Going through the Trials of Job

Going through the Trials of Job Rabbi Shimon Rosenberg is a smiley man, even when he is full of grief. He talks about strength, powerful faith, and of the spiritual trials he will always overcome. A year-and-a-half ago he lost his daughter, Rivka Holtzberg, who - together with her husband Gavriel - was killed in an attack on the Chabad House in Mumbai. Since then, the rabbi and his wife Yehudit have been raising their three-year-old grandson Moishi, who red survived the attack thanks to Sandra, his Indian nanny. "He's like my 11th child," Rosenberg says, his face aglow.

But now, the Rosenbergs are fighting for the life of another one of their grandchildren, Haim Eliezer Lipman Gelfrin, nicknamed "Lazar", who was badly injured in a fire that broke out in his house last month. The six-year-old was rescued from the flames with very high degree burns. He has been under anesthesia and on life support for a month now, and has undergone three complicated operations, lost his left leg from the knee down, his right foot and the fingers from his left hand.

The boy was initially hospitalized at Haim Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer, but on the advice of his doctors and with the help of head of the hospital's burns unit Dr. Josef Haik, he is now being treated at Shriners Hospital for Children in Cincinnati, Ohio, where there is a larger quantity of cultured skin substitutes than in Israel. This is particularly important in Haim's case, due to red the severity of his burns and his young age, which means he is constantly growing and in need of additional transplants. His rehabilitation is expected to take a number of years.