Mumbai victims remembered in Baltimore

December 1, 2008

WASHINGTON (JTA) -- A Baltimore Jewish outreach center held a memorial service for a father and daughter killed in the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

Alan Scherr, 58, and his daughter Naomi, 13, were murdered Nov. 26 while eating at a cafe in the Oberoi Hotel. They had been in India for a spiritual retreat sponsored by the Virginia-based Synchronicity Foundation, a Faber, Va.-based organization on whose compound the two lived.

At the service Sunday before an overflow crowd at the Etz Chaim Center for Jewish Studies in Baltimore, the city where Scherr's mother, sister and brother live, the former University of Maryland professor and his daughter were remembered as pursuers of peace and tranquility, according to the Baltimore Jewish Times.

Scherr "moved to the Synchronicity Foundation about 13 years ago because he wanted to give people a method to enlighten and improve their lives," wrote Scherr's mother, Carolyn, in words read at the service by Rabbi Shlomo Porter, according to the Times. "This was his passion. This is what he dedicated his life to. He planned seminars, set up programs and did intensive lecturing to create a stress-free environment. He traveled to India many times for this purpose and it was a place that he loved."

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