By Friday morning, Rabbi Yossi Winner of the Chabad House at the University of Arizona had not slept for two nights and two days.
He had been praying for his friend, Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, and Holtzberg's wife, Rivka Holtzberg, who were taken hostage at the Chabad Center they operated in Mumbai, India.
Early on Friday, Winner received the tragic news that both the Holtzbergs had been killed by terrorist gunmen who led a series of attacks in and around Mumbai's commercial center this week.
Winner, 28, grew up in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, the headquarters for the Chabad movement and where Rabbi Holtzberg, 29, also grew up.
"We went to the same summer camps, went to the same classes, though he was a year ahead of me," Winner said.
Like Holtzberg, Winner is a "sluchim," an emissary sent by Chabad to help spread the movement to communities around the world.
People are also reading…
They both attended the same conference for more than 4,000 Chabad emissaries in New York last week.
"Sometimes you ask yourself, if he'd only stayed a few days longer in New York," Winner said.
"Rabbis throughout the world have been up all night reading psalms. We were hoping for the best. He was a close friend in our circle of sluchim."
There are about 3,500 Chabad communities in 75 countries around the globe.
Winner and his wife, Naomi Winner, moved to Tucson from Brooklyn in 2005 to establish a permanent Chabad Jewish presence on the UA campus. Chabad Lubavitch is a large branch of Hasidic Judaism, though the services the Winners host are open to all Jewish students.
About 10 percent of UA students, or 3,500 students, are Jewish, says Hillel, a campus group. In contrast, about 3 percent of the Tucson area's population, or about 28,000 people, are Jewish.
The Chabad house has been getting calls from concerned students ever since the attack on the Mumbai Jewish center was reported in the news.
"This is obviously a very sad day for us and for Jewish people and for the whole world," Winner said. "It is a day of mourning for us."
He said the Holtzbergs selflessly went to India to create a community for Jews and lived there for six years away from their parents and other loved ones.
"They did it to spread the good deeds. This is a very special couple who were always very generous and greeted people with a smile," Winner said. "In times of a lot of pain and grief we should always remember to channel energy in a good way, to do acts of goodness and kindness."
One sign of light in all the pain is that the couple's nanny escaped with their 2-year-old son and he is unharmed, Winner said.
"It's a time of pain and at the same time it's a time of strengthening our duty and operations," he said. "Our Chabad movement is all about continuing to be good."