A CT scan revealed that the bullet had entered just behind my eyes and lodged itself in my jawbone, which was crushed. By a miracle, the bullet had narrowly avoided my brain. It was also a miracle that the bullet had become stuck in my jawbone rather than exiting through the other side of my head, which would have caused even more damage.

“Moshe is going to live,” the doctors told Sarah, “but we don’t know what’s going to be with his vision.”

For two days, I lay in the intensive care unit, sedated and intubated. Then, the doctors decided to stop the sedation. When I awoke, I couldn’t speak because of the tube in my throat, so I motioned to Sarah that I wanted to write. She brought me a paper and pen, and I wrote, in large, shaky scrawl, “Kol mah d’avid Rachmana l’tav avid. Ani mevakesh shetichyu al zeh.” (Everything Hashem does is for the good. I ask that you live by that.)

That these were the first words I expressed after I awoke was no surprise. I grew up in a home that was suffused with emunah. In fact, when the news that I had been critically injured in a terror attack reached the nearby yishuv of Shiloh, where my parents live, the rav of their shul and the doctor of the yishuv came to their house to break the news to my mother personally. (My father was not well, and they decided not to inform him of the attack.) When they arrived, they found my mother saying Tehillim, as she does every day, and when they told her they had come to discuss an urgent matter, she motioned to them to wait until she finished reciting her daily quota. Even after they told her what had happened and offered to take her to the hospital to see me, she told them to wait while she gave tzedakah, recited her pidyon nefesh prayers, and lit candles for the yahrtzeits of tzaddikim — as she did every day.

From my parents, especially my mother, I had learned that everything Hashem does is for the good. My mother experienced plenty of difficulties in life, from being sent from Morocco to Eretz Yisrael at the age of seven and spending the next three years without family to raising a deaf son at a time when few support services were available. Yet she always chose to see the good in her life and thank Hashem for her many blessings.

I had some experience adopting this attitude as well. Sarah and I married young — she was 18, I was 19 — and shortly after our wedding, we opened a grocery store to support ourselves. The enterprise was a disaster, and a year after our marriage we found ourselves owing a quarter of a million dollars to creditors and the tax authorities. “Even if you work for the next 20 years, you won’t be able to repay all that,” my friends predicted gloomily.

My response was, “We did our hishtadlus, and nothing we did was dishonest. You’ll see, everything will be good.”

It was a difficult period for us. Banks, creditors, and Hotzaah Lapoal (the bailiff’s office for debt collection) were breathing down our backs, and we were forced to live hand-to-mouth. Yet I kept on assuring Sarah that things would be good.

Incredibly, within a year and a half we were out of debt. By then I had begun working as a foreman in a construction company, and one of the clients I worked with turned out to have connections with the tax authorities. He helped me appeal to these authorities to wipe out the enormous penalties they had slapped us with, and, around the same time, we were the beneficiaries of two inheritance payments. Sarah and I walked away from that financial catastrophe with no lasting damage and were able to reestablish ourselves on stable economic footing.

Several years later, I was overseeing the construction of a building when a concrete pump overturned while pouring the concrete, causing the still-fragile building to collapse and lightly injuring several of my workers. I narrowly escaped injury when a wall fell right near me, after which I went off to side, breathed deeply, and said, “Kol mah d’avid Rachmana l’tav avid.” I was sure this accident was going to cost me dearly, but in the end our insurance covered the entire loss, and the injured workers were delighted with the generous compensation they received.

Now, in ICU, with my face crushed and bandaged and my eyes sightless, my first thought upon realizing that I had survived was, once again, that everything Hashem does is for the good.

A few days after I awoke, I underwent facial surgery to remove the bullet lodged in my cheekbone and reconstruct my shattered face. I was discharged from the hospital after just two weeks, by which time a bit of my vision had returned, enough to distinguish between light and darkness and make out colors. While I was fortunate to escape the terror attack with my mind and body intact — the doctors called me a “walking miracle” — most of my vision was irreversibly lost, along with my senses of taste and smell.

In the hospital, it hadn’t been much of a struggle to maintain my good spirits. The hospital is like a different planet, and there, my miraculous survival and recovery gave me much cause for joy and gratitude.

Coming home to regular existence was a different matter entirely. Suddenly, I realized how limited I was. I couldn’t read or use a computer. I couldn’t prepare food for myself. I couldn’t drive — which, for someone living on a tiny, remote yishuv, was a necessity. And I was condemned to this existence for the rest of my life.

I was “lucky” enough to be pronounced 100 percent disabled by Bituach Leumi (Israel’s National Insurance Institute), due to my vision loss. As a disabled terror victim, I was entitled to various stipends and benefits, including a full-time home care aide.

But did I really want to be a disabled person?

I saw two paths before me at that point. I could take full advantage of my disability and sink, legitimately, into victimhood, doing little of value and depending on others to care for me. Or I could decide to grow from the experience and find ways to remain vibrant and productive despite my limitations.

Having been raised to see the positive, and having strengthened that muscle myself through my own life experiences, I made the conscious choice to embrace my new life and remain as independent as possible.

Through Bituach Leumi, I was referred to a low vision clinic where I discovered various technological aids that could help me function and capitalize on the limited vision that remained. Suddenly, I was able to use a computer again — one that was capable of up to 60x magnification — as well as a dictation program that read text aloud and transformed my speech into writing.

This opened new vistas for me, enabling me to read and write again.

A couple of months after being shot, I went back to work at the construction company, but being legally blind, I couldn’t oversee construction the way I used to. In addition, the company was beset with financial difficulties at that time, and it closed down shortly thereafter.

Sarah had always told me I’d make a good lawyer, and I decided then to go to law school. The government provided me with a driver to transport me to school, a shadow who accompanied me to classes, and a tutor who read the material aloud to me and helped me study. Still, I tried to remain as independent as possible, and insisted on writing my papers myself as much as possible, rather than dictating them to my shadow.

Half a year ago, after 3.5 years of studying law, I earned my degree, and now I am in middle of an internship and working toward passing the bar.

Not being able to see forces me to rely heavily on my memory. Since I can’t easily refer to a textbook or notes, I had to focus intently on what was said in law school so that I could remember it. Often, while studying, I would actually correct my tutor and tell him, “That’s not what the professor said in class.”

I also learned to concentrate far more intently during Torah shiurim. I thought it would be harder for me to learn Daf Yomi, considering that I couldn’t see the daf before me, but I learned to listen to every word the maggid shiur says and maintain full concentration throughout the entire shiur so that I retain everything that is said, even without seeing the words of the Gemara on the page.

Although I’m not able to learn as much as I used to before the attack, I know that when it comes to avodas Hashem, what counts is not quantity, but desire and commitment: “Echad hamarbeh v’echad hamamit, u’bilvad sheyechavein libo l’Shamayim.” My children see how committed I am to maintaining daily sedorim despite my disability, and that’s how I’m transmitting to them the value of Torah learning.

That’s not to say our lives have been the same after the attack. Having spurned the government’s offer of an aide, I often bump into windows, cabinets, trees, and street signs. Sarah and the kids have to keep the floors clear of objects, so I won’t trip, and ensure that every item in the house is left in its correct spot, so I can find it by memory and touch. For the most part, however, they forget that I can’t see, because I’ve learned to function quite well and compensate for my inability to see. I even manage to make cholent every week, as I did before the shooting.

While I was physically injured in the attack, I was unconscious throughout most of the ordeal, and therefore less psychologically affected by it than Sarah was. Sarah may have been unhurt in body, but she was the one who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), to the extent that she, too, was pronounced 20 percent disabled by Bituach Leumi. We both underwent psychological treatment for trauma, but it was she, not I, who experienced flashbacks of the attack and was left with recurring fears. We considered moving away from our yishuv to a “safer” place, but we dismissed that possibility because our neighbors on the yishuv were so kind and helpful to us that we didn’t see how we’d manage without them.

Almost exactly a year after the attack, Sarah and I made plans to vacation in a hotel, where I would receive government-funded spa treatments. We planned to leave our five daughters with relatives, but in the end it didn’t work out for Sarah to come for Shabbos, so she stayed home with the girls while I went to the hotel with a business partner. The plan was that she would join me Motzaei Shabbos.

That Friday night, our six-year-old daughter Tal told Sarah she had a headache. Then she vomited. As Sarah was cleaning up the mess, Tal fainted.

Sarah called Magen David Adom, and when an ambulance arrived several minutes later, Sarah and Tal set out for Shaare Zedek Hospital in Yerushalayim. When the ambulance reached the entrance of the yishuv, however, another ambulance pulled up. In that ambulance was Tzuri Chezi, the same paramedic who had saved my life a year earlier. Upon hearing that our family was again in distress, he had rushed to the yishuv, and even after the emergency call was canceled when the other ambulance arrived, he continued heading to our house and insisted on examining Tal even though she was already in the other ambulance.

“You’re not going to Shaare Zedek,” he told Sarah, after peering into Tal’s eyes. “You’re coming with me to Hadassah Ein Kerem. This is no virus — it’s a neurological emergency, and you need Hadassah’s neurosurgery unit.”

A CT scan at Hadassah revealed that Tal’s brain stem contained an arteriovenous malformation (AVM), a tangled mass of abnormal blood vessels that was essentially a time bomb. Now, the AVM had burst, endangering Tal’s life. The doctors warned Sarah that even if Tal survived, she would likely suffer brain damage. They took her into surgery immediately and inserted a shunt in her brain.

After Shabbos, my brother drove me to the hospital, where I joined Sarah at Tal’s bedside. For the next ten days, Tal remained in the ICU, unconscious and attached to every kind of tube imaginable. Ten days into her hospital stay, she took a turn for the worse, her vital signs spiraling way out of control. Her temperature, pulse, and blood pressure were dangerously high, and the doctors could not stabilize her. Even laying her on a bed of ice cubes did nothing to bring down her fever.

Having lost most of my vision, I couldn’t see my daughter well, but I could hear the frantic beeping of the machines attached to her, and that was more than I could bear. A year earlier, I had been the one in ICU, but watching my child suffer was far, far more painful. I left the ICU, found a quiet room, and cried my heart out. “Hashem,” I pleaded, “I know everything is for the good, but it’s so hard for us to watch this!”

After about half an hour of intense davening, I suddenly heard a voice inside me telling me that everything would be fine. “I don’t care what the doctors are saying,” I told Sarah. “Let the machines beep away. Tal is going to be okay.”

Sure enough, Tal survived the crisis, and over the next few days her condition stabilized, to the point that the doctors were able to stop the sedation. They cautioned us, however, that they had no way of gauging the extent of the brain damage Tal may have suffered.

Twenty-four hours after the sedation was stopped, Tal was still unresponsive. “Tal,” I said, taking her hand, “if you see me or feel me, squeeze my hand.”

She did!

The doctors didn’t believe me at first. “A lot of parents imagine that their kids are responding to them,” they told me, after trying unsuccessfully to get Tal to squeeze their hands. But in a matter of hours, Tal began to respond and even speak. A few days later, she was moved out of ICU to a regular ward, where she was soon running around like a normal six-year-old.

After being discharged a few days later, Tal underwent extensive testing at the Alyn Hospital rehabilitation center, and the testing showed no lasting physical or cognitive damage. The only lingering effect of the AVM was that her vision is not perfectly sharp, which means she can’t become a sharpshooter or a pilot. Other than that, she’s fine.

“You don’t understand what a miracle that is,” one of the doctors there told us. “I recently saw another child with the same condition who was taken to a local hospital that didn’t have a neurosurgery unit. By the time she was transferred to a better-equipped hospital, the damage to her brain was irreversible. You’re lucky your daughter was taken straight to Hadassah within the ‘golden hour’ in which she could respond to treatment.”

It was Tal herself who pointed out the Hashgachah in her being brought immediately to Hadassah Hospital. “Abba,” she reflected, several weeks after returning home, “had you not been shot, Tzuri Chezi wouldn’t have known who we were, and he wouldn’t have come when he heard over the radio that I needed an ambulance, because there was already another ambulance on the way. He only came because he remembered you.”

In that sense, my ordeal had laid the groundwork for my daughter’s recovery — yet another manifestation of how everything Hashem does is for the good.

It’s been ten years since I was shot, and during that time I’ve been asked many times to speak about my experience, to audiences ranging from teenagers in pre-military academies to not-yet-religious Jews at Aish HaTorah. When I speak, I focus on two main themes, which are closely interrelated. The first is that everything Hashem does is for the good, and the second is that disability is largely in the mind.

To illustrate this second idea, I ask my audience: How many of us are depressed that we can’t fly like a bird? The answer, of course, is no one. Why? Because we don’t expect to fly, so we’re at peace with the “limitation” of being earth-bound, and we find other ways to get from Point A to Point B. In other words, as soon as a person makes peace with his limitation, it ceases to be as much of a limitation. In that sense, a person is only as disabled as he believes himself to be.

“I can’t see the way other people see,” I say, “but so what? Just as it doesn’t bother me that I can’t fly, it doesn’t matter that I can’t see. True, I can’t drive, but there are plenty of people who don’t drive — the prime minister, for one, and he’s not complaining. Everything Hashem does is good, and if I can’t see, that’s also for the good!”

Once, a member of the audience challenged me on this point. “Do you say the brachah of pokeiach ivrim in the morning?” he asked.

“Yes,” I replied.

“But you can’t see,” he countered. “So why are you thanking Hashem for giving sight to the blind?”

“Simple,” I said. “There’s more to vision than eyesight. In fact, because I don’t see with my eyes, I actually have better vision than you do. I don’t judge people by the way they look — I see them for who they really are. I see with my heart, with my mind, with my soul.

“Eyesight can be very limiting,” I continued. “What do you see when you look in front of you? You see a wall. I don’t see that wall. I just keep going forward and doing what I can, without allowing any perceived barriers to stop me.”

This brings me back to my first theme, that of everything being for the good. Emunah, I explain, gives me the power to choose how to look at life, instead of being dragged down by the way things appear superficially. It allows me to view the events of my life in the larger context of Hashem’s plan and discern purpose and goodness in every situation. And that vision, no terrorist can ever take away.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 740)