Be’er Sheva Terror Claims Four Lives

The first victim was Rabbi Moshe Kravitzky — Chabad chassid and father of four children aged 10 to 22 — who ran a shul and soup kitchen in the city’s Nachal Beka neighborhood for a decade.

“Rabbi Kravitzky was the Chabad shaliach to Kishinev, Moldova,” recounts Rabbi Zalman Gurlick, head of the Chabad center of Be’er Sheva. “He learned in the Chabad yeshivah there and made aliyah 15 years ago. Naturally he formed a strong connection with the Soviet emigrants living in Nachal Beka. On behalf of Colel Chabad, he founded a shul and a soup kitchen, where many elderly and needy people from the area and everywhere around came to eat their fill. Since the attack, we’re received countless calls from people who remember his broad smile and wide heart and miss him. He was very dedicated to his shlichus. He invested his heart in the kehillah’s welfare, in terms of both gashmiyus and ruchniyus.”

Rabbi Mendy Blau, director of Colel Chabad, adds that he knew the victim personally as a modest man with a warm heart for kedushah and gemilus chasadim. “Until quite recently he lived in Nachal Beka, a neighborhood that’s absorbed many new immigrants. The soup kitchen was in the shul’s bomb shelter. He got the food from us, and some of it came from neighboring IDF bases. He regularly rode his bike to bring food to elderly or homebound individuals who couldn’t come to the kitchen. His eishes chayil also helped him manage the place.”

Rav Yirmiyahu Calipha, rosh yeshivah of yeshivas Tomchei Temimim Be’er Sheva, describes Rabbi Kravitzky as a modest man who devoted his whole life to others, particularly olim from the former Soviet Union. “He had endless patience for teaching them halachos and basics of Judaism. Later he moved to the Neve Ze’ev neighborhood, and there too he founded a Chabad house and spiritual center for Russian speakers. Now we’re focusing on filling the hole, while trying to assist the Kravitzky family, which has been left with no means of support.”