A Rabbi Is Murdered at Dubai

The murder at Dubai of an Israeli rabbi representing the Chabad community of Orthodox Jewry is a heartbreaking development. The rabbi, Zvi Kogan, had been missing since Thursday, and his body was recovered Sunday. Emirati authorities said that they have arrested three persons and, according to Reuters, vowed that the government would use “all legal powers to respond decisively.” Prime Minister Netanyahu calls it an “antisemitic terrorist attack.”It is too soon to know all the particulars of this crime, but it is not too soon to remark on the extraordinary work that is carried on by Chabad rabbis in distant and, it keeps turning out, dangerous lands. No doubt American Jews — and millions of friends — marking the American Thanksgiving will speak of the latest news and of the slaying, in 2008 during a terrorist attack, of the Chabad emissary at Mumbai, Rabbi Gabi and his wife, Rivka, Holtzberg.The attack at Mumbai came amid reports that other attacks were planned or attempted — at Baku, Bangkok, Derbent, and Athens, as well as Cyprus. Yet the emissaries — known as shluchim — of the Chabad-Lubavich movement keep stepping up. Rabbi Kogan was the nephew of Rabbi Holtzberg. When the news went out in the wake of the Abraham Accords that a kosher supermarket had opened at Dubai, it was an inspiring fact unimagined a generation ago.We remember thinking at the time of the logistical and religious backup the community of Orthodox Jews would need to be able to reside in the Emirates according to Jewish laws and customs. What Rabbi Kogan, 28, and his wife — and now widow — Rivky were doing was part of the unsung work that goes along with making it possible for an Orthodox Jewish community to thrive as it expands in the wake of peace.The movement was envisioned and launched by the Lubavitcher rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who died in 1994. Congress enacted the award to him posthumously of the Congressional Gold Medal, which President Clinton marked by citing the Rebbe’s contributions to “world education, morality, and acts of charity.” The more we cover Schneerson’s life’s work the more towering a figure he seems.One thing to remember about these heroes is that Judaism is not an evangelical religion. Their aim is not to convert persons of other faiths to their own. The religious reaching out that the shluchim do is to other Jews — to enable them to live fuller Jewish lives and to undertake the studies and learning that is their lifetime pursuit. It’s hard to imagine a more peaceable or admirable calling than the work of Chabad Lubavich.Evangelism may not be part of this, but helping the Arabs who have joined the Abraham accords to understand Judaism is part of it. This may be why, as Israeli analysts believe, Iran orchestrated the murder of Rabbi Kogan. Widening the Mideast peace circle is a main goal of President-elect Trump’s Mideast policy, but an anathema to the mullahs. Their twisted logic reckons that killing a devout rabbi will undermine the region’s integration.It happens that religious custom includes a variety of honorifics to follow the name of someone who has died. The honorific HY”D is used for Jews who have been martyred or were killed by antisemites. It is an acronym of a prayer to God to avenge the killing, as He no doubt will in His own good time. The Sun offers its own sentiments to the rabbi’s family that they may be comforted among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.

A Rabbi Is Murdered at Dubai

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