JERUSALEM—Police in Ukraine have arrested four suspects for the brutal beating and robbery two weeks ago of Chabad-Lubavitch emissary Rabbi Mendel Deitsch, who remains in serious but stable condition at a hospital in Israel.
According to local press reports, two men and two women from the Carpathian Mountains region attacked Deitsch, 63, near the central train station in Zhitomir on the night of Oct. 6, or in the early hours of Oct. 7. They then fled the city with the rabbi’s cell phone and cash, leaving him bleeding and unconscious under a bridge near the station.
The suspects returned to the city a week after the attack. They were identified and arrested by police two days ago.
The rabbi was discovered the morning after the attack and was admitted to the intensive-care unit at a regional hospital, where he was diagnosed with multiple head injuries and brain trauma.
Deitsch underwent emergency surgery in Zhitomir while the victim’s family in Israel urgently worked with the Israeli government and emergency-services organizations in Jerusalem to arrange an airlift to Tel Hashomer hospital in Ramat Gan.
Deitsch has been active in strengthening Jewish life in the former Soviet Union for many years, and is a central organizer of hospitality and programming at the burial site of Chabad’s founder—Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, in Haditch, Ukraine, where Deitsch is believed to have spent Rosh Hashanah.
The rabbi’s injuries remain life-threatening. His family asks that people continue to pray and recite Psalms, particularly Psalm 20, for the full recovery of Menachem Mendel Mordechai ben Miriam.
Dear Rabbi Deutsch,
My heart is sickened by what happened to you,it breaks to think of the hatred and pain you have suffered. I pray for you, I admire you, I know G-d will bless you.
completely agree with you. I was lucky one day to spend Shabbos in Jerusalem with this wonderful family .. these are very special people, thanks to whom Chabad is still the leader of the Jewish people not for nothing in the abbreviation Chabad 2 common letters with the name of the head of the family Chaim Shlomo Deitch Shlita ... Refua Shlemah Dear r. mendl