Kobi has an amazing story, and he told it to me with great excitement last Friday. On the morning of Simchat Torah Kobi woke up in his home, in a kibbutz in the Gaza Envelope, when he heard missile alarms. He looked out the window and saw an armed  terrorist in a drone landing in his yard. He put the children in the mamad (a shelter room that some Israelis have in their own homes), grabbed his gun and waited for the terrorists to enter the house. He looked out the window again and saw the terrorists approaching the front door, but at the last moment they apparently changed their minds and went to the neighbors instead.

They murdered entire families but miraculously not a single terrorist entered Kobi’s house during the entire day. Kobi told me: “I don’t know why the terrorists didn’t enter my house, but it is clear to me that Hashem protected me.” He turned to me to get tefillin because he wants to put them on every day to thank  Hashem for this miracle. I asked him where he currently lives with his family, and he gave me the name of a settlement in the south that I didn’t know. I had no idea how I would get the tefillin to him, but I told him that I would make sure they reached him.

The conversation with Kobi took place on Friday as I mentioned. When I arrived at the synagogue that night for Sabbath prayers, I saw someone I knew who, I remembered, lived in the south of the country. I approached him and asked if he knew where Kobi lived and he replied, “He lives two minutes from my house!” I asked him if he would be willing to bring him the tefillin, and he agreed happily. Baruch Hashem, that Saturday night the tefillin were already in Kobi’s hands, and he thanked me very much for them.