“I don’t have a sense of urgency,” says Leibowitz. “But as a rabbi of a community, I do have a sense of responsibility because I know that what happened on October 7 could happen again.”
The rabbi of the Va’ani Tefilah community in Jerusalem’s Nahlaot neighborhood adds, “Honestly, I am less scared now than at first and that might not be logical, but more a subjective psychological feeling since a few Sabbaths have gone by without event.
“But we saw the power of the surprise attack and the surprise attack can come at any time. If another front opens up, if we have terror flare up nationwide, the security forces are going to be spread thin,” he says.
Leibowitz is not alone in his desire to arm himself.
Israelis were shocked by the catastrophic failure of Israel’s much-vaunted security forces to foresee the events of October 7. That shock was compounded by the heart-wrenchingly slow and ineffectual Israeli response in the first hours of the attack. READ MORE
