The funeral for Rabbi Zvi Kogan took place in the central Israeli town of Kfar Chabad on Monday evening, a day after the Chabad-Lubavitch emissary was found murdered in the eastern Emirati city of Al-Ain.
The funeral procession began with speeches at the Chassidic group’s Israeli headquarters in Kfar Chabad ahead of his burial at the Mount of Olives cemetery near Jerusalem’s Old City later on Monday night.
Thousands, including Israeli government ministers, traveled to Kfar Chabad to attend the ceremony, per local media reports.
Among the attendees was Rabbi Nachman Holzberg, the grandfather of Kogan’s wife, Rivky. In November 2008, Holzberg’s son and daughter-in-law, who were Chabad envoys in Mumbai, were murdered by Islamist terrorists.
The body of Kogan, who was a dual Israeli-Moldovan national, was repatriated to the Jewish state earlier on Monday, the ZAKA rescue group said.
Video footage posted to social media showed ZAKA volunteers reciting Kaddish—the traditional Jewish mourning prayer—near Kogan’s body after it arrived at Ben-Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv.
Kogan was an emissary for the Abu Dhabi Chabad branch and ran a kosher supermarket in Dubai. Chabad is one of the largest religious Jewish groups in the world with branches in scores of countries.
The rabbi was last seen alive in Dubai on Nov. 21. His lifeless body was discovered three days later in Al-Ain, near the border with Oman, by Emirati intelligence and security services, the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office and Foreign Ministry said in a joint announcement on Sunday.
“The murder of Zvi Kogan, of blessed memory, is an abhorrent act of antisemitic terrorism,” the office and ministry stated. “The State of Israel will use all means and will deal with the criminals responsible for his death.”
