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Reuven Bulka, rabbi emeritus of Congregation Machzikei Hadas in Ottawa, was driving to New York State last weekend to attend a family bar mitzvah and Hanukkah gathering when he got a text message from his daughter.

A machete-wielding man had stabbed five people who were celebrating Hanukkah in a home next to a synagogue just around the corner from where she lives.

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“We’re all OK,” she wrote. “Very scary, but didn’t want you to worry.”

The incident happened at the Monsey, N.Y., home of Rabbi Chaim Rottenberg, whose father, Rabbi Menachem Rottenberg, had been good friends with Bulka’s father when they served in the same area in the Bronx.

“It hits home,” Bulka said. “This was the topic of conversation everywhere I went when I was in New York. Obviously they’re agitated, they’re reeling. You figure that a holy place is some sort sanctuary. … It seems like there’s no more borders, that evil has encroached into areas where evil previously dared not tread.”