THE TIMES OF ISRAEL — “Help! Help! Something terrible has happened!”
The alarming call, coming amid shouts of pain, bombarded a member of the Northbrook Community Synagogue as she entered the temple’s sanctuary outside of Chicago to find over a dozen worshipers lying helpless on the bimah platform and in between the chairs below.
As she weaved through the chaotic scene, the synagogue member tracked who needed triage and who could be moved to a safe location, while ordering one unhurt worshiper to call 911 and another to help apply pressure to a wound.
The screams weren’t real, though. Nor was the blood on the oversized t-shirts that Magen David Adom paramedic Raphael Herbst had participants wear for the simulation. The exercise was part of MDA’s “First 7 Minutes” training session, one of several Herbst facilitated last week for faith communities in the Chicago area.