(Photos: Flash 90, Shmulik Almany)

Every two years, Israeli police hold a moving ceremony honoring all officers injured in the line of duty, but last week’s event, at the Israeli embassy in Washington instead of in Israel, brought the audience to tears. They were watching Druze Border Policeman Naaman Fares, 39 — almost killed in a May 2017 terror attack — speaking by video hookup from Jerusalem and personally thanking Boro Park residents Mordechai Lichtenstadter and Simcha Czin for saving his life. “You are my angels,” said Fares.

How did two visiting New York chassidim wind up heroes in the line of fire and later presented with a Civil Exemplary Decoration by Israeli ambassador to the US Ron Dermer and police attaché Commander Yitzhak Almog? The central characters in this happy-ending story are two friends who’ve been traveling to Israel together for years, suddenly finding themselves in every visitor’s nightmare — the throes of a terrorist attack. They didn’t flee the scene in a panic though; instead, with lightning-speed response and adrenaline pumping, they succeeded in pulling the knife-wielding attacker off the severely injured officer and giving him a clear shot at the terrorist — whom he then managed to gun down before collapsing himself.

Shared Passion

Being in the right place at the right time is nothing new to Mordechai Lichtenstadter and Simcha Czin. Both have cut important niches for themselves in the field of speech language pathology — two sought-after Yiddish-speaking male professionals in a predominantly female profession.

They wound up as classmates in Touro College as they were becoming certified bilingual therapists. “There were times,” Simcha Czin says, “when we were the only men in a class full of women, and we were the ones to sit behind the proverbial mechitzah.”

Czin, a 36-year-old Rachmastrivka chassid, learned in Gateshead yeshivah and spent seven years in kollel before deciding on this career move. He began working with children facing developmental challenges due to various genetic syndromes, and today works with children suffering from traumatic brain injury or with severe language delays.

For 37-year-old Mordechai, a Bobover chassid, the speech therapy bug began with his older sister, who was studying to be a speech therapist. “I was fascinated by the work she was doing and decided to go into it too, to be able to help struggling kids in our community, especially seeing the need for Yiddish-speaking male therapists,” says Mordechai, who also manages his family’s flower shop, Kineret Florists, on 13th Avenue in Boro Park.

Back in 2009, Mordechai and Simcha — the two old friends from speech pathology at Touro — bumped into each other at the luggage carousel in Ben-Gurion Airport, realizing they both shared another passion: traveling to Eretz Yisrael for the Meron pilgrimage on Lag B’omer. Since then, it’s become an annual tradition. Every year since, they travel together, share an apartment in Jerusalem, and travel from there to Meron and other holy sites. And they’ve also become both neighbors and chavrusas.

As Mordechai says, “He has my back, I have his back. We’re good.”

(Excerpted from Mishpacha, Issue 747)