In August 2009 Michael Rubenstein was given the opportunity to return to the scene of the Mumbai terrorist attacks in order to photograph the Mumbai Chabad House. Between Wednesday, November 25 and Friday, November 27, 2008, six Jews including the Rabbi and his wife were killed. During this trip Micheal photographed Rabbi Berkowitz, the Rabbi chosen by Chabad to organize the reconstruction of the Mumbai Chabad House along with those who lost loved ones in attack.

The experience in Michael’s words:
“I covered the 26/11 attacks for the NYT as they were happening. Ruth Fremson, Amiran White and myself were witness to the horrible events those days at the Taj Hotel, Chabad House and Oberoi hotel. We missed the destruction at VT station and on Colaba Causeway. Professionally I did my job and made pictures that people around the world needed to see but those days were very difficult for me on a personal level. I’d never seen anything like it and I never want to again. Though I wasn’t captive and no one I know was killed during those days I, like many native Mumbaikers and Indians alike, felt personally attacked.

I look at the work I did in August and September of 2009 as a way of getting closure for myself. I needed to see the inside of the Chabad house as an American and as a Jew (albeit secular). I needed to photograph it and I didn’t want to do it with a throng of other photographers. I wanted to do it silently so that I could say goodbye to people I never really knew but had felt connected to for almost a year.”