“Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children” — Ephesians 5:1

Brethren, I’m writing today about a couple that was for a short time living in my neighborhood in Brooklyn. 

Gavriel and Rivkah Holtzberg were Lubavitchers.  For those of you who don’t know about this, they were super-faithful, quasi-evangelizing (to Jews who have fallen into secularism), quasi-messianic (The Lubavitchers had a rabbi who died a few years ago, and some few of them believe he was Moshiach, not Yeshuah, our real Moshiach) Jews who hungrily attempt to follow the teachings of the Old Testament in the Law.  These are not people who were on the fence about God.  They had no born-again moment, but clearly they loved YHWH, Ha Shem, the name, and they were desperate to be obedient to Him as they understood Him.

If that isn’t enough to make you respect them by itself, brethren, then try this on for size:  This couple, in their twenties, had an audacious plan — to build a Chabad center in Southern India.

Okay, here it is — you’re sitting in Brooklyn, maybe you’re visiting your aunt in Israel.  What makes you think to yourself, “What we REALLY need is a Jewish community center in Mumbai, India!”

What makes a person think that?  What kind of a person would you have to be to do that?

To be clear, there are a few ethnically Jewish people in India.  Remember that for centuries, the Jews were the traveling merchants of half the world, and as a result, a few settled in what is now Mumbai and live and worship there.  But it’s not Brooklyn.  It’s not Israel.  Even the Lubavitcher headquarters in Israel were designed to be exactly like the brick building in Crown Heights.  The Chabad Lubavitch movement seems to engender a great deal of conformity.

However, Gavriel and Rivkah had some kind of vision for this center.  Here’s a picture of Rivkah opening the mikvah at their modestly-sized center.  Look at her and look at the Indian women around her.  They look respectful, but they also seem like they are wondering what on Earth she is thinking, but Rivkah knows.  She has a distinct purposefulness to her in the photo.  This is the way someone looks when they have heard from God.

Look at the serenity of her face.  Look at her confident, steady gesture.   Her footsteps to this place are ordered.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.” — Isaiah 55:8

I have one more photo to show you of this brave, odd couple, courtesy of The New York Times.  The husband Gavriel is the one with the book in his hand, and the wife Rivkah, is obviously pregnant to the far left of the photo:

Look at them!  They are performing a wedding ceremony under a huppah in the sweltering heat of Southern India, in the polluted air of Mumbai, and these people are fully committed to the life they are leading here, a life that even in Brooklyn seems like it came from another time, and they transport this life, this Godly life to a far-away place where they are surely, surely misunderstood by almost everyone.

Rivkah and Gavi were killed yesterday by Muslim terrorist gunmen.  The baby in the belly of Rivkah in the photo above, Moshe, ran out and was rescued — I say miraculously — by the Chabad  center of Mumbai’s cook.  The little boy’s pants, he is turning two today as i write this blog entry, were stained in the blood of his parents.  It breaks my heart to think of what they will miss in his life, his graduation from school, his wedding, the birth of their grandchildren through him.  It breaks my heart to think that if these brave, interesting Brooklynites had stayed closer to the group-think of their subculture, they would be alive today.

So here’s my question to all who would listen:  Did Gavi and Rivkah miss God when they thought for certain that they were led to open a Jewish center in Mumbai?  After all, why would God send them there and let them be killed?

If being killed for belief, for surely this is the only reason why Gavi and Rivkah were targeted, were a sign of being out of God’s favor, then Paul was a failure, Jesus’ cross was a symbol of absolute failure.

I say they did not miss their calling.  I say they were sent.  Why?  Why did God need a center for an unusual group of Jews in Mumbai?  God knows.  Perhaps He finds, as I suspect He does, the diverse juxtaposition of unusual things one to another, absolutely glorious.  After all, who knew there were Lubavitchers who were so experimental? Who knew in Brooklyn about the Jewish community in Mumbai?  Who knew among the Hindus about the mikvah?  God wants to wake us up.  God loves, I say, original thinkers.

But make no mistake — original thought is dangerous.  It may lead to death.  Jesus even promises people who act like Him that they will be persecuted.  Honoring God in unusual ways that actually wake up people to God’s presence in their everyday lives will lead to persecution.

The Jews are chosen and set apart by their bloodlines, their attempts to conform to the Law of YHWH from the nations.  The church is set apart by the circumcision of the heart that Paul talks about and the New Birth Redemption, grafted into the vine by the Blood of Yeshuah that Gavi and RIvkah claimed by natural bloodlines.  If we really are interested in pleasing God, we will attract animosity from the world.

There is an old saying in the African-American community — If they are shooting at you, you must be doing something right.  That was true for the movement of liberation politically of African-Americans, and it is true, as Martin Luther King said, that acts of civil disobedience have the primary purpose of making people call into question the way things are usually, and some people get angry enough to shoot.  I say Gavi and Rivkah were doing something right.  What are Jews doing in Mumbai?  Serving the Most High as best they know how.  That someone got angry enough to shoot proves that they were effectual challenges to the merciless systems of the world.  God bless them.  In His thoughts, I believe He sees victory, even where there is mourning today.