We caught up with Barak Nixon for a video chat while he was traveling to share his story with people around the world, as he does almost every day.

Israel Today: You had already begun a change before Oct. 7^th. What influenced you to begin “turning in repentance” (t’shuva) and becoming religious?

Barak: A terrible feeling in my heart that something was going to explode, and that my way to change it was to start fully observing the Sabbath day.

What happened to you on October 7^th?

I had already started [mostly] keeping Shabbat before that. Yet, as you know, the Nova party was on Shabbat. I didn’t want to go, but my friends convinced me. And in the middle of the night I received a message that the organizers had approved me to attend the party. I arrived at 5:30 in the morning.

At 6:30 the rockets started. At first I tried to calm the people around me and say that this was fairly...

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