Yesterday, we had an interesting, and touching, ceremony in the office.

One of our peers spends a lot of time in India. He practically lives in the hotel there, and was there during the terrorist attack. He survived, thank God, and this week he returned to Israel. He was interviewed on Israel TV from India, and came back and shared his story with us in the office.

The owners of the company decided to make a "Seudas Hodaya" - thanksgiving meal - in his honor, for his survival and safe return.

He was in the hotel when he heard explosions and shooting. He hid out for some hours in a smoky stairwell with others, while they made their way down 19 flights of stairs barefoot to escape from the terrorists, who shot on sight anybody they came across.

Rav Yitzchak Dovid Grossman, the rav of Migdal Ha'Emek and uncle of Mrs. Rivka Holzberg hy"d, came to participate. After lunch, there were some speeches.

One of the owners spoke about how we are all together in this and we all thank Hashem for his safe return. Eli shared some thoughts with us after having survived (he already had told the story dozens of times, and did not repeat it at this occasion) about how appreciative he is of everyone's good wishes, and how he realizes he has so many people who love him and were concerned for him.
Rav Grossman spoke about the appreciation we need to have, and the thanks we must say to Hashem for his survival. Rav Grossman said that he is known as "The Disco Rabbi", so he has to sing. He composed a song in thanks to Hashem for the survival of little Moishie Holzberg and the other survivors, and then he sang it for us.


If you want to hear Rav Grossman's whole speech, just a few minutes, here it is:


Survivor Eli Averbouch's thoughts and HaGomel can be seen:


After the ceremony, we all went to shake hands and try to get brachos from Rav grossman. Rav Grossman was chatting with some people and he pulled out the following note from his pocket and explained it to us.

The note is the text of something the Klausenberger Rebbe said 27 years ago. In the middle of a speech, he suddenly said something that was supposedly unrelated to what he had been talking about. he said, "Publicizing Gods presence in the world, is not just for Jews, but also for gentiles, that they should see that Jews pray and serve Hashem. There will be one Jew who will go to India, and in this place where there are millions of gentiles who worship idols, he will reveal Gods presence, and he will be killed, the whole nation will talk about him, and he will have sanctified Hashem's name as via him Hashem's presence will have been revealed to millions of gentiles."

That is enough to send chills down your spine...