Israeli Mayor Visits 770

By COLlive Reporter

The Mayor of Afulah, Avraham Alkabetz, paid a visit to Lubavitch World Headquarters in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and used the opportunity to pray for the safety of his city in Northern Israel, which has been bombarded in the past with rockets from Lebanon.

As tensions have recently resumed in his area, Alkabetz spent the day in Crown Heights while keeping tabs on the renewed violence let by a Hezbollah terrorist group.

“I hope and pray the rockets don’t come in our direction,” the mayor commented to COLlive about the situation. “I’m here to pray for my city.”

Alkabetz began his day praying in the Rebbe’s room at 770 Eastern Parkway. He joined the Rebbe’s secretaries Rabbis Leibel Groner, Yehuda Krinsky and Binyomin Klein.

He received an aliyah to the Torah, and said that he dedicates his prayer to slain shluchim to Mumbai, Rabbi Gavriel and Rivkah Holtzberg HY”D.

The mayor takes pride in the fact that Rivkah Holtzberg (nee Rosenberg) was born and raised in Afulah, and said that he plans on building a chesed center in her and her husband’s memory.

Alkabetz also met with Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, Vice Chairman of Merkos L’inyonei Chinuch, whom he met at the Holtzberg’s funeral in Israel. The two agreed to meet again in New York, and Rabbi Kotlarsky kept his promise, accompanying the mayor on a tour of the Jewish Children’s Museum.

The mayor was visibly impressed with the museum, remarking, “I wish the Israeli Ministry of Tourism would offer tourists to Israel a place such as this.”

During his visit the mayor was accompanied by his friend Rabbi Mendel Shagalov and Yehuda Holtzberg of World Trade Copiers, cousin of Gavriel.

The group paid a visit to OK labs on Troy Avenue, to meet with CEO Rabbi Don Yoel Levy, who employed Gavriel as a part-time Mashgiach for kosher products in India.