Last Sunday, Tel Aviv’s Shalev Biton stood before the community at Temple Ahavat Achim in Gloucester and told his story of survival.

He told the 60 congregants gathered there that he attended the Nova festival to spend time with old friends he hadn’t seen in years following his post-IDF world travels. He told them how he’d gone to sleep on the evening of Oct. 6, planning to rise at dawn to continue dancing. He told them the increasing state of confusion that morning of Oct. 7, as festival-goers heard rockets and gunfire; the eventual realization, as he sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic with a friend, trying to drive out of the grounds, that something was seriously wrong when he heard a woman shout that there were terrorists on motorcycles.

He took his friend’s hand and said, “We need to run.”

He told the congregants – who ranged in age from pre-bnei mitzvah kids to retirees – how he and his friend ran five miles, leaving their car in the standstill roadblock, fleeing the sounds of motorcycles and bullets and screaming, until they arrived at a farm they’d come across on Google Maps.

The manager of the farm, a Bedouin Israeli named Yunnis Alkarnawi, gave them water and food, phone chargers, and a place to rest. As the day moved on, more Nova survivors found their way there – at first six, including Biton and his friend, and then another couple who arrived later. Biton, exhausted, had fallen asleep by the time Alkarnawi ran inside, shouting that there were terrorists on motorcycles approaching.

Along with 24 Thai farm workers and the seven other festival goers, Biton ran again – this time throwing himself underneath a house that was raised a few inches off the ground. They stayed there for hours, listening – unable to understand the Arabic being spoken – as Alkarnawi met the Hamas terrorists at his gate and spoke with them. The only thing Biton could understand was one question the terrorists asked: “Wen el yahud?”

“Where are the Jews?”

Alkarnawi responded, in Arabic: “There are no Jews here.”

“Including his own life, he saved 33 people,” Biton said. “He convinced [the terrorists] to go, and somehow they believed him, and they went away.”

Since then, Biton, 25, has been traveling around Israel and the world, telling his story. Originally from Arbel in northern Israel, Biton completed his IDF service in July of 2021. He worked for 10 months to save money and then traveled to Peru, Colombia, Thailand and Australia. He returned to Israel two weeks before Oct. 7, and now lives in Tel Aviv, working as a service agent for a company called WOLT.

In March, he traveled to Chicago and Nashville as a part of a delegation called Faces of October Seventh. In May, Biton accompanied Alkarnawi and other survivors to speak in Stavanger, Norway, at the invitation of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem. He’s spoken with Alkarnawi at other events in Israel as well. Now he is back in the U.S. with a group called ISRAEL-is, delivering talks around the Northeast.

“It’s like therapy for me,” Biton said, describing his public speaking engagements. He explained that he gains strength from the communities he speaks with, and sees that he gives those communities strength as well, just by showing them that he can still smile after talking about such horrific events.

“I will still dance forever,” Biton said, emphasizing the power in continuing to experience joy after serious trauma. “No one will stop me from enjoying my life.”

Biton wasn’t originally going to come to Gloucester on this tour, but agreed when TAA’s new spiritual leader, Rav Naomi Gurt Lind, invited him after they met while she was visiting Israel.

When asked why he agreed to add on this talk to his planned trip in the States, Biton said that he feels compelled to agree to speak whenever people ask him. “I have to let people understand what happened there, because there are a lot of people that cannot speak after that day,” he said. “If I can do it, I have to do it.”

“Oct. 7 is more than a news story,” Gurt Lind said. “It was something that happened to human beings, who are our family, so to say, and the way we think about it also needs not only the nuance that we can have with the perspective of distance, but also the viscerality that we need because this is about human life.” Θ