News-Letter

Media Credit: John Prendergass The Chabad House, which is located at 2701 N. Charles St., represents the minority group under attack.

Last week's terrorist attacks in Mumbai shocked and horrified the world. Much of the Hopkins community was likewise stunned, including students with friends and family in India, members of the Jewish community and the University's Chabad House.

Siddharth Talapatra, a Hopkins graduate student and member of the Indian Graduate Students Association (IGSA)'s Advisory Board, expressed his fears following the attacks.

"Every time there's an attack, you frantically call home just to find out if your friends and your family are alive," he said.

For Talapatra, the attacks hit very close to home.

"I know at least one person [who] died due to the shooting. He was engaged to be married. It's really a sad thing, so many people have died," he said. "It's just so unnecessary and pointless."

The IGSA will be hosting a candlelight vigil in front of the MSE library on Friday at 6 p.m. to commemorate those who lost their lives in the attacks.

While the attacks were devastating for all, the murder of Rabbi Gavriel and Rivkah Holtzberg, leaders of the Chabad House in Mumbai, had a particularly strong effect upon the Jewish community.

Rabbi Zev Gopin, co-director of the Hopkins Chabad House described the strong sense of unity among the Chabad community and their shared grieving for the loss of Rabbi Holtzberg and his wife.

"We all feel like brothers and sisters in what we're doing, and we have taken this pain personally into the depths of our hearts," Gopin said.

Rahul D'Mello, Hopkins senior and president of South Asian Students at Hopkins (SASH), grew up in Mumbai. His entire family lives there, and the train station that his uncle travels through on the way to work was one of the terrorists' targets.

"I think everybody's shaken up because even though you hear about terrorist attacks, it's never really places that you're familiar with. But these are landmarks. Whenever we go visit India, we visit the Taj hotel," he said. "It's frightening that people would be so merciless."

D'Mello noted the uncertainty experienced in the hours following the attacks.

"Since the attacks actually happened at night, nobody really knew about them over there until the next morning," he said. "We knew more about what was going on with the attacks here than they did over there."

Continued...

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