Driving Into a Terrorist Attack

On the morning of September 8, 2025 two terrorists began shooting from a bus stop at the Ramot Junction in Jerusalem. Tragically, six people were murdered and 21 people were injured. My friend was right in the middle of it.

That morning, she was on her way to a gym class and, at the last minute, decided to bring money with her to donate to an Israeli volunteer organization that treats victims of emergencies and attacks. Normally, she donates online, but she remembered that her instructor’s husband raises funds for this group and thought it would be even more meaningful to give the donation in person that day.

So just before leaving, she slipped the money into her purse and drove toward Jerusalem. As she neared the city, she noticed heavy traffic and chose to take a shortcut through Ramot.

This is the message she left on my phone a few hours after the attack:

I was driving to the gym today and there was so much traffic, so I went a different way because it was not moving at all. So I drove into Ramot to avoid the traffic. I am driving there, and I see an Arab right near my car who was dressed as a bus monitor. And I remembered thinking that he looked really out of place for some reason, but I wasn’t sure why. He just looked very suspicious and very scary. And I thought for a moment that it was really crazy that someone like that was in charge of checking the bus.

And I saw a bus driver standing outside on the sidewalk and suddenly I saw people running like crazy in every direction with terrified expressions on their faces. I’ve never seen people look that scared in my life. And I was so confused, the only thing I thought in my head was: Oh my gosh, there’s probably a siren and I cannot hear it in the car. So I open the window, and I hear gunshots, tons of gunshots.

And I still didn’t catch on, I was like oh my gosh, gunshots? So I turn around with my window still open, and I see this guy standing there shooting left, right, center. He’s looking towards me because I’m in the car right in front of him. It took me a moment to realize I was staring right into the face of the terrorist. 

So I started swerving between cars, went through a red light, continued driving, driving, driving and then I heard ambulances and police cars coming from all over.

I get to the gym, and I have the donation that I wanted to give to my teacher. Usually when there is any kind of tzedakah campaign, my sons give it online for me, but I had thought: It’s my teacher’s husband in charge of this campaign, why not give it to her today in class? And it dawned on me that because of this one tiny choice that morning, instead of being just another driver trying to get to the gym, I had been a messenger, a shaliach mitzvah, bringing tzedakah for victims of terrorist attacks. And I truly believe that it is what saved my life that morning.

In the prayers for the High Holidays, we say that there are three things that give us merit in the coming year: prayer, tzedakah (charity) and teshuva (repentance). They can change everything.

I still have the chills when I think about my friend driving straight into that terrorist attack, opening her car window and staring at the face of the terrorist as he shoots in every direction.

And here’s the part that I can’t stop thinking about: She still drove to the gym afterwards! She continued on her mission to give the donation that she had put in her purse that morning. She didn’t drive straight home to calm down like most of us would have. Instead, she kept going until the one tiny choice that she had made before she left that morning became another choice: To view the miracle that had just happened to her in the merit of what she was trying to give to others.

We face so many choices each day and some of them seem inconsequential at the time. Do we donate to a charity online later or do we give whatever we can right now? Do we push off saying we are sorry until tomorrow or do we pick up the phone today?

It wasn’t only the donation in my friend’s purse that saved her when she drove into the terrorist attack. It was her decision before she even left the house that morning, to do what she could with what she had, as soon as she possibly could.

We all have the power to make these small choices each day, choices that can change everything at any moment. May our choices protect us and the entire Jewish nation, and may we merit a new year full of peace, health and blessing.