PM Modi meets Moshe in Israel, invites 26/11 attack survivor to visit India

PM Modi’s decision to meet Moshe along with his grandparents Rabbi Shimon Rosenberg and Yehudit Rosenberg was an emotional moment for the family. (Source: Twitter/PIB)

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday met Moshe Holtzberg, the Israeli child who had lost his parents in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack. Moshe was then two years old.  Modi’s decision to meet Moshe along with his grandparents Rabbi Shimon Rosenberg and Yehudit Rosenberg was an emotional moment for the family.

Modi also met Moshe’s Indian nanny Sandra Samuels, who in 2008 ran from Nariman House to escape from terrorists. Moshe’s parents, Rabbi Gavriel and Rivkah, were serving as emissaries of Nariman House when they were killed along with six others by terrorists. The Nariman House, also known as Chabad House in Mumbai, was one of the five places targeted by the terrorists who killed 166 people.

Moshe, now 11, lives in Afula, Israel, with his grandparents. He now goes to a yeshiva (religious school). He is still very attached to his nanny Sandra. Sandra works with young kids in Jerusalem and joins the Rosenberg  family over the weekends.

#WATCH ‘PM Modi invited me to India and you will come with me’, PM Netanyahu to Moshe #IndiaIsraelfriendship pic.twitter.com/r9jRvP4eAy

— ANI (@ANI_news) July 5, 2017

Before meeting the Prime Minister, Moshe’s grandfather had said that he wanted to do Moshe’s ‘bar mitvah’, a ceremony performed for Jewish boys at the age of 13 which Indian scholars in Israel compare with upnayana or the thread ceremony, in Mumbai for which he would invite Modi.