“I begged them to let me breathe, they covered my head and started to step on me and kick me, and here I lost consciousness,” Rabbi Gabriel Davidovich, Chief Rabbi of the Jewish Communities in Argentina, said Tuesday, as he added he does not know who the attackers are nor does he know the motive for the attack against him.

Rabbi Davidovich, 62, was attacked on Monday night when a gang of seven men broke into his home in the General Conesa neighborhood of Buenos Aires, beat him violently and caused fractures of nine of his ribs.

Yediot Achronot quoted the rav in a report appearing on Wednesday morning, taken from the rabbi’s reenactment of the incident. “I woke up in a panic to the sound of noises in the bathroom adjacent to my bedroom,” said the rabbi. “I went to the bathroom and there I found myself with a man who came in from a narrow window of the bathroom that was facing the street.

“At that moment, the other members of the gang, who numbered seven in total, entered the house and laid me down on the floor, and I begged them to let me breathe, and they covered my head and began to step on me and kick me.

After attacking the rav, they moved to his wife, tied her up and cursed her – but did not beat her. They told her that they knew he was the chief rabbi and asked where the money and jewelry was. They turned over the cupboards in the house, took jewelry and left.

Two tourists who stood outside the house and saw what was happening called the police. The police found the rabbi lying unconscious on the floor and summoned the rescue forces who evacuated him to the hospital with nine broken ribs, a punctured lung and various injuries. The rabbi was hospitalized in serious condition. B’chasdei Hashem, his condition has stabilized, and he is now listed in moderate condition.

Rabbi Davidovich thanked the Jewish people for the warm wishes and said: “I have no idea who is behind the attack.” In a conversation with President Reuven Rivlin, Rabbi Davidovich said: “When these things happen, it’s terrible, my wife is afraid to go home, the security of the Jews here is in danger, but we should not stop our work and our Judaism.”

While the incident has been labeled a “hate attack”, Buenos Aires police are treating it as a criminal incident. The local Jewish community however feels the attack was anti-Semitic.

Rabbi Davidovich serves as one of the roshei yeshiva of the Chafetz Chaim Yeshiva. He became chief rabbi in 2013 after Rabbi Ben-Chamu retired.

In recent months, the Rav received threats against his life in light of a divorce case he handled.

The umbrella organization of the Jewish communities in Argentina, AMIA [the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association], tried to force a well-known person in the Jewish community to give a divorce to his wife. According to Jewish community sources, Rabbi Gabriel Davidovich received a death threat via WhatsApp.

The death threat came with a target date, and it was written that on the 24th of the month the rabbi would be murdered. According to them, on January 24th, security was stepped up around the rabbi and after several weeks had passed – the rabbi stopped worrying. But the date of the attack raises the suspicion that the attackers carried out the threat and did so at 2:00AM, two hours after the beginning of February 24th.

The Jewish community is quoted telling Kikar Shabbos News that the person who claims that he was forced to give a get to his wife owned a well-known printing press and was caught a year ago as head of a gang of Jewish burglars. He denied the suspicions against him, but the affair led his wife to demand a divorce and the AMIA organization stood up to him.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)