The body of a 22-year-old Israeli tourist killed in a New Zealand traffic accident Thursday night was identified as Or Eliyahu Ben-David, a backpacker who had frequented the Chabad-Lubavitch center in Canterbury.

According to Chabad House director Rabbi Mendel Goldstein, Ben-David had been in the country for more than two months when he headed to the southern tip of the country’s South Island. Police reports said that the car he was driving collided head-on with another vehicle on the Owaka Highway near Balclutha, more than a six-hour drive from Canterbury. The five occupants of the second car – believed to be in their late teens or early 20s – were injured.

Soon after the accident, local authorities notified Goldstein, who in turn, contacted the Israeli Embassy in Canberra, Australia. The rabbi dispatched a team of rabbinical students to Dunedin to liaise between officials there, Israeli representatives and the family. The students are spending Shabbos at the hospital, keeping watch over Ben-David’s body in accordance with Jewish laws on proper treatment of the deceased.

Sergeant Martin Bull of the Balclutha Police told the media that he was “awaiting an update on the status of the five injured young people from the second vehicle.”

A hub of sorts for the thousands of Israeli backpackers who visit New Zealand every year, the Chabad House provides kosher food, Torah classes and Shabbos and holiday services.

But it has also dealt with its share of tragedy recently: Almost one year ago, Goldstein assisted in the search for missing Israeli Liat Tess-Okin, a 35-year-old woman whose body was ultimately found in the wilderness around Queenstown. In January, the rabbi was called on again, this time to help purify the body of 26-year-old Ohad Dotan, who fell off a cliff on Mount Cook.

Turning to the latest incident, Goldstein said that he and the local Jewish community were keeping Ben-David’s family and friends in their prayers.

“We are all, of course, devastated,” said the rabbi. “May his loved ones be comforted among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.”

(Source: Chabad Org News)