CHENNAI, India (RNS) The Indian nanny who saved the two-year-old son of a Jewish couple slain last week in Mumbai, India, may receive a residential permit to live in Israel, according to published reports.
The Israeli government, according to Indian newspapers, views the attack on the Jewish Chabad House in Mumbai as an “enemy action” against Israel.
Chabad Houses worldwide are run by young Lubavitch emissaries, an ultra-Orthodox sect headquartered in Crown Heights, New York. Two of these emissaries-Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg, 29, and his wife, Rivkah, 28-were killed last week (November 26) when their Chabad House in Mumbai, opened in 2003 and known as Nariman House, was among the buildings targeted by terrorists.
The Holtzbergs’ child, two-year-old Moshe, however escaped with his life when his Indian nanny, Sandra Samuel, fled with him in her arms. Samuel has since been caring for Moshe, who was taken Monday (December 1) to a memorial service for his parents in a Mumbai synagogue.
Reports from Jerusalem said Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told the Israeli Cabinet on Sunday that her ministry was working to bring the Indian nanny to Israel.
The reports also said that Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak Aharonov, a senior Chabad official, had requested the Israeli government to allow the Indian nanny to emigrate. “At this point she is the only one the boy is responding to (after his parents’ death),” the rabbi said. A similar request concerning the nanny had also been made by Gavriel Holtzberg’s parents, Rabbi Aharonov added.