Living up to life’s challenges, with G-d’s help

Rabbi Freedman is off this week. We are reprinting a previously published column.

Sometimes, heroes are the most ordinary people, who rise to the most extraordinary occasions. Like Noam Apter.

The sweet light of the Shabbat candles and the singing of Shalom Aleichem, a song of peace, greeted Friday night in the Yeshiva at Otniel. Except that while the students and their families were singing of peace, wire cutters were slicing through the security fence.

While parents were blessing their children with light, and seeing in them the majesty of creation, two other “children,” armed with M-16 automatic assault rifles and grenades, were making their way into the dining hall, bringing only darkness and destruction.

At Otniel, in the Hebron foothills south of Jerusalem, boys add two years to their army service in order to combine army service with Jewish studies. Noam, along with Gavriel, 17, Tzvika, 19, and Yehuda, 20, were in the kitchen. In the blink of an eye, light became darkness and the sweet sound of Shabbat melodies was lost in the horrible sounds of gunfire.

Two terrorists, members of the Islamic Jihad organization, entered the kitchen wearing IDF army uniforms and began shooting immediately.

Under fire, Noam Apter ran towards the door separating the kitchen from the dining room where over 100 unsuspecting people, young boys and families, were welcoming Shabbat. Wounded and bleeding profusely, with his last strength, he managed to lock both locks and throw the key away. He locked himself in with the terrorists, preventing them from entering the dining hall, and raining death and destruction on all those inside.

Noam Apter paid for this act of heroism with his life. The terrorists murdered him, and the other three boys with him.