Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein was walking into the banquet hall at Chabad of Poway on Saturday when he heard a loud noise. He thought a table had toppled or that one of his congregants had fallen.

“I did not know what that was,” he said. But when he turned around, he immediately found out.

“I was face to face with this murder terrorist who was holding the rifle and looking straight at me,” he said.

The gunman did not say anything.

“As soon as he saw me, he started to shoot toward me and that is when I put my hands up,” Rabbi Goldstein said.

In an interview on the “Today” show on Sunday, Rabbi Goldstein recounted the harrowing moments when the gunman entered the synagogue in Poway, Calif., about 25 miles north of San Diego, and opened fire with an A.R. 15-style gun.