A kosher store in South London with an online delivery facility that is scheduled to open next month will be named after the brother of the rabbi of the Chabad-Lubavitch center in Wimbledon, which will house the store.
Rabbi Yossi Moscowitz’s 24-year-old brother, Eliyahu Moscowitz, was murdered in Chicago on the night of Simchat Torah in October, discovered face down on the sidewalk by a local Christian pastor.
The masked killer remains at large.
Rabbi Moscowitz told The Jewish Chronicle that his brother—a member of the Chabad community and a kashrut supervisor at Jewel-Osco, the primary kosher-food grocery store in Chicago—was “an extremely special personality. He always had a joke and encouraging word, and was incredibly humble and kind.”
“Whenever he saw someone who needed help, even if it wasn’t exactly his job, he helped them find what they needed,” he continued. “He was passionate about providing people with the best quality and the best service of kosher food.”
The store, said Moscowitz, will sell “fresh challah, poultry and other kosher products,” in addition to “dry-goods products such as crisps and Bissli [packaged snacks], olives and pickles, and items such as hummus. There will also be a refrigerated section.”
He added that a small cafe will be included, plus a deli counter in the future.
“I suspect in the beginning, we’ll have around 100 products. Before Shabbos, we may be selling fresh chicken soup and things like that,” said Moscowitz.
Regarding store hours, Moscowitz said the place will first be open on Sunday morning—“we’ve got the Hebrew school, lots of parents coming to drop their kids off—and then perhaps Thursday evening and Friday morning as well.”
The store’s opening will correspond with the Southwest Kosherfest, hosted by Wimbledon Chabad, in memory of Eliyahu Moscowitz.
In related news, family and friends are uniting to commission a Torah scroll in honor of the beloved 24-year-old to be used at Chabad Cambodia, Phnom Penh’s first and only Jewish congregation, directed by Mashie and Rabbi Bentzion Butman, sister and brother-in-law of the victim.
And during Chanukah, a giant 9-foot menorah was lit in his memory at the site of the grisly shooting in Loyola Park.
