A moment of testing
On the afternoon of Thursday, July 1, 2021, a summer camp was under way at Shaloh House Jewish Day School in Brighton, and dozens of children were inside the building. Rabbi Shlomo Noginski was standing near the entrance, talking on the phone.
Suddenly a terrorist approached him with a gun and ordered him to leave the area and not to interfere with his getting inside. The rabbi's first thought was not about himself, but about the children in the building.
The rabbi thought the man wanted the car, so he held out the keys. But the terrorist said he wanted the rabbi to walk with him to the car. The rabbi began walking toward the car, away from the entrance, and at the same time tried to draw attention.
He stopped a passer-by and asked him to translate the terrorist's words from English into Hebrew — even though he knew the language and understood every word. He only wanted people to notice them. The whole time, his back was to the terrorist.
The passer-by ran off. The rabbi turned around and saw that the terrorist had hidden the gun, pulled out a knife and was running at him. The rabbi began to run toward the park across from the school.
But he realized that if he kept running, the younger man would catch him and he would be stabbed in the back. So he stopped, turned around and decided to fight face to face.
The terrorist tried to stab him in the chest, and the rabbi blocked every attack — stopping the knife and pushing the terrorist away. But no one in the park noticed them either. The rabbi ran back to the middle of the road and stopped cars, and a second fight took place there. The cars sped away, and no one stopped.
After a while, the rabbi had lost a lot of blood and felt everything beginning to blur. The terrorist let go of him and started to walk away. Even then, the rabbi did not run straight to the school. He watched where the terrorist was going, and returned to the school only once he had moved off — so that the terrorist would not follow him back to the children.
Meanwhile, inside the building, the doors were locked and the children stayed safe. No child was hurt. A police officer who arrived at the school put a tourniquet on the rabbi as first aid, and he was taken to the hospital. The terrorist was arrested a few hours later.
“It is also very fortunate that the assailant encountered me, and I was therefore able to divert his attention from the school and the children.”
After treatment, the rabbi recovered at home. “By the Grace of G-d, a great miracle has just happened to me. G-d saved me,” he said, and he called on people to respond by increasing in acts of goodness and kindness. He sought not a response of blood, but a response of light.
That is how pain became a mission. The rabbi promised to turn every moment of darkness into a constructive force — by training rabbis who would lead the next generation with Jewish pride and without fear. Today, that promise is at the heart of Boston Rabbinical College.
Looking back, Rabbi Noginski feels grateful for the chance to keep working in education and kindness, with a daily reminder that every moment of life is a gift — meant to add more light.
