Spilling out the doors of the Satmar synagogue in Monsey, N.Y., the mourners wept and prayed for Nachman and Raizy Glauber, both 21. Nachman grew up in Monsey and has family there and in Ramapo, N.Y.......indystar.
The Glaubers were using a car service to go to a hospital because Raizy was feeling ill when a BMW crashed into their vehicle in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, said Hasidic community activist Isaac Abraham.
Their son was delivered at Bellevue Hospital Center in Manhattan, where Raizy Glauber was pronounced dead of blunt-force trauma. Nachman Glauber was pronounced dead at Beth Israel Hospital.
Rabbi Herschel Waxman knew Nachman Glauber as a child and called him a "person that we expected to see from him great things."
"He just got married about a year ago," he said. "He was starting to become a young rabbinical mentor that takes care of the entire community. He was very beloved by everyone."
Waxman said the couple's sudden and seemingly inexplicable death stunned many in the insular religious community.
"They are very, very numb," he said of Glauber's family. "But they have faith the Almighty did the right thing even if we can't understand it."
He added, simply: "The baby has survived. That's a miracle."
On Saturday, Raizy Glauber "was not feeling well, so they decided to go" to the hospital, said Sara Glauber, Nachman Glauber's cousin.
The three-story, tan brick synagogue was jammed as hundreds of mourners went through the streets after the minivans that carried two coffins draped in black cloth to the Satmar cemetery in Monroe, N.Y.
Onlookers stood on balconies to listen as Rabbi Chaim Halberstam cried out a mournful prayer in Yiddish. Men and women stood apart, as per Jewish law.
Earlier Sunday, the Glaubers were mourned by hundreds at a funeral outside the Congregation Yetev Lev D'Satmar synagogue in Brooklyn. A succession of men and women delivered eulogies in Yiddish, sobbing as they spoke into a microphone about the young couple.
"I will never forget you, my daughter!" said Yitzchok Silberstein, Raizy Glauber's father.
The Glaubers were married about a year ago and had begun a life together in Williamsburg, where Raizy Glauber grew up in a prominent Orthodox Jewish rabbinical family, Sara Glauber said.
Raised in Monsey and part of a family that founded a line of clothing for Orthodox Jews, Nachman Glauber was studying at a rabbinical college nearby, his cousin said.
"This is a devastating tragedy to all of us," said Ramapo Councilman Daniel Friedman, speaking by phone Sunday morning. "This is a place where their family had roots for a long time.
"I think we're all mourning the loss of two young, happy people who had their entire lives ahead of them," he added. "We pray now for their son, who still does."
Abraham called the couple's death "a tragedy beyond (belief) just coming off a joyous holiday as Purim" as they were getting ready to welcome their first child.
