Rabbi Shot in Kotel Terror Attack Survives by Wearing Tefillin

46-year-old father of eight Rabbi Zeev Katzenelnbogen was finishing davening the morning prayers Sunday morning when a terrorist opened fire at the Kotel. Still wearing his tallis and tefillin, Katzenelnbogen “got a really strong pain in the arm right at the spot of the tefillin,” he said. He realized that he was in the middle of an attack, and that the tefillin had taken the brunt of it, next to his heart. The attack wounded another rabbi and two police officers and killed 26-year-old Eliyahu David Kay, a South African who had recently made aliyah, before officers killed the Hamas-affiliated terrorist. Katzenelnbogen said, “I understand the great miracle, the kindness that God did for me. In a second I could have lost my life and I received it as a gift. It’s written that the tefillin are connected to the heart… There’s a connection to God and you feel it, you feel covered, you feel protected.” Read more here.

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