A few minutes later, this all took a very personal turn for me

The morning of Erev Shabbos Chanukah began uneventfully for me, as I’m sure it did for most of us. I awoke and prepared to attend the k’vasikin minyan in shul. After davening, I went to my office to begin my busy Erev Shabbos.

Then I received the sad news from Eretz Yisrael that, once again, those who live to kill Jews had extinguished the light of one of our precious neshamos. Mrs. Ludmila Lipofsky, who had just passed her 83rd birthday on November 11, had been murdered in cold blood by a knife-wielding terrorist.

Ludmila Lipofsky was born in 1941 in Buy, a small town in Russia about 275 miles northeast of Moscow. She was forcibly evacuated to Samarkand, Uzbekistan, a distance of over 2,200 miles, where she spent the war years. She was one of the privileged few to leave the Soviet Union for Eretz Yisrael, where she married and had a family.

Mrs. Lipofsky was outside the Herzliya assisted living home where she lived, waiting for her daughter to take her to the doctor, when she was attacked and mortally wounded.

This tragic event reminded me once again of the constant life-and-death challenges our brethren in the Land of Israel face every day. But a few minutes later, this all took a very personal turn for me.

My son Tuvia and his family were staying in Herzliya for Chanukah, taking a rare respite. After being awakened in the middle of the night by sirens triggered by a missile attack from Yemen — the fifth time in the previous eight days — the family was finally enjoying a quiet breakfast when gunfire was heard outside.

Tuvia’s Hatzalah radio crackled to life and gave word of an active shooting situation. The dispatcher warned that “only armed members” should respond. Tuvia, an IDF combat veteran who has already completed two stints in the reserves since Simchas Torah 5784, grabbed his weapon and his Hatzalah vest and set out on the call.

When he arrived, he found that Brinks security guards, who were at the location for a drop-off, had wounded the terrorist and disarmed him of his knife.

Tuvia joined the first responders trying to help the elderly Holocaust survivor. Despite their heroic resuscitation efforts, Ludmila Lipofsky — 2,500 miles from her place of birth 83 years before — began to slip away.

Tuvia attempted to recite Shema Yisrael with her. With the word “Echad” on his lips, he reaffirmed our commitment to Hashem as she returned her neshamah to Hashem. On Chanukah, a holiday commemorating Jewish self-sacrifice, the lives of Ludmila Lipofsky of Russia and Tuvia Eisenman of New York intersected for one brief but eternal Jewish moment on a street in Herzliya.

As the murder victim was placed into the ambulance, Tuvia glanced up at the street sign. The name of the street on which Ludmila Lipofsky had taken her final breath was Kedoshei HaShoah — the Holy Martyrs of the Holocaust.

There are no coincidences in this world.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1045)