The Jewish people should please continue to pray for my brother’s full recovery, because prayer is all we have,” said the brother of Nethaniel Felber, the soldier from the Netzah Yehuda Battalion who was shot in the head earlier this month outside the Givat Assaf settlement.
Daniel Felber, 26, said he remembers like it was yesterday the afternoon of December 13 – the day a terrorist opened fire on soldiers and civilians standing at a hitchhiking station between the towns of Beit El and Ofra, murdering two people and wounding Daniel’s brother.
“My father sent me a message to call him right away,” Felber recalled. So he walked out of class at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he is a student, and called his dad.
“He gave the phone directly to a soldier, and that soldier spoke to me,” Felber said. “He told me what happened and instructed me to go to Hadassah Ein Kerem as soon as possible, because my brother was in an attack.”
Felber went directly there, beating his parents, who had to drive to Jerusalem from Ra’anana, where the family lives.
The Felbers – parents Joe and Judi; Daniel; Adina, 24; and Nethaniel, 21 – made aliyah in 2008 from Silver Spring, Maryland. An Orthodox family, before moving to Israel they belonged to Young Israel Shomrai Emunah of Greater Washington.
When Felber arrived at the hospital, he had to wait close to 30 minutes for his parents in a too-silent waiting room before he could see his brother and understand the gravity of what had happened. Eventually, a surgeon came out and explained that Nethaniel had been shot in the head.
“It was such a shock to our family,” Felber said.
The family quickly realized they would have to inform their extended family in the US. But before they could do so, family and friends began contacting them – they had read about it in the paper.
Since then, he said, “We have just been at the hospital every day, waiting for visiting hours. In between, people visit with us. His friends come to tell us stories about Nethaniel, and they pray with us.”
