Boston, along with nearly every other major US city, has seen a rise in anti-Semitism since the Gaza conflict last month
When Shlomo Noginski was a lad of ten, he was with his mother at Moscow’s Red Square, facing the spires of the Kremlin, when a man approached and began yelling anti-Semitic slurs. He ended with the chilling threat that he would return and kill their entire family.
The family fled the scene, and soon decided that Russia was not their place. It was the early 1990s, just as the Soviet Union was collapsing, and the family moved to Eretz Yisrael, joining the one million others who made aliyah during that period. Shlomo’s mother also insisted that he train in martial arts so he could protect himself in any future confrontations. Eventually, the Russian Jewish boy became a black belt in judo.
That skill likely saved countless lives three decades later. Last Thursday, Noginski was standing in front of the Boston Chabad day camp he helps run when a man approached him aggressively and began trying to stab him.
“What saved me was HaKadosh Baruch Hu — I don’t have to explain that,” Rabbi Noginski, 41, told Mishpacha. “This guy tried stabbing me dozens of times, if not more. The Hashgachah pratis was that it was me there, and I know judo. If it had been anyone else, the outcome would have been terrible.”
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