One young man was just sitting on a bench on the promenade near the Mediterranean sea in Jaffa, playing his guitar. Suddenly, he “heard screams and the sounds of chaos.” Seeing what could only be a terrorist running towards him, he jumped up onto the bench, lifted his guitar and began to beat the terrorist with it until police officers arrived and shot the terrorist dead.

Earlier that day, a second young man was in the Petach Tikvah shuk—a bustling open-air market—when out of nowhere he felt someone jump on him and felt a sharp pain in his neck. Within seconds he realized he was the victim of a terrorist stabbing attack. “I told myself I had to fight him,” he later said. So he pulled the knife from his own throat and stabbed the terrorist with it, killing him instead.

Who knows how many lives were saved thanks to their bravery?

There is much to learn from them and from countless other heroes—and not only in cases of attacks, G‑d forbid. Here were two men who could have focused only on themselves, thinking about what they did not have or could not do to help others in the current situation. Instead, they chose to act, despite the difficulties. No one would have made any judgments if one had decided to lie on the sidewalk in pain and wait for an ambulance. And there would not have been a shred of criticism if the other had said, “I ran for my life; what else could I do? I only had a guitar—no weapon or anything like that.” But one ignored his personal injury, and the other did not give a thought to what he had in hand.

What they both had was a courageous determination to do something. And both saved lives.

I hope that there will never again be such attacks, and that there will never again be a need to see such heroism. But even if with G‑d’s help there are no more, there is still a lesson in the spiritual sphere that we can learn from these brave men. We all need to help each other—physically and spiritually, both in general and especially during a crisis.

But it is so very easy to evade these responsibilities by saying: “How can I influence someone else if I’m not perfect myself? How can I help others if I’m ‘wounded’ spiritually? How can I inspire others if I don’t have the weapons—I’m not a scholar or articulate or a natural teacher or talented in some special way?

These two young men showed us that no matter what we have or do not have, the most important thing is a willingness and readiness to act.

With that willingness, we will experience the blessings and help of G‑d wherever we turn.