The following is an Arutz 7 report:
Gabriel Sandler, 3, who was gunned down at point blank range in Toulouse on Monday, was named after Rav Gavriel Holtzberg, the Chabad emissary who was murdered in Mumbai just before he was born. Rabbi Shimon Rosenberg told Arutz Sheva that he was informed of this by a member of the Sandler family.
The rabbi said that the murder in Toulouse brings back the memory of the terrible day, 39 months ago, when he lost his daughter Rivki Holtzberg and her husband Rav Gavriel Holtzberg. The fact that one of the victims was named for Gavriel makes the event even more chilling for him, he said.
With a shaking voice, Rav Rosenberg quoted Psalms 30:10, which asks G-d: “What use is my blood, when I descend to the abyss?”
The rabbi then asked: “G-d, what do you want from our blood, which is being spilled all over the world?”
Rabbi Rosenberg thanked the Israeli government for bringing the bodies of the dead to burial in Israel. He called on people all over the world to join forces in fighting terror, and never to say “It won’t happen to me.”
(Source: Arutz 7)
Join the official YWN WhatsApp status
8 Responses
That is so so so scary….
Creepy. The mazel went with the name. Wasn’t the surviving Holtzberg also three at the time of the Mumbair attack?
hashem yikom damam.
Isn’t there’s a minhag not to name people after those who die young?
I don’t know how many of you are into Gilgulim but that’s the first thing I thought of. Yes, at first I thought hmm, maybe they shouldn’t have named him after someone who died young but to think outside the box… it’s possible that after Gavriel Holtzberg died he needed to come back for three years to fulfill a part of his tafkid…and then maybe he had to die in the same way (also it’s interesting that he died at three yrs old, and it’s three yrs after the Mumbai attack. This kid must’ve been born shortly afterward)….
I happen to have heard a lot of stories from the Gemanra and from kaballic sources that have similar themes. I wonder what people think of this possibility…
Yes this is scary and yes there is a Minhag, etc.
However let’s not forget about the Ruach Nevuah that comes to the parents at the time of the naming of a child…
Yet another glimpse at the mysterious ways of the Hand above. HY”D.
#4:
Except where the person died al kiddush Hashem (or if one adds a name).
Little Gavriel had a 2nd name Yissachar, which would mean that the Gavriel part isn’t named after Gavriel Holtzberg, but just a zecher. Naming after someone would need to be EXACTLY the same name & nothing else. So I was once told by a Rov when discussing names. HY”D.