Rabbi Shlomo Noginsky speaks out after Brighton stabbing

Three days after Rabbi Shlomo Noginsky was stabbed eight times outside the Shaloh House synagogue and school in Brighton, he’s recovering at home with his wife and children, in awe at the fact he’s still alive.

If you want to see a miracle, Noginsky said through his translator Rabbi Dan Rodkin, “you can look at at him.”

Noginsky, who arrived in Brighton from Israel two years ago, was speaking Hebrew when he met the press Sunday. Rodkin, who also works at Shaloh House, said his colleague “feels much better,” now three days after the attack.

Noginsky said he knew his attacker, Khaled Awad, 24, wasn’t trying to rob him as soon as he offered his car keys to man, a tactic he tried multiple times during the assault.

Noginsky said he thought Awad, who was armed with both a gun and a knife, was trying to force him into the car to kill him there. The rabbi said Awad tried to stab him close to 100 times and he called it a “miracle” that he only got him eight times.

This isn’t the first time Noginsky was attacked for his religion. When he was 10 years old, he said, he was badly beaten up by “hooligans,” in Russia, where he grew up.

After that attack as a boy, Noginsky said, his mother signed him up for martial arts classes and he eventually earned a black belt in judo

The martial arts training was no help in Thursday’s attack, though. Instead, Noginsky said he was saved by “his trust in God.”

He was released Thursday night from Boston Medical Center, where he said he received “excellent care.”

He even mustered up the strength, with the help of his older children, to walk to his synagogue Saturday morning, where he was greeted by a congregation three times the usual size.

Physically, Noginsky said he is in pain, but on the mend with stitches, antibiotics and pain medication.

Psychologically, he said he is able to carry on because, “every person in this world has a mission, and it was my mission in this moment to be there and to protect children.”

At the time of the attack, the nearby Shaloh House school building was full of children.

“He was there because he understood this was what God would want,” Rodkin said, translating for Noginsky.

After the attack, he told his 12 children, aged 1 to 20, that they should continue wearing signs of their Judaism, like their yarmulkes, and “continue our obvious Jewish pride,” he said. “We should be very proud that we are Jewish and not to be scared.”

“The best way to push darkness is not by fighting the darkness. It’s not going to help,” Noginsky said, drawing from Jewish teachings. The best way, he said, is to bring a “small candle, and the small candle will push a lot of darkness.”

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/3dJMBZx