Hero: Boston Rabbi Diverted Armed Attacker from Children, School

Images of Shaloh House Jewish Russian Center & Synagogue of Greater Boston captured from G
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Rabbi Shlomo Noginski, who was stabbed eight times by an illegal alien from Egypt last week outside a Boston-area Jewish school last week, told reporters on Sunday that he had led the attacker away from the school and the children.

Khaled Awad, 24, attacked Noginski without warning or provocation, first demanding the keys to the rabbi’s van and stabbing him even after the rabbi tried to cooperate. Awad was described as having antisemitic views and mental illness.

The Boston Globe reported:

Noginski, who is recovering from his wounds at home, told reporters that his survival was a “miracle.” He recounted the attack, and added that he had run away from the school to divert Awad when he saw the attacker also had a firearm:

“From the start, when he pointed a gun at me, I understood that he wanted to kidnap and kill me,” Noginski said. “And to my luck, when we approached the road and another person passed us by and I tried to draw his attention, he [Awad] put the gun back into his pants, so that nobody would notice. Then he took out the knife.”

Noginski said he made the split-second decision to try and keep the children safe.

“I seized the opportunity that the gun was not in his hand but in his pocket to try and escape, and to get him away from the school, from the danger, with all the children who were there.”

Against those who said that Jews need to hide their faith in the face of a rise in antisemitism, Noginski said that Jews should feel emboldened to express their faith outwardly: “We don’t have to be ashamed of being Jewish. We don’t have to hide our kippah [yarmulke], or the tzitzit [tassels] we wear, or the clothes that show that we are Jewish. We need to be proud of the fact that we are Jewish, and The Holy One, blessed be He, will watch over us, like he watched over me.”

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His new novel, Joubert Park, tells the story of a Jewish family in South Africa at the dawn of the apartheid era. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, recounts the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

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