(May 23, 2022 / Chabad.org/News) On May 19, the Jewish holiday of Lag B’Omer, the ribbon-cutting for a new rabbinical school was held in Brighton, Mass., with philanthropist Robert Kraft flanked by local rabbis, dignitaries and elected officials.

The school comes in response to the July 2021 anti-Semitic terror attack in the community, when Chabad-Lubavitch Rabbi Shlomo Noginski was stabbed eight times by gun-wielding terrorist Khaled Awad, just outside the Shaloh House day school where Noginski works.

During the attack, the rabbi fought off Awad with his bare hands. Noginski, who fled anti-Semitism in the USSR for Israel, where he lived before moving to Boston, also drew the attacker away from the steps of the school filled with children by running to a park across the street.

For years, the rabbi had a dream of establishing a rabbinical school in Boston. Days after surviving the attack, Noginski pledged to see that vision through to fruition. An opening cohort of eight rabbinical students would be educated in a new, purpose-built center—one student for each time the attacker tried to end Noginski’s life.

A fundraising campaign was launched by Rabbi Dan Rodkin, director of Shaloh House, a Chabad-affiliated school and Jewish community center in the Boston area. The effort saw people worldwide contribute more than $1 million in honor of the rabbi, including prominent Boston-area Jewish philanthropist Kraft, who contributed $250,000 for the new campus.

Reprinted with permission from Chabad.org./News.

Source: JNS