac explodes, and water bursts everywhere, leaving a pattern that looks like inverted tears, blown outwards. Now imagine that the balloon is in fact a grenade, full of hot metal shards instead of water, so there are little holes everywhere, still inverted like tear drops, still in the same pattern. That’s what the interior walls of Nariman House looked like, wherever a grenade exploded, which seemed to be everywhere. There were hundreds of holes where the attackers sprayed the walls with gunfire, little pits like beach sand after a rainstorm. Whole sections of sheet rock and concrete had collapsed. There were curious square-shaped cuttings removed from the walls in some places, leaving behind a gum-like residue—this was sonically conductive putty, left over from the building department’s use of ultrasound equipment to test the structural integrity of the concrete. In the absence of electricity, the rooms were dim with natural light, just a cool grayness with no gold in it, like you’d want for a brief nap.
There were not many bloodstains, as a result of another aspect of Jewish law, which dictates that human bodies should be buried whole. In November, an Israeli volunteer organization called zaka, which specializes in recovering body parts after terrorist attacks, swabbed the walls of Nariman House with special rags, to be interred with the bodies. But zaka ran out of time and had to bring the remains back to Israel for the approaching funeral, so the Chabadniks would have to finish the job. Brown smudges colored the walls, as if left by a child with iodine on his fingers. Outside the rabbi’s office, the drywall was graphed with a scatterplot of red. The elevator car lay mangled in its shaft. Everywhere, the floor was broken; we stepped over pieces of marble and wood, fragments of slate that crunched underfoot like seashells.
The smell of the chickens was there. “Dead bodies?” asked Shmuel Avraham, standing with his hands in his pockets, his back slouched. His mournful posture belied his vigor, the weight of the question bowing his spine.
“No,” said Menachem. “It’s just the chickens in the freezer. Rule number one,” he told everyone, “is whatever you do, do not open that freezer. Later, we get it together and send it to Pakistan.” They laughed uncomfortably—jokes about India’s nuclear rival, whose intelligence service may have trained the perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks, elicited bitter laughter.
“Now, everyone, gather round,” Menachem said. “Thank you very, very much for coming here. It is a great mitzvah.” He enumerated the three categories of things to be packed, as if he were teaching Talmudic laws. “The first category, is things that are good, for the family; these must be packed in boxes. Then, there are things that are ruined, to be thrown out. Then, there are things for the new Chabad center…” Behind him were stacks of cardboard boxes—the Chabadniks had been working hard, preparing for this day.