Terror survivor Shimon Levy used faith and his beketshe to avert another casualty

Photos: Elchanan Kotler; Flash 90

I think I heard someone in the bushes screaming for help.”

“Shimon, you’re imagining things. I’m going home.”

Shimon listened again. The cries were growing fainter, but he knew he wasn’t imagining those noises. Something inside pushed him on toward the direction of the path that wended its way through the park. A force seemed to propel him, and he began to run in that direction — and then he saw it: a yeshivah bochur lying in a pool of blood, the knife still protruding from his back.

On Shabbos Bereishis, like every other Shabbos afternoon, 20-year-old Shimon Levy, his young wife, and baby daughter, took a post-seudah walk through their neighborhood of Givat Hamivtar to the new park between Ammunition Hill and the light rail station. They strolled along, enjoying the post-Succos Jerusalem air and the tranquil Shabbos atmosphere that has settled in these parts in recent years. Suddenly, a young Arab ran past them in a frenzy, screaming something that sounded like “Allah hu akbar.” That made the Levys a little nervous, but Shimon just assumed the fellow wasn’t all there. After all, he thought, city parks have all sorts of weirdos on Shabbos afternoon.

But his wife felt something was off, seeing the Arab running like that. She didn’t feel safe continuing toward the park and told Shimon she was going home. And that’s when he heard the very faint yet desperate cry for help. He knew he had to follow the sounds, even as his wife nervously turned around and fled.

Two weeks later, Shimon Levy takes me back to the scene where yeshivah bochur Eliyahu Dahan (Eliyahu ben Margalit, for a refuah sheleimah) was nearly killed. He points to the path he somehow knew he had to follow, and replays the scene that’s still constantly flashing through his mind.

“I was sure I heard weak cries, and I felt like they were a call for help. As strange as it sounds, no one around me — neither my wife nor her friend who was there — heard the voices. My wife and her friend turned around to go home — the whole thing was a little spooky — but I decided to go into the park to check.”

Shimon followed the trail into the park, and after a few minutes, there on the ground, Shimon saw him: a young man — a yeshivah bochur based on his appearance — sprawled on the grass in a spreading pool of blood. “He couldn’t scream anymore. He was barely conscious. All he could do was whisper, ‘Save me!’”